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January
27, 2006 |
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Junk Science
January 27 -
Deadly outdoor pollution -
Taking
the next logical step on the road to tobacco prohibition California
has designated outdoor secondhand smoke a hazard to
nonsmokers. Although indoor secondhand smoke, even in the
cases of nonsmokers and smokers living in close proximity over a
span of many decades, has never been proven to be dangerous the
debasement of science allows the ideologues to expand their war on
smokers. Strangely enough the
hook anti-tobacco is using to peddle California's latest garbage is
breast cancer. Primary smoking isn't blamed for causing breast
cancer yet the creators of this latest preposterous study plan to
hype outdoor smoking prohibition as prevention for breast cancer.
This "study" has been in the works for
several years. The conclusions were determined long before the
"research" began. Today's is a happy day for behavior
engineers, prohibitionists and grifters everywhere. It's
another sad day for legitimate research and science.
January 27 -
Fraud exposed -
One
so-called researcher who hoped to make it big on the anti-tobacco
junk science circuit finds himself in hot water after fabricating
research data that was published in several international scientific
journals. While his fraudulent machinations didn't focus
exclusively on tobacco he did attempt to link his junk with smoking
and oral cancer. Linkage with tobacco is the surest way to get
press attention and government grants. This time the con man
was caught but not until a lot of damage had been done.
Anti-tobacco smears
January 27 -
A traitor in our midst -
Michael
Siegel is bemused at the calumny an anti-tobacco operative casts his
way. Being labeled a tobacco stooge and a traitor is to be
expected when one challenges, as he effectively has, the more
odiferous of anti-tobacco's junk studies but Siegel is nonplussed
that his accuser's rant was in response to his comments on a social
policy issue rather than one that relates to the effects of tobacco.
Siegel, a tobacco control advocate, has
recently written critically of recent research about secondhand
smoke and heart attacks as well as questioned whether smoking should
be banned everywhere. These heresies didn't prompt any name
calling but Siegel's forceful opposition to firing smokers who smoke
struck a chord, most likely because the public is repulsed by
anti-tobacco's latest tact of promoting job discrimination.
Prohibition
January 27 -
Who to
believe? -
On
one side are taxpaying, payroll-making, hardworking business people.
On the other side are highly-paid operatives of anti-tobacco special
interests that pay no taxes or produce a product or service anyone
would buy. The small business people don't want a smoking ban
because they know their profits will plunge. The operatives
want a smoking ban so their patrons, the pharmaceutical companies,
can market smoking cessation devices. Too often the
politicians listen most receptively to the polished operatives who
do know how to lie with charm. |
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Pro Choice Smokers
Newsletter
January 27 -
Latest
Edition Out Now - Empowered by their success in
Washington State the nannies are on a roll and stamping out
sin everywhere....."Thank you for smoking" picked up by Mel
Gibson....Pro-choice candidate files in Minnesota.
Check out the tobacco and lifestyle related news in your
state.
Hate
January 27 -
Church paper revels in hate -
Back
in the good old days before anti-tobacco made hateful
bigotry respectable newspapers would never have dreamt of
printing an editorial as vicious as one that appeared in the
Deseret News, one of Salt Lake City's two dailies. The
subject is a bill to completely ban smoking in all "public"
places, expanding the state's clean air act to bars and
private clubs. More disturbing than the secondhand
smoke fraud on which this bill is based is the hateful tone
the editors take.
Cigarettes
don't kill people. People smoking cigarettes kill people.
Those who
spew it in public are public menaces.
The paper
brushes off concerns about lost business, property rights
and "freedom-of-choice" issues by pontificating that
secondhand smoke is a public health issue. Lawmakers
must step in a protect the vulnerable, such as the young
things who choose to spend a night in a night club
and bar.
The Deseret News
is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Each 24th of July the Mormon church and its news organ
celebrate the arrival of the Mormon pioneers to the Salt
Lake Valley 159 years ago. Preachers relate the
tale of how the early Mormons were persecuted, killed and
driven from their homes in Illinois by violent mobs of
ignorant bigots. The Mormon church has joined the mob.
Straitening up eaters
January 27 -
Stealth fast food tax -
"Fed
up" by school kids littering neighborhoods in which high
schools are located, an Oakland California city councilwoman
has a plan. Her plan does not focus on the adolescent
scofflaws who daily violate the law against littering but
instead target the fast food joints that lawfully sell a
legal product to those who choose to buy it. "Fees"
ranging from $230 to $3,815 per year would be charged to
restaurants and convenience stories depending on the size of
the establishment. Non-profits and professional
shakedown artists are enthused about the plan and support is
high among city council members.
January 27 -
Limits proposed -
A
county supervisor in the Bay Area has a solution for the
epidemic of obese kids; get rid of the fast food purveyors.
While his busybody approach to a dubious problem that has
been overblown by money-grubbing special interest groups is
hardly unique, this politician's conflict of interest is
fairly glaring. The fast food banner is the owner of a
restaurant that competes with the establishments he want to
limit. | |
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January
25, 2006 |
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Health
January 25 -
Lung cancer rates - A reader writes asking for clarification
on lung cancer rates. The reader is not so much consumed with
fear that he is ripe for lung cancer but wants the ammunition to
talk coherently about how all of us have been hoodwinked by the
anti-tobacco machine. Ammunition is supplied.
Straitening up eaters
January 25 -
Baseless lawsuit -
For
years we have said that the suits against the tobacco industry,
although highly lucrative to lawyers and special interest groups,
were merely dress rehearsals for the main event; taking down the
food industry. Michael Siegel
examines a wonderful scheme by a team of lawyers, one a veteran of
the tobacco lawsuits, whereby lawyers suing the fast food industry
needn't bother with proving cause and effect. In fact legal
wrongdoing by the targeted corporations doesn't appear to have any
place in this shakedown scheme. |
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Canada
January 25 - Tobacco News - Break out the champagne
and symbolically toast Warren Klass on the good news that
the anti-smoking government has been sent packing.
Nirvana has not broken out but the grifters who have made
out like bandits on the anti-tobacco gravy train are shaking
in their boots, fearful that their good times are near the
end.
CommentaryJanuary 25 -
The Great Smokescreen - We're pleased to present Bob
Dyer to our readers. Bob's commentary will be a regular
feature on our web site. From the education system to the
"respectable" drug pushers saturating the air waves, Bob will
bring his common sense and humorous perspective to the issues of
the day. While passionate about the tobacco issue Bob is
not a one-note writer. His
extensive life experiences, as well as his academic
background, provides insight that resonates with all. | |
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January
23, 2006 |
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Fight for Freedom
January 23 -
Dollars talk - While the Washington DC city council
has approved a terrible smoking ban the mayor has not yet signed it
and has indicated that he has big problems with a law that will
negatively affect the District's important hospitality industry.
You can help him make up his mind by emailing a message to him and
the city council expressing your disapproval with declaring our
nation's capitol off limits for smokers. All it takes is
affixing your name to a letter and then pressing "send." It's
not much to ask.
Canada
January 23 - Tobacco News - What on earth do online
dating services have to do with Canada's upcoming election?
Warren Klass examines the dating scene and discovers an odd
affinity between anti-smoking woman and Canada's status quo.
Big PharmaJanuary 23 -
Sky high mark ups -
The
predatory practices of the pharmaceutical corporations ensure that
this industry is far more unpopular than the tobacco industry.
While drug company front groups lobby relentlessly to tax cigarettes
out of existence, the prices they charge for their own products,
including their lousy smoking cessation products, are astonishingly
high. While this particular story is two
years old it's a safe bet that the
astronomical mark ups
have
only gotten higher. Certainly the price of cigarettes
continues to rise as drug companies work overtime lobbying
politicians to raise the taxes on cigarettes to effect their goal of
driving the tobacco industry, their competitor, out of business.
January 23 -
The payoff -
Nearly
half the population in the United States are currently on or have
recently been on prescription drugs. It's no wonder that the
drug industry is the richest on earth. Certainly the scheme to
saturate the airwaves with seductive prescription drug
advertisements is paying big dividends. With so much business
it is sheer swinishness of Big Pharma to monopolize the nicotine
market.
DiscriminationJanuary 23 -
Sheer hatred -
While
very few companies are willing to reduce their talent pool by
refusing to hire smokers, each time one does announce its policy of
forbidding its employees to smoke on their own time the
announcement is treated as the second coming. CBS focused on
one company recently and appears to have bought hook, line an sinker
the company's financial justification, even though the figures
reported do not reflect the health care costs of smoking employers.
Far uglier is a press release
distributed by Action on Smoking and Health, which advocates the
wholesale firing of all workers if they refuse to quit
smoking. This is the sort of hatred that Michael Siegel,
himself an advocate of tobacco control, believes is turning off the
public to the whole anti-tobacco message. The public will not
stand for job discrimination. ASH's position is well outside
the mainstream and Siegel's scathing denunciation is echoed by all
people of good will. |
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Commentary
January 23 -
Level Killing Field - Anti-tobacco has worked so hard in
implying that only smokers get lung cancer and that
smoking tobacco inevitably causes lung cancer that it is
hard pressed to come up with a coherent explanation why lung
cancer, in an era of fewer smokers, is rising.
Søren Højbjerg, from Denmark, examined the stats provided by the
Centers for Disease Control and finds some surprising trends.
Smokers
January 23 -
Face transplant patient is smoking -
Last November the
world was started with the news that French doctors had
performed a face transplant on a woman whose own face was
destroyed by a dog attack. Periodic updates indicate that,
so far, the procedure has been a success.
One of those updates hit the news
circuit last week but this time the hook was not the woman's
progress but the fact that she has resumed smoking.
Needless to say the doctors are opposed to her smoking but a
close reading of the story doesn't offer any evidence that her
smoking is causing tissue rejection or interfering with her
recovery. The doctors themselves are rather circumspect on
the smoking issue, confining most of the comments to medical
matters unrelated to how smoking could affect the woman's
recovery, despite the lurid headlines highlighting the
transplant update. So why the focus on smoking?
Because this is the first face
transplant it's likely that the doctors are not sure if the
operation will be a success. What to do if it fails?
Say she was smoking! If she turns into some sort of circus
monster, it's surely the the fault of smoking, not complexities
associated with such a procedure. Smoking has become the
catch-all excuse for any misfortune on the planet; when in
doubt, blame smoking. The media and medical establishment
will cooperate.
Population ControlJanuary 23 -
No smoking...at home -
Smoking at
home has been in the news lately because of the efforts by a few
businesses to prohibit their employees from smoking off the job.
Even those petty dictators haven't intruded into the home to
ensure their dictate is obeyed.
Home prohibition, however,
could come to Scotland as a consequence of the country banning
smoking in the workplace. Smokers would first be
identified and their addresses marked on a map. The government
would then send out letters informing the smokers that they may
not smoke in their homes during visits from a council worker or
health worker. The prohibition would begin one hour before
the government employee's scheduled arrival.
Civil
libertarians are aghast but given the passivity of a supposedly
free people in the face of the unwarranted smoking ban the
latest outrage will probably stand. | |
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