Big Tobacco after Big Antismoking propaganda treatment. Who says that the Middle Ages are over? June 2 - It has finally happened - For ten years antismoker groups have said that FORCES was tobacco industry funded. Of course it was never true. When our C.E.O. got a free lunch from the Canadian tobacco industry, his letter of thanks to an executive was promptly published on antitobacco  websites. We never received money from Big (or even Small) Tobacco because we do not speak or behave as they would want us to - but we also said that we see no reason not to get money from a time-honoured legal industry. Still, nothing happened. Recently we decided to officially open up for advertising, as we have never done that before, and established an advertisement ethics policy. Low and behold – we got a banner from RJ Reynolds (see above and, to the best of our knowledge, the banner is only visible in the United States). It has finally happened! After 10 years of existence, FORCES is getting a tiny bit of the “tainted” money of Big, Evil Tobacco – although just for a banner. It was about time and, while we thank RJ Reynolds, we sincerely hope that this is going to be an example for other advertisers, as well as for the tobacco industry at large. So, now when the rabid antismokers foam at the mouth about FORCES and tobacco money, they can rest at ease knowing they’re not entirely lying! They’ll have reached about the same standard of truth and integrity on this subject that they uphold for everything else -- a very low standard, mind you, but that’s the way it is.

May 30 - FORCES Press Release - Taking time off from impotently contemplating the loss of life and developing health disaster in Indonesia due to a devastating earthquake, the kind and caring people who run the World Health Organization continue to keep their priorities on track.  Tomorrow the globe will celebrate the WHO's World No-Tobacco Day.  Millions dead from malaria?  No problem.  Filthy, disease causing water supplies?  Not to worry.  Thousands of Indonesians dead, inadequate medical supplies with conditions ripe for a massive outbreak of infectious disease?  Get real!  The WHO tomorrow addresses its all-consuming goal of badgering healthy, well-off people into quitting smoking, which will, so the WHO says, solve all problems in our troubled world.

Prohibition

May 30 - Antismoking strategy - Suppress public comment. Refuse to hold hearings. Disseminate highly selective propaganda. Gain silence from special interests by rewarding them with exemptions. Order your own Health Department to lobby you for a ban-- but don't call it a ban because it sounds too much like...a ban. Publicly "shame" anybody who might vote against it. "Go for the jugular." Call them Anti-health. Call them lackeys of Big T. Does this sound like a paranoid vision? Well, sorry, it's precisely how Arkansas got its ban-- and likely other places too, where the banners were simply smarter about what they put in their emails. Obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under Freedom of Information, this article spills the beans. Here's a tantalizing sample:

“Why give the bill more shots and more public airing ?” [wrote Deputy Chief of Staff Kelly Boyd to the Governor who'd instigated the ban.] “All you are going to get is folks who oppose the bill coming in and giving legislators something to think about. You have enough resources at your disposal to visit with each individual legislator numerous times during the next week. You only want legislators hearing your side of the story and going to committee is about as opposite a way to do that as I can think of.” 

May 30 - New Hampshire: ban rejected - A proposed ban on smoking in restaurants and bars came up one vote short in the Senate yesterday, failing 12-11. The bill had passed the House by 33 votes last month. Senators said the bill was the subject of one of the most intense lobbying efforts they could recall. Sen. Carl Johnson, R-Meredith, said lobbying on the bill crossed the line. He complained that he was harassed at his home by telephone and with massive e-mails written by lobbyists. “This movement has done nothing to further its cause and — in my opinion has taken a giant step backwards,” he said.

May 30 - South Carolina: ban rejected - House members narrowly defeated a bill Wednesday that would ban smoking in restaurants. After nearly two hours of debate, the House voted 55-52 to send the proposal back to committee, killing it. The measure would have prohibited smoking in restaurants, bars, lounges and recreational facilities but had exceptions for cigar bars and private clubs, such as the American Legion. There's no such thing as safe cigarette smoke," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia. He said he introduced the bill last year after learning of a report that linked secondhand cigarette smoke to breast cancer. "Anyone who says secondhand smoke doesn't kill people is burying one's head in the sand," he said.

May 30 - England: a Welsh council has banned its staff from smoking at all during working hours -The true intent of this latest twist on a ban is clearly seen by the prohibition of council workers smoking outside as well as inside. It has nothing to do with "protecting non smokers" and everything to do with increasing persecution of smokers to pressure them into quitting. The requirement that smokers clock out breaks if they'll smoke during them shows the same sort of mean-spirited intent: are workers forced to clock out for breaks if they do NOT smoke? There's far too much lying and Big-Brotherish manipulation going on with these antismoking campaigns: smokers and the general public need to stand up and just say NO to Nanny. - Michael J. McFadden, author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains.

May 30 - Tobacco News - Warren Klass has been preoccupied but returns with a blow-by-blow account of a recent radio interview in which he took on the anti-smoker callers who, as always, have plenty of emotion but a total lack of facts and logic.  Klass, a perceived Toronto basher delivers a surprisingly kind paean to the city and what it could be.

Business

May 30 - Smokers welcome, cities say - Attention huddled masses yearning to breathe smoke. The Illinois suburbs of Champagne-Urbana (which is now pronounced Ur-BAN-a) are publicly welcoming refugee smokers with wide-open arms, and justifiably expecting a boom in business. The eleven neighboring townships, whose governments believe that the choice about smoking is strictly a matter between customers and owners, stand ready to bust the lie about "bans are good for business" and, at last, to treat smokers as valuable clientele. If you live in that neighborhood, help prove them right. If you don't, just chortle and applaud from your chair.

Tobacco Control

May 30 - Tobacco control advocate says movement out of control - As our readers may know, for quite a while we've quoted bits from the blogspot of tobacco-control advocate Michael Siegel. While we thoroughly disagree, in no uncertain terms, with his pro-ban agenda and the "science" he puts behind it, we nonetheless respect the decency of the man and his willingness to engage in civilized debate. Siegel's been learning the (very) hard way what we, at forces, have known all along: that the anti-smoking movement is a zealous and stop-at-nothing crusade. Or as New York Times columnist Russell Baker once observed-- in fact, as long ago as 1994: "The crusade against smoking is now clearly...entering its dangerous stage. [T]he true crusader doesn't stop at burning the village, killing the women and children and making off with the cattle if that's what it takes to purify the world." Siegel has now stepped out of the shadows, and the safety of his blog, and is making the same point in the Boston Herald.

May 30 - Michael Siegel kicked out of the antitobacco movement - Tobacco control advocate Michael. Siegel has gained the reputation of “dissident”, and we'll continue to do so. Why? Because – using his words – he is antismoking but not antismoker. The difference is important, although the final, practical results end up being the same: smoking bans. Antismokers hate smokers, antismoking activists hate smoking. Siegel takes a position that is consistent with that of a scientist. He starts from the assumption that the science on smoking is mostly sound – an assumption that we challenge, especially on passive smoking. Siegel’s concern with scientific accuracy and with the respect of personal choice, liberties and rights has cost him his position of prominence in his movement. As Siegel himself reports:

As members of this organization and as honest people, we are exceedingly pleased by the words of this “executive director”, as anything and everything that sets us apart from groups and individuals who have made a career out of misleading the people with false representation of evidence and fraudulent claims is truly an honor.  Thank you for that, Mr. Executive Director! We shall celebrate by lighting up a cigarette where it is forbidden. We sincerely hope that others of your kind say the same thing too. We are only sorry that such people keep on getting away with what they do instead of being punished according to criminal laws as they deserve; we'll keep on working for that to happen. In the meantime, Dr. Siegel himself should also be pleased, as people of integrity do not and cannot belong to what the antitobacco movement has become.

As antismokers are programmed to slander anyone who doesn't brainlessly recite the party line, the predictable accusation that Siegel took money from the tobacco industry had to follow automatically, and, in fact, it did.

Our C.E.O. Gian Turci had this to say about this incident:

The problem I see with Dr. Siegel is not one of integrity or courage, that’s for sure. The problem is that he does not yet realize who and what he was/is associated with. Antitobacco has as much to do with science as alcohol prohibition did – from incidental to irrelevant. Antitobacco is healthism, and that is ideology. Healthism and the cult of health always flourished in oppressive regimes and there is a reason for that; it is the manifestation of a political view: your personality and liberty are shrunk to a skin that belongs to the collective. An oppressive regime by definition does not respect its subjects, and one of its most powerful tools is hatred – hiding behind the thin finger of some excuse.

Having made these premises, it seems to me that Dr. Siegel advocates what many people I know and respect want: they want to be “a little pregnant”. They want just enough castor oil to set things “straight”, and then we’ll put the bottle away. NOT! Those who administer the oil soon learn the thrill of holding the spoon, create a self-rewarding system that makes heroes out of do-gooders, and soon castor oil flows like a river. And those who jettison their guts as a result become “scientific” evidence of their own weakness. ^[*]   I call that confusion.

Healthism does not allow reason, science and debate. You either are pregnant with it, or you are not. If you are, you better carry on the rotten pregnancy, deliver the grotesque Leviathan and “enjoy” the consequences. If you are not, then you have to reject antitobacco in toto and fight it to its destruction - for there may be a tragic difference between what Michael wants and what his ex-colleagues want. He is finding out from his ex-colleagues that I am right – once again. One cannot support smoking bans and then be outraged when the antis take away the dignity of smokers, for a smoking ban DOES rip away the dignity of smokers! Personally, I’d rather have 1,000,000 kids taking up smoking than 10,000 of them turning into little brown shirts who beat up their smoking friends “for their own good”. This is the society the antis are working really hard for, so we have to fight them in kind. I respectfully submit that Michael has a choice to make – not with the public, but with himself.

May 30 - Anti-tobacco myth revealed by mainstream press - Dr. Siegel has been relentless in calling attention to one of the most absurd, and baseless, claims by anti-tobacco activists out to enact smoking bans by any means necessary.  One half hour or less of exposure to secondhand smoke, so say the mythmakers, substantially increases the risk of a fatal heart attack.  Common sense reveals this to be a blatant lie since, if true, there would be no smokers living past 30.  Dr. Siegel has debunked this claim using scientific methods.  His tirelessness in calling attention to the fraud paid off as ABC's 20/20 featured the 30 minute myth and rightly attributed it to anti-tobacco organizations' distortion of science to enact a social agenda.  Kudos to Michael Siegel for keeping the pressure on.

May 30 - Hire ban rescinded - While Michael Siegel is an advocate for tobacco control he does have the integrity and intelligence to differentiate between anti-tobacco policies designed to educate the smoker to quit and policies enacted to force, bully, threaten or humiliate the smoker to quit.  He thus deplores the increasingly radical anti-smoking organizations demanding that employers fire smokers who refuse to quit and refuse to hire people who smoke.  Unfortunately he stands alone in adhering to the basic decency that defines humanity.  He can take satisfaction, however, in reporting that one Florida city that had been bullied by anti-smoking fanatics into refusing to hire smokers for the police force has reversed its discriminatory policy.  It seems the city didn't reduce its health care costs by evicting the smokers nor could it attract enough candidates to consider being police officers.  The city joins corporations and city governments that have quietly reversed their anti-smoker policies when slapped hard in the face by reality.

Junk Science

May 30 - Covering all bases - Grant junkies at the University College in London make up in craftiness what they lack in scientific ability.  One cigarette smoked as a youth, they say, could be a pernicious passport to the coils of addiction later on.  The "researchers" dub the phenomenon the "sleeper effect" and such a concept, with proper media promotion, can explain why smoking continues and will continue forever.  Nearly every normal child smokes at least one cigarette.  This childish exploration is not a rite of passage like smoking as a teenager to impress buddies and get that special boy or girl.  It is mere curiosity, made more compelling by today's anti-tobacco zealotry.  Since nearly everyone smokes a cigarette out of curiosity millions of "sleepers" are created each day who will duly join the legion of adult smokers over time.  There is nothing that can be done to stop the sleepers.  Physiology is all.  Best of all anti-tobacco can not be blamed for failing in its self-imposed mission of ending smoking once and for all.

May 30 - Orchestrated science - There really is nothing new under the sun, although some of the permutations of anti-tobacco "science" are so bizarre they do appear new.  Junk science was invented a long time ago and once its use as a tool to disseminate deception and scary-sounding innuendo was perfected it became the coin of the realm in societal adjustment.  Our correspondent from Denmark presents a brief history of anti-tobacco junk.  Please note the abhorrent source and ponder why evil can be defeated but never eliminated.

Epitaph

May 30 - World Health Organization Director General Lee Jong-Wook is dead - He was 61 years old. He observed his healthist religion so much, he died 14 years before the average. A few days ago Lee was participating in a dinner for the inauguration of the World Health Assembly in Geneva that includes the World No Tobacco Day of tomorrow, May 31, when antismoking philosophy and junk science are celebrated throughout the world.  A strong headache followed by vomiting caused Lee to be taken to the cantonal hospital where he was immediately operated on for aneurism. He died shortly after the operation. As Lee hated smoking to the point of imposing a ban on hiring smokers at the WHO, to what can his premature death can be attributed? One could finger wine, which the Director General loved as much as he hated smoking. It is more probable, however, that some distant relative can testify that he was exposed to a whiff of passive smoke some 20 years ago, thus providing the “causal link” for his demise.

But as we reflect - while lighting a cigarette - that Lee is finally just a memory, we have to admit that the career of this vaccine expert has been nothing short of a lightening bolt. Once a relatively unknown WHO bureaucrat, he became better known with his unfortunate involvement in the supply of tetanus vaccines tainted with beta Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin. The incident caused numerous deaths in the Philippines. All in all, Lee seemed to have had the “right stuff” for the WHO which, denying all accusations made in connection with the incident, rewarded him in 2003 with the chair of Director General. About 1,000 people went to his funeral, most of them employees of the bureaucratic giant. How many of them were closet smokers looking ahead to a change in smoking policy remains a mystery.

Understanding the obvious

May 30 - Harvard Crimson weighs in on smoking bans - Writing in a recent issue of The Harvard Crimson, Piotr C. Brzezinski proposes the commonsense solution to smoking bans that regular FORCES readers are fully familiar with, acknowledges the totalitarian potential of the assumptions behind the anti-smoking movement, and comments on the science about secondhand smoke. In doing so, he triggers an interesting forum debate, including this comment from Ireland:

“The biggest problem that we have had here in Ireland is that the smoking ban has made smoking attractive again. Young people think it's great outside the door and love the fact that there is very little supervision. They are also a massive target for drug pushers as can be seen by the huge increase in drugs here in Ireland. It also creates a worse drinking problem. Some of them come into the pub, order one drink and then pop out to their cars and have a few cans in there when on their smoke breaks. It's an absolutely ridiculous law and will create huge problems in the future. Everybody then will forget that the smoking ban has been the biggest contributory factor of all.”

Straightening Up Eaters

May 30 - Behold the modern freak show - In today’s world of “Big Brother” and reality TV, covert freak shows can easily pass for respectable mainstream feature writing. Really, what possessed Britain’s venerable (kinda) Guardian newspaper to send a journalist out on assignment to an obscure place in Russia Soviet Union to pay a poor family for exploiting the spectacle of a grotesquely overweight child? Are we learning something from this? Or are we just staring? The lead for this feature is telling; it’s as if the writer lamely tried to put a brave face on this sorry assignment by playing up the trusty health angle: “If there is a 'face of child obesity', it is six-year-old, 15-stone [210 pounds] Dzhambulat Khatokhov”, the article begins. Uh-huh. The Guardian’s web robots reinforce the redeeming social value hook by placing the article on a page with links to Special Reports on Medicine and Health, and “useful links” to institutions ranging from the British Medical Association and the Royal Institute of Public Health to the (good old) World Health Organization. Guardian readers, you may gape and stare with a healthy conscience!

May 30 - The junk food smugglers - Nanny may, in fact, not be all that bad. In England she's apparently teaching little children some very important lessons in entrepreneurship: how to start a blackmarket. With potato chips, sweets, burgers and soft drinks (in fact anything interesting) banned from the British schools, the enterprising kiddies are learning how to stock and run their own businesses, dealing in delectable playground contraband. Older kids are setting up car pool services like underground railroads that lead to MacDonald's.

Alas, poor Nanny may eventually be forced to ban the legal sale of burgers to "children" who are under 18. No, better make it 19. Er,,,how's 45?

May 30 - Follow the losers - In hopes of satiating an insatiable appetite for power and control, Big Beverage has bent over, with hardly a whimper, for the health fascists. Big Beverage no doubt thinks this act of submission will be enough to get them out of the crosshairs.

Big Tobacco tried this ploy starting with the Surgeon General warnings and the TV advertising bans of the 60’s and 70’s. Then vending machine bans and so on. Throughout the 90’s the tobacco companies basically chained their wrists to their ankles trying to gain favor with their persecutors. These tormentors, though more than happy to sidle up for the occasional quickie, had a lot more on their minds than the fleeting pleasure of watching their victim capitulate and squirm.

After decades of rolling over at their beckon call in hopes of a reprieve, Big Tobacco finally learned the real cost of getting off the radar. Cold hard cash to the tune of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars that is sucked from the wallets of consumers to pay for government protection. Significant portions of these protection dollars are now being used to initiate and institute what amounts to, in many cases, total prohibition of a legal product on private property!

The "science" behind the obesity hysteria is every bit as shoddy as anything anti-tobacco ever regurgitated. As proven in a recent lawsuit in the UK (perhaps link to your archive commentary?), shining a light on the real science is the only way to derail their poisonous agenda.

If Big Beverage, or Big ANYBODY, plans on following Big Tobacco’s “grab your ankles” script, well, we all know how that movie ends.

Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

Health Care

May 30 - Crocodile tears - Guess what "health" organization is weeping over the growing numbers of the working class and poor who lack health coverage?  Why, that would be the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, an anti-tobacco outfit that works tirelessly to make life as miserable as possible for smokers.  From bamboozled legislators RWJF buys smoking bans, sky-high cigarette taxes and hate campaigns to demonize those who lawfully consume a legal product.  Of late anti-tobacco zealots, funded by RWJF, have worked tirelessly to eliminate, reduce or charge higher insurance premiums for health care for smokers.  To gain the grace bestowed by RWJF these poor smokers must quit smoking and become hooked on the pharmaceutical smoking cessation devices that provides the cash (RWJF is the largest single stockholder of Johnson & Johnson) to keep its anti-smoker engine humming.

Anti-tobacco backfires

May 30 - Ban and higher taxes lead to more smoking - In yet another stunning example of anti-tobacco duplicity the state of Washington reports that cigarette smoking is up.  Legal sales of packs of cigarettes where the tax is $2-per-pack are up meaning that "illegal" sales are skyrocketing.  Voters last year were promised that if they voted to outlaw smoking in restaurants, bars and non-Indian casinos the state would reap a health boon as smokers quit smoking en masse.  Instead neighborhood restaurants, bars and non-Indian casinos are suffering while smokers continue to puff away at home and in the tribal establishments that welcomed them with open arms.

Healthism

May 30 - Certifiable insanity - From the focal point of hysterical hypochondria we offer proof that the health-obsessed are truly bonkers.  The issue du jour in San Francisco is whether the roads that traverse Golden Gate Park should be closed on Saturday.  Although the large park is riddled with roads due to the length of the park, the roads that are being targeted are those that allow access to the pavilions, museums, band stands and other attractions clustered at the eastern edge of the park.  Bicyclists, roller skaters and the automobile haters are not satisfied with the Sunday vehicular ban.  In agitating for Saturday closures they are at odds with the majority of citizens who have voted twice to keep the roads open except on Sunday.  The Board of Supervisors, the same band of geniuses who passed a law to keep smokers out of Golden Gate Park, blithely ignored the will of the people and recently passed a law closing the roads on Saturday.  From an "activist" we are treated to this statement:

"I can't see a way that he [the mayor] could veto this and then stand up with a straight face and talk about public health."

So leaving roads open as they have been for generations, and as the citizens wish, all of a sudden is an assault on "public health."  With this vote driving through the park on Saturday miraculously becomes a hazard for those who don't drive through the park.  The air is now deadly when just a few weeks ago it was acceptable.  Some might accuse the "activist" of throwing a temper tantrum except her panic is sincere, just as the weak-minded anti-smokers now tremble when a cigarette is lit, outdoors and 10 feet away.

As proof we link to an outraged letter to the editor and reproduce it in full below:

Editor -- In the face of global warming and choking pollution, it is amazing to hear people with children determined to use their cars to enter Golden Gate Park. If these drivers wish to commit suicide, they should first think of the effects on their children.

Can we have one area of our city where cars don't have the right-of-way for a couple of days?

So driving through the park on a Saturday is suicidal and far, far worse if children are in the car.  Well, the mass suicide continues since the mayor of San Francisco, listening for a change to the voters, vetoed the Saturday closing.  Dire political retaliation has been promised.