November 11 - Larding The Figures -  Not long ago the head of the Centers for Disease Control and the Secretary of Health and Human Services ascended their soapboxes to hector America about their flabby bodies.  Fat Americans, they shrieked, are dropping dead by the hundreds of thousands.  The death toll is nearly as high as that caused by smoking.  Drastic measures must be adopted immediately to deal with a health crisis of spectacular gravity.

This alarming news was fodder for several weeks of wailing, gnashing of teeth and soul searching as every special interest group remotely connected to obesity weighed in with demands for government to make the citizens shape up.  The hook to tobacco hysteria was brilliant, although very discomforting to the suddenly out-of-fashion activists.  Smoking no longer the most important health issue?  Perish the thought!

Early this week the CDC quietly admitted it had made an error in its tabulation of the fat death toll.  Although it refused to issue the number it had overestimated, one paper reported that the CDC overstated the figure by 80,000.  Whoops!  Back to the statistical drawing board!

Although ignored by most of the media, the most interesting aspect of the CDC's original death toll is that its 400,000 deaths per year is identical to what was, until recently, the death toll from smoking.  For years the CDC was saying that tobacco killed 400,000 Americans per year.  About three years ago the anti-tobacco industry began pushing that figure higher.  In this story the CDC now says that smoking kills 435,000.  Rather strange that the tobacco death toll is increasing while the CDC claims that smoking rates have dramatically declined in the past decade.  Something isn't right with this picture.  The tobacco death toll has been debunked and now its fat deaths appear to be a lie.

The CDC is revealed as a politically-driven agency that pulls numbers out of hats to advance the causes of the special interests who make money of regulating personal behavior.

November 24 - Imagining Health Disasters -  Todd Seavey, writing for the American Council on Science and Health, writes of how technology's ability to measure ever smaller particles, although a boon to science, provides the perfect excuse for the purveyors of health hysteria to whip up the populace into a panic.  

Forgotten, or purposefully ignored, by the fright mongers is the truism that it is the dose that makes the poison.  He takes the media to task for consistently hyping the lurid while scanting the deliberative. A specific example includes an "activist" calling the Mediterranean Sea an un-flushed toilet to the delight of the media while a scientist throwing cold water on the unwarranted hysteria is ignored.  The tactics that demonized tobacco have been perfected and we now have an epidemic of purposeful deception.

November 24 - Hazardous Worship Services -  Speaking of tiny solid pollutants, we present this hilarious BBC story about the dangers lurking in churches, especially during the Christmas season.

Church air was found to be considerably higher in carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons than air beside roads travelled by 45,000 vehicles daily.

Such is the credulousness of the BBC that a midnight Christmas service may as well be held by the side of a busy highway for all these dumb priests know about health.  The candles and incense must go so that worship may be sanitized for the 21st century.  Improved ventilation won't do since anti-tobacco says that it would take a hurricane to purify the air of the church pollutants, which are the same as those of tobacco.  Merry Christmas from Big Health.

November 24 - Incensed By Incense -  As an antidote for the mind-numbing earnestness of the BBC, the news outfit that never met a junk science study it couldn't embrace, Judi McLeod takes the Church of Pollution report and puts it into perspective.  An activist here an activist there and pretty soon we won't dare climb out of bed in the morning so deadly is our world.

November 23 - Lumps Of Coal -  Big Brother dumped a ton of coal on smokers in South Africa, bringing wreaths of smiles to anti-smokers everywhere.  The Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa informed its workers that the Christmas holiday would be a two-tiered affair this year with nonsmokers receiving an additional five days off.  Smokers have been told that because of their sinful ways they must work additional days "to set an example to our members with relation to our general well-being."  How penalizing workers who lawfully consume a legal product fits within the Christmas holiday season is not addressed by little dictator who issued the edict.

Deception

November 23 - The Ends Justify The Means - Privately, some scientists and anti-smoking lobbyists concede that the evidence for the lethal effects of passive smoking is less than compelling.  Yet they insist that qualms over the scientific evidence should not get in the way of the ultimate goal: the elimination of an avoidable cause of more than 100,000 deaths in the UK each year.

Robert Matthews, writing for the Telegraph, strolls through the evidence manufactured by agenda-driven "researchers" to make the case for smoking bans.  He explains how and why these studies were molded and shaped to produce the "right" result.

He also highlights research, such as a huge, long term study conducted at the University of California that counters anti-tobacco's secondhand smoke claims.  When the researchers conclusions don't please the social engineers there is hell to pay as the Telegraph itself found out when anti-tobacco tried to censor the newspaper when it broke the story about a World Health Organization secondhand smoke study that also ran counter to anti-tobacco dogma.  He finishes by noting that the obsessive focus on secondhand smoke is harmful to legitimate research on all aspects of health. 

November 22 - Sleeping With The Lights On - On occasion we have referred to the anti-tobacco mentality as a mental disorder.  Although it is faith-based its acolytes are compelled to impose it upon their neighbors.  Unlike religious mania, however, anti-tobacco adherents dress up their belief with the trappings of science -- pseudo-science actually since on close examination the "science" dissolves into intangible vapors.

We present here a short explanation of what anti-tobacco has accomplished up to now preaching its mantra of contradictions, why such a bizarre ethos will fail and a glimpse into the minds of the unhappy people who have devoted their lives to a false god.

November 22 - Canada Tobacco News - The New Brunswick smoking ban is producing the usual result; lost revenue for businesses that will soon be out of business.

The boneheads responsible for high taxes know why smuggling is increasing.  In fact they expected it.  They continue in their insanity.

Anti-tobacco continues its destructive drive to make the Canadian pension system divest tobacco stocks.  Not a good idea as these stocks are consistently good performers.

Restaurant and bar owners as well as casino operators in the United States across the Ontario border as popping the champagne corks as that province moves towards total prohibition.

November 17 - Finger In The Dike - A busy group of federal and New York agents confiscated cigarettes sent into the country from Switzerland.  Although the specific grounds from interrupting the shipments are not available in this story, it is clear that tax collectors in New York have ramped up their attempt to halt the ocean of cheap cigarettes flowing into the state due to the obscenely high state taxes.  New York City also tacks on a huge local tax so practically no one buys cigarettes in that city these days.

The tax collectors may have halted this one particular vendor from availing itself of the huge market for reasonably priced cigarettes but stopping this one spigot means that one or more spigots will spring into existence.  People will not pay high prices for goods that are produced for a low price.  This economic rule cannot be violated.  If New York wishes to halt the "illegal" sales it can easily reduce its tax take to something appropriate.

Anti-tobacco Politicians

November 19 - Good News From Washington! - Another anti-tobacco attorney general appears headed for political oblivion.  Back in those heady days in 1998 when big tobacco lay prone at the feet of the triumphant state attorneys general the future appeared bright indeed for those who had extracted billions of dollars from smokers.  

That was then.  Christine Gregoire, who trampled bystanders in her rush to hog the cameras, based her run for governor of Washington on her involvement in the settlement.  The voters have spoken and they haven't been appreciative.

November 19 - Crushing The Producers -  One of the biggest disappointments of the Bush Administration is how it was bullied into continuing the federal lawsuit, launched by the Clinton Administration, against the tobacco industry.  As the trial moves forward the hypocrisy and greed on which this suit is based becomes clearer.

We are now in the ninth week of the farce and the judge has halted the proceedings so that the industry can make an interim appeal over whether, should the government prevail, the companies must "disgorge" the profits they made over the past 33 years.  Disgorgement is a punishment for criminal cases under the RICO statutes that form the basis of the suit.  Since the tobacco suit is a civil complaint it is uncertain whether disgorgement applies.  

The stakes are huge.  If the industry must disgorge its profits the government would collect $280-billion.  If disgorgement is not allowed in civil cases then the government would collect nothing but the satisfaction of ordering the industry to alter its marketing strategies.  

Considering that government, at both the state and local levels, has collected more money per cigarette pack sold than the cigarette manufacturers over the past 33 years it would seem that the RICO racketeering statutes should include the government as a co-conspirator with the industry.  The tobacco control industry has also profited handsomely from cigarette sales.  Bring these racketeers before the judge as well.

All the legal maneuverings, of course, are merely a smokescreen to obscure the foregone conclusion of this case.  The government doesn't have a case but it has all the power.  The industry will, as it always does, make a deal with its persecutors.  It will settle for a huge sum, up the price of its product, thereby obligating the smokers to pay yet more of their money to the government.  When the government assumes the role of a robber it shouldn't be dismayed when the citizens withdraw their trust.

Population Control

November 19 - Binding Us With Rules -  It is said, though less often now than it used to be, that the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited.  Effectively, this principle limited the scope of the state to intervene in people's lives. Law set the boundaries of personal action but did not dictate the course of such action.

The author of this provocative lament notes that this simple concept worked very well for hundreds of years but over time, first slowly then rapidly, has found disfavor with the governing class.  In both the United States and in the United Kingdom the law makers are hell bent on writing laws that govern every aspect of human behavior.  The law code books expand while personal liberty contracts.