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February 24, 2006 |
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Victories!
 February 24,
Celebrate
and dance to music!
Virginia, Maryland and
Galveston, Texas
said NO to tobacco bans. "Delegates in both states said
that many business owners have prohibited smoking in response to
customer demands but that those who wish to cater to smokers should
be allowed to do so." Finally, some common sense!
In a free society we don't legislate human behavior or free
enterprise.
ACS, AHA and the ALA can get out of our states and stay out of
them, we don't want you! Democracy and free enterprise is not
something you can destroy!
You can make a difference in your home town. Success
is just a matter of stepping up to the plate to be counted,
legislators do listen! |
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Pharma Cartel
February 24 -
Celebrating addiction -
Nicotine,
so anti-tobacco operatives claim, is highly addictive, so addictive
that quitting smoking is harder than getting off heroin. That
being the case, it's awfully peculiar to hear that same demon
nicotine being touted as medicine when injected in gum, a patch or
an inhaler sold by Big Drugs. The most dramatic decline of
smoking rates occurred long before pharmaceutical smoking cessation
devices saturated the airwaves.
Michael Siegel, an advocate for
tobacco control, accepts the definition of "addiction" that in the
late 1980's expanded to include nicotine. He does, however,
question the wisdom of predicating smoking cessation upon
substituting the nicotine of a cigarette with nicotine produced by a
drug manufacturer. If the poor smoker is indeed addicted to
nicotine, what is the purpose of keeping him hooked on
pharmaceutical nicotine?
Obviously the huge multi-national
drug companies derive a financial benefit when smokers switch from
tobacco-company nicotine to drug-company nicotine. Less
obviously mainstream anti-smoking organizations benefit since most
of them are lavishly subsidized with drug-company money. As
Siegel points out here, whatever mercantile interest benefits,
smoking cessation based upon nicotine substitution has a failure
rate that renders anti-tobacco's recommendation of it very troubling
indeed.
Smokers
February 24 - Miracles in our time -
We're not sure what to make of these two stories about two people
who smoked yet reached a ripe old age. Everyone knows that
smoking is so deadly that those who indulge die young and very
painfully. Perhaps these reports of their longevity are urban
legends having no basis in reality.
Margaret Perry,
a sister of film star Katherine Hepburn died this week at the
venerable age of 85. The news story claims she was a heavy smoker to
the very end.
Antonio Pierro outdoes Ms. Perry at age 110, still going
strong despite being a smoker and enjoying a diet of eggs, bacon and
read meat. Something fishy here but we're sure anti-tobacco
will uncover the real ages of these two sickly, pitiful, addicted
smokers. |
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Pro Choice Smokers
Newsletter
February 24 -
Latest
Edition Out Now - Forget the lousy pharmaceutical
nicotine and just be sure to take your vitamins C and
E.....First it was beneficial, then dangerous, now once
again beneficial.....Bill to ban tobacco products moves
forward in Utah.....Bill to make teen smoking illegal
receives cold response....Car smoking bill snuffed out
Catch all the news and views on
lifestyle issues from coast to coast and throughout the
world.
Prohibition
February 24 -
No smoking anywhere -
An
advocate for tobacco control is appalled that Action on
Smoking and Health, a radical anti-smoking outfit, has let
the cat out of the bag. ASH, publicly the most hateful
of anti-tobacco groups, is crowing how the critical mass
drummed up by anti-tobacco makes possible for government to
forbid smoking in one's own home. Michael Siegel finds
calls for such an invasion of privacy appalling and fears
that ASH will ultimately tar all of the tobacco control.
Frankly FORCES is delighted that ASH is exhibiting the true
face of anti-tobacco and hopes that ASH becomes the public
face of tobacco control.
Population Control
February 24 -
Mission creep -
After
the Patriot Act was hastily passed soon after the shocking
events of September 11, 2001 the only people who had
problems with it were those in the far left and far right of
the political spectrum. Four and a half years later
the concerns that were dismissed as paranoid fantasies
aren't sounding so paranoid after all.
Reauthorizing the Patriot Act
provided the excuse to expand government's role in every
citizen's life, an exercise that most politicians cannot
forego. This article details one component of the
Patriot Act that will record the purchases of common cold
over-the-counter drugs. The article delves deep into
money-laundering aspects of the act relating a horror story
about a man imprisoned in a case that would baffle Kafka.
The Patriot Act was supposed to prevent terrorist attacks on
our soil. The politicians are now focusing it on
Americans. | |
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February 22, 2006 |
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Virginia
 February
22 -
Immediate Action Needed - The Virginia Senate passed Senate
Bill 648 (Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act) prohibiting smoking in all
"public" places on February 13. Essentially smoking would
remain legal only within the home or in the car.
SB 648 has been sent to the House
Committee on General Laws, Subcommittee #3, ABC/Gaming, hearings
will be held on February 23. To
follow this legislation and contact your legislator please visit
Forces Virginia.
Ethics
February
22 -
Private taxing authority -
Rob
Reiner, a Hollywood "activist" wants to raise your children.
Eight years ago he wrote a voter initiative that raised the price of
a pack of smokes by 50 cents. The proceeds are supposed to
help disadvantaged children under the age of five.
Although Reiner's programs have been
given a
failing grade he plans to expand his private, but publicly
financed, empire by yet another voter initiative that will fund
universal pre-schooling (child care) for all. To his credit he
realizes that smokers' have been sucked dry so this time he will
"tax the rich" to pay for his personal playground. To build up
support he has been running saturation advertisements, beginning
last year, on the joys and wonders of pre-schooling. As the
editorial from the Los Angeles Times shows, tobacco tax funds are
being diverted from the childhood programs they are supposed to fund
to pay for Reiner's propaganda blitz. This is a serious ethics
lapse but pales in comparison to the outrage of a well-wired,
politically-connected do-gooder passing taxes on his fellow
Californians to pay for his pet peeves. |
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Health Care
February
22 - Targeting the unpopular
- The issue was health insurance for smokers on the Neil Cavuto
program on Fox News. FORCES spokesman Norman Kjono on one side
and Nancy Darling,
President of National business Group on Health, on the other.
Ms. Darling wants businesses to charge their smoking employees more
for health care than their nonsmoking employees. Mr. Kjono
sees a bigger picture. Although limited by the constraints of
time both sides had their say. The most interesting point was
Mr. Kjono's revelation that Ms. Darling is the beneficiary of
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation school of talking points.
To view the video, click
here, click on VIDEO on the menu bar. In the resulting
popup window click on the "Smoking Surcharge" link.
Population Control
February
22 -
Under the all seeing eye -
Mayor
Daley of Chicago is so tickled with the surveillance cameras that
have proliferated in his city during this nervous era that he wants
them installed in bars and "swanky nightclubs." The current
batch of cameras are focused on government buildings, train
platforms and intersections.
Taking them into establishments where
people eat and drink to relax is an escalation that might be
regarded as extreme. Not to worry. The panic-stricken
residents of the once muscular city think spy cameras in their
watering holes
are just fine.
Security
is now the goal that all docile citizens crave and government is
more than willing to cater to their insecurities. Chicago
recently banned smoking in private establishments so moving forward
to filming the activities in these businesses is the next logical
step. | |
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February 20, 2006 |
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Anti-tobacco
February 20 -
An embarrassing malfunction - As many know, at the
headquarters of the Word Health Organization in Geneva there is a
huge counter that shows the number of “tobacco-related deaths” in
the world. As we know, not one allegedly tobacco-related death can
be scientifically demonstrated.
Something very strange happened the
other day at WHO, however, which caused much embarrassment for Jong
Wook Lee, boss of the organization, who had just recovered from the
scandal of his involvement in the pharmaceutical traffic of
tetanus-infected vaccines: the counter started telling the truth!
The technical support of the company that installed the counter was
called immediately, and the preposterous algorithm that transforms
fraudulent hypotheses into numbers was quickly restored. In spite of
the prompt response, however, the supplying company lost the
contract with the wealthy customer.
February 20 -
Noble goals? -
Readers
of this site may feel the need for a stiff drink after perusing the
depressing, hopeless, end-of-the-world items we post here. We
try to highlight upbeat items but the sheer number of negative news
dictates the imbalance between good and bad.
If misery loves company then reading
this commentary by Michael Siegel, an advocate for tobacco control,
is a must. If you think you are depressed, image Siegel's
malaise as he is hit over the head with the nastiness that is at
heart at the base of tobacco control. Smokers may be the
obvious victims of the horrific anti-tobacco agenda but at least we
never admired these people and always knew that most are conmen and
grifters.
Rule of Elite
 February
20 -
Int'l tobacco control's new digs -
The
world's health took a turn for the better last week as World Health
Organization bureaucrats announced the headquarters for the
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. After considering
Cairo, Port au Prince, Detroit, Minsk and Liverpool, the bureaucrats
decided their important work of saving the Third World form the
First World's deadliest scourge would be best run from Geneva
Switzerland, one of the planet's richest and most glittering cities.
Good works, after all, require good restaurants, luxurious
accommodations and pleasant scenery to provide the conducive
atmosphere for the tobacco busters to plan their attack on the
world's smokers. To camouflage
the announcement of the expensive headquarters international tobacco
control has scored, the press release focuses on taking the world
tobacco treaty to unregulated cyberspace. Stamping out tobacco
advertising, a goal that is completely incompatible with our
country's constitution, cannot be complete as long as the pesky
Internet persists in celebrating unrestricted and unregulated
speech. The peasants with pitchforks must not be allowed to
their say. |
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Commentary
February 20 -
Freedom!! - Whatever the view of the conflict in
Iraq most people do agree that democracy, as opposed to the
dictatorship before the fall of Saddam Hussein, is a worthy
goal for that unhappy land. Bob Dyer doesn't argue
that Hussein was not a blight upon Iraqi aspiration for
liberty but can't help noting that enormous sums of money
and effort are freeing the people there while people here,
in Washington State in particular, are losing their freedoms
right and left.
Prohibition
February 20 -
Anti-tobacco sent packing -
The
non-nonsense senators in South Dakota decisively told
anti-tobacco where to go by killing a bill in committee that
would have ushered in widespread smoking bans. The
level of defeat for anti-tobacco corresponds to the sparse
coverage given this story. Had the vote totals been
reversed the reporter, with the ardent help of anti-tobacco
operatives, would have produced a multi-paragraph paean to
the glory of tobacco control.
Canada
February 20
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Tobacco News - The world may be falling apart but
the special interest agenda builders are as busy and
oblivious as worker ants. Nothing must be allowed to
interfere.
Theatre of the Absurd
February 20 -
Smokers cause global warming -
On
the heels of the preposterous plan to exile Britain's
smokers to the great outdoors, anti-smoking fanatics are now
howling that all that smoking outside, aided by patio
heaters, is threatening the environment and leading to
global warming. Sounds like a good reason to bring all
the smokers back inside where the belong and where smart
business people want them to be but, as is well known,
common sense and personal freedom are anathema to
anti-tobacco zealots. The heated patios serve one
important service, however. On the coldest of nights
the hottest spot in the pub is always where the smokers
congregate, whether indoors or out, giving the lie to
anti-tobacco's dictum that banning smokers is good for
business.
Junk Science
February 20 -
Tallying up the death toll -
Six
power plants in Maryland are responsible for 700 premature
deaths nationwide. To the geographically challenged
it's worth noting that Maryland is on the eastern edge of
the American continent. The prevailing winds tend to
move from west to east. Pollution, whether real or
imagined, doesn't blow from Maryland into the vast interior
or western coasts of the United States. It is blown
east, over the Atlantic Ocean. The junk scientists
should have claimed that the plants are killing people in
Spain, France, Great Britain or Morocco. Of course the
ideologues wouldn't then have had the hook to hysteria that
is crucial for enacting an agenda. | |
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