Dear FORCES:

Some hypocritical fodder for Anti-Smoking Nazis: The U.S. recently lost several astronauts in a space tragedy. They were proclaimed lost heroes. It was indeed a sad loss. But why, when they choose a high risk job that unfortunately kills them, are they heroes, when smokers who choose a high risk activity (supposedly) are scorned? Same thing can be said of  Nascar drivers or many other careers or hobbies that are inherently risky, yet an individual's choice. When such people die, people are saddened. Society and doctors need not be saddened when a smoker dies, but they should shut up during their lifetime prior to this. And provide a little consistency to their logic and emotions.

Tom

Dear Tom,

You are right, of course – but consider this: how much money would get into the pockets of those who would propose to persecute and despise Nascar drivers? Of course, the antismoking scum brings up the passive smoke fraud to justify its contempt, but the same scum does not have any problem when it PAYS to inhale the powerful fumes at the Nascar tracks -- where it even advocates smoking bans! It is easy and glorious to advocate when others have to pay for what you are advocating.

You say there is no logic in the antitobacco enterprise. We respectfully disagree. If:

• when  you con the public with junk science;
• when you instigate hysteria, divisions and hatred in society;
• when you lie to children;
• when you create dangers out of nothingness, or amplify the existing ones out of proportion

millions of dollars flow into your pockets, and you have virtually unlimited power without any of the political liabilities that come with it -- in virtue of the fact that you are wearing a “white coat” -- that seems eminently logical to us. But perhaps you are referring to those laypeople who foolishly believe the lies they hear.

The problem is not logic, but honesty. And our desperate lack of it as a society is mirrored in the reality that the state (which ultimately represents what the people are, even in dictatorships) has created a system that feeds and rewards dishonesty -- to perpetuate it, and then uses what it produces to justify more feeding and rewards. Such a closed-loop system can end in two ways:

• either it consumes its own resources by feeding on itself (as in the case of the USSR), or
• a critical mass of people decides to break it (as it happened in the French Revolution).

If the first case is true, it will take a long time, and our generation may not see the end of it at all. If the second case is true, then you and I can do something about it – but it takes courage, and millions of others as well.

But there is a third possibility -- the most frightening of all: that people will gradually and literally be drugged by state and pharmaceutical multinationals (already in control of the state’s health systems and many universities -- not to mention a powerful influence on the media) into total indifference --  their primary needs (such as food) being met, their “vices” and “risky” behaviours taken care of by vaccines, violence being “prevented” with genetics or vaccines, and the resulting emptiness and total lack of liberty “taken care of” with psycho-drugs, anesthetising us with the ultimate control – and then genetic engineers will take over. If this folly becomes reality (and it is already happening), then no generation may see the end of it.

Live long and prosper – and fulfil the ultimate dream of state and pharmaceutical multinationals (to be one and the same?) for the health of all.

Regards,