Prohibition

June 15 - Compromise better than nothing - When members of the food service committee opened the meeting to public comment, Cheryl Bratcher, a local waitress who opposes the ban, presented the group with a photocopy of a book called "The ABCs of ETS (environmental tobacco smoke)" she said provided evidence the risks of smoking have been exaggerated. The book is produced by a group called Forces International, an organization opposed to smoking bans.

"If you look in here, you see that whole milk is five times more likely to give you cancer than secondhand smoke," she said, opening the packet and pointing a passage out to committee chairman William Schroeder.

Bratcher, who said a smoking ban would affect her livelihood, said bans are less about public health than currying favor with non-smokers.

"It's trendy," she said of smoking bans.

We admire Ms. Bratcher's restraint in labeling the ugliness of smoking bans "trendy" while we applaud her use of our publication The ABCs of ETS.  What could have turned into yet one more cookie-cutter smoking ban in Corpus Christi Texas may evolve into an ordinance that both smokers and nonsmokers can embrace. That prognostication looks good and the compromise is a definite improvement over the zero-tolerance of smokers approach favored by anti-tobacco interests.  Of course any law that regulates smoking on private property, such as restaurants and bars is not needed when market forces will very efficiently protect the paranoid from even a whiff of tobacco smoke.

June 15 - Coping with oppression - Six months after Washington voters decided it was their business to tell other people how to live their lives, smoking continues in the neighborhood bars throughout Seattle and all other points in the state.  The scene is reminiscent of the speakeasy phenomenon that sprang up after the country banned alcohol consumption in the early years of the 20th century.  What is different now is that there are well-financed non-governmental organizations who are prepared to spend whatever it takes to ensure that prohibition reigns in "liberal", "tolerant" Washington state.  Despite the professional snitches who scurry from bar to bar seeking verboten tobacco smoke, the smokers and the businesses who must cater to them or go out of business defy the law and make a mockery of anti-tobacco's bogus contention that banning smoking is good for business.

June 15 - Smoking ban suspended - (Note, this story is best viewed in Netscape or Mozilla Foxfire)  A Kenyan court has suspended that country's ban on smoking in "public."  Surprisingly the law was challenged by a cigarette manufacturer but not surprisingly the company is narrowly focusing only on one aspect of the ban that specifically affects its bottom line.  Rather than challenging prohibition on the junk science that is used to persuade legislators that secondhand smoke is deadly to nonsmokers, the cigarette company is miffed that part of the law that requires cigarette packs carry "Cigarettes Kill" in huge print immediately.  Claiming that it will loose millions of dollars recalling cigarettes with the smaller warning labels, the cigarette makers are asking for time to phase in the new warning label.

Such shortsightedness is typical of the industry and indicates just how much it values its customers.  Rather than address the real problem, unjustified smoking bans, the industry wastes time and money plugging a dike with its little finger.  Punishment, by the way, for the poor soles who violate the smoking ban, is horrendous ranging from six-month jail terms to fines of over $600, a fortune in poor countries like Kenya.

Society

June 15 - Why are the politicians so keen to stub out my cigarette? - For those who are still grappling over why so much public attention, money and passion is spent over intruding into the private sphere and what (or whether) we eat, drink, or smoke, check out this thought-provoking article by British journalist Frank Furedi:

“As public life is emptied out and loses direction, private and personal preoccupations are projected into the public sphere. So, passions that once were stirred by ideological clashes over the future of society are now far more likely to be engaged by individual misbehaviour, private troubles or personality conflicts. In this climate, governments can become therapists to the individual, seeing their aim as the ‘healing’ of society; they become the managers of emotion.”

Straightening up eaters

June 15 - FDA: Restaurants on front lines in obesity fight - “…And letting consumers know how many calories are contained in a meal also could guide the choices they make, according to the report. Simeon Holston, 33, called more disclosure an excellent idea as he lunched on a sausage-and-pepperoni pizza at a downtown Washington food court…”  

Poor crocodile Simeon needs a shrink as a zookeeper: he doesn’t know that sausage and pepperoni pizza is fattening. What did he learn in school, antitobacco?... Now, really – answer honestly: do you actually and diligently read all the ingredients and calorie reports before taking a bite of food out of a box? Would you do that at a restaurant? You are there to eat, and you have so little time to read as it is, never mind summing up your caloric intake when you're supposed to be enjoying yourself! You have as much time as politicians have to read and digest the hefty 136-page book just cooked up by the Keystone Center for the Food and Drug Administration. Politicians, like most of us, love fast food – and in this case we are talking about political fast food.

Hefty and expensive, those reports tell politicians all about the mounting evidence of fat bellies across the land: the “experts” are saying it; it must be true. Invariably, the remedy is political fast food - more regulation, taxation and prohibition, and the problem will go away. Seriously, who believes that? And who believes that 64% of Americans are overweight? Of course they are - all we need is to change the threshold for obesity and the evaluation criteria, and presto, it's a fact. Equally of course, we are all capable of eating salad instead of sausage without the need for some bureaucrat to regulate our portions. Restaurants at fault? Can anybody say that waiters harass or point guns at the heads of customers who don’t order nice pepperoni pizzas or juicy cheeseburgers? Here is the “Philip-Morris-made-me-smoke” syndrome again, shifting the responsibility from those who make the choice to those who offer it -- so we can force and enforce the “solution”: get rid of the choice. The bad - says who? - stuff must not be made available. Go eat a fat one!

June 15 - Taxing the portly - Meeting this week in Chicago, the AMA is considering recommending a "small" federal tax on soda along with other suggestions for a better and healthier America. It's estimated that small tax, possibly 1 cent per can, could raise $1.5 billion a year, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (which previously has decried the consumption of most popular food).

The only surprising aspect of this proposed shakedown is that the American Medical Association waited so long in proposing it.  As its membership declines as doctors leave in disgust over the organizations overtly political maneuvers, the AMA retains its clout by enthusiastically joining any ideology that extracts money from the people in the name of public health.  The money, if such a tax is imposed, would go to outfits like the Center for Science in the Public Interest who would take it and construct campaigns to demonize the overweight and the corporations that sell so-called unhealthy food.  Remember the self-serving activism of the AMA and CSPI whenever some bonehead politician cries over the phony "health care crisis."

Propaganda

June 15 - Charlatan cruises the high seas - It has been nearly half a century since Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's paean to liberty, justice and individualism, hit the bookstores.  The novel became a perpetual best seller forever transforming the American culture that had been slowly and relentlessly succumbing to the narcotic of mindless reliance on an all-powerful, benevolent and caring Big Daddy represented by the governing class in Washington, DC and his surrogates at the local level.  Vehemently attacked as farfetched and hysterical, Atlas Shrugged proved to be prophetic in ways that may have surprised even Rand, who died in 1982.  From the use of junk science to pursue political and financial goals to the celebration of the "safe" and mediocre, Rand's vision of the near future is an accurate portrayal of our era where liberty and personal responsibility are steadily stripped away from the populace by rulers who are incapable of creating but are adept at looting the producers.  Rand's perspicacity on the role of the media is on the money when she writes that what is not reported by the handmaidens of the elite conveys more information than the carefully crafted messages disguised as "news."

James Repace went on a cruise. He brought along his anti-smoking kit. He studied PPAH levels (from smoking) because everyone knows smoking outdoors on a cruise ship kills more nonsmokers than icebergs. At least that's what I think he was trying to prove. But alas, he failed.

On Friday, 14 July 2006 at 3:30 PM he's giving a lecture on these findings:

Outdoor Air Pollution from Secondhand Smoke
Objective: What happens to secondhand smoke (SHS) outdoors?

Results: Smoking in outdoor areas of the cruise ship tripled the level of PPAH relative to indoor and outdoor areas in which smoking did not occur, despite the strong breezes and unlimited dispersion. Outdoor smoking areas were contaminated with PPAH to nearly the same extent as the ship's casino. A cigarette smoked in a well-ventilated 28 m³ stateroom increased PPAH levels 100-fold, emitting 21 micrograms of PPAH per gram of tobacco smoked. link

In a nutshell (or I'll try at least):

• The average cigarette contains .68 grams of tobacco. link
• The single cigarette smoked in the stateroom emitted 14.28ug of PPAH. Evenly dispersed in that room should measure .51µg/m³.
• All nonsmoking areas of the ship PPAH levels were said to be 1/100 of the smoked-in stateroom level. That should make them .0051µg/m³.
• Repace said the outdoor smoking areas levels were 3x that the nonsmoking areas (both indoor and outdoors) and almost as high as what was found in the casino. That should mean he found .0153µg/m³ and a little higher level in the casino.

Okay, so what's the punch line to this story? First, why did Repace mention the level found in a private stateroom, but not the level in the outdoor smoking areas, which is what this study was all about? He didn't mention the casino level either which is open to the public. He only mentions a private stateroom and leaves the calculations to be made by someone like me to figure out exactly what he found. From my calculations this is what he found:

Nothing.

OSHA's permissible exposure limit (PEL) for PPAH is .2mg/m³ (.2 milligrams per cubic meter). In micrograms (millionths of a gram), which is how Repace reported his findings, .2mg becomes 200µg/m³.

In µg/m3:

• OSHA PEL = 200
• Stateroom = .51 (approximately 400x less than what OSHA allows)
• Outdoor smoking areas = .0153 (approximately 13,000x less)
• Casino = somewhat > .0153 (let's say 10,000x less)

Unless I have the wrong PEL and/or my math is WAY off, what Repace found is nothing. And yet this and some sidewalk cafe measurements he also did supposedly warrant this kind of statement:

"These data have important implications for the regulation of outdoor air pollution from SHS under existing state or federal environmental statutes."

I don't think so.

June 15 - Making lemonade out of a lemon - Scientists found evidence that the climate of the Arctic millions of years ago was quite benign with warm temperatures, palm trees and alligators.  While such dramatic proof that the global climate fluctuates dramatically without any help from homo sapiens should cast doubt over the politically-motivated hysteria over world warming, the scientists who are evaluating the arctic data have no problems furthering the faith-based ideology of man as climate manipulator.  The warm Arctic temperatures eons ago are proof that "too much" carbon dioxide causes global warming.  "Too much", of course, is what results from industrialization.  All of this man-induced carbon dioxide must be eliminated even though it has never been proven that the puny amounts man produces has any affect at all on the climate of the world.

Tobacco Control

June 15 - Heretic discomforts the dishonest - Last issue we reported that Michael Siegel, a highly respected tobacco control advocate, is being shunned by many in the anti-tobacco movement.  As the word "shunned" implies, Dr. Siegel is being punished for deviating from an orthodoxy as rigid as any promulgated by a doctrinaire religion.  His sin is one that honest people have committed for generations.  He told the truth about the scientific fraud that forms a pillar of the anti-tobacco agenda.  Noting that the emperor has no clothes, Dr. Siegel demonstrated just how buck naked are the latest claims made by the charlatans that have now taken over the tobacco control movement.  His reward for laboring to keep anti-tobacco honest has been public denigration from some of the worst of the junk science junkies.  He was, without notice, ejected from the communication apparatus that links tobacco control advocates together.  The word is out:  Silence Siegel.

A week later he was invited back into the communication link.  The invitation was not particularly gracious.  In fact to rejoin Dr. Siegel would have to grovel and agree not to write about how much of anti-tobacco is misrepresenting science to pursue its agenda.  Apparently his comments the delicate flowers who toil so vigorously for prohibition to get the vapors.  Haven't these people ever heard of the delete key?

June 15 - Anti-tobacco's political smear backfires - Although the Federal lawsuit against Big Tobacco still hasn't ended, anti-tobacco from the beginning of the suit behaved as though the verdict was reached long ago.  The dream verdict, of course, would result in a huge liability judgment against the cigarette manufacturers with hundreds of billions of dollars being dispersed to anti-smoking organizations.  In reality the Fed's case is obviously week and its suit hasn't gone as planned.  At a point when it became clear that multi-billion dollar judgments were a figment of greedy anti-smoking operatives, the Justice Department started talking deal.  It's a safe bet that Big Tobacco will rather pay a token fine rather than pursue the suit to the end where it is likely, if the rule of law has any relevance these days, it would win.

When the Justice Department softened its demands anti-tobacco screamed bloody murder and immediately went into personal attack mode.  Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum became the focus of the tobacco control industry's ire.  Tool of Big Tobacco and cowardly political hack were the least of the calumny heaped upon this government lawyer and all of it was untrue, according to Michael Siegel who has followed this case closely.

June 15 - Slandering the opposition - In the collection of increasingly disreputable outfits that comprise the tobacco control movement, Americans for Nonsmokers' Right stands out like an ugly, diseased thumb.  This is the organization that took California state money and used it to produce an enemies list comprised of any and all who dared to disagree with any tenets of anti-tobacco.  So disreputable are its tactics that state funding was cut off, although pharmaceutical money more than makes up any deficit.  Michael Siegel details how ANR is up to its old tricks of tarring the opposition with unsupportable charges.  He notes how the ANR, following the Stalinist playbook, imply that any individual or organization that opposes a smoking ban is a "front" for the tobacco industry.  Proof that the opposition is funded by Big Tobacco isn't necessary, whispering the smear is often all that is required.  Such despicable tactics once were called McCarthyism.

June 15 - Making smoking illegal - An Arkansas legislator is proposing a law that would make smoking tobacco illegal for pregnant women.  He offers the usual, unproven assertions that smoking during pregnancy leads to inevitable health problems for the baby.  He preposterously opines that smoking while pregnant cannot be constitutional.  To nobody's surprise this ignorant, bigoted legislator is the same Arkansas politician who wrote a law forbidding smoking in automobiles where children are passengers.  Michael Siegel, who endorses the notion that secondhand smoke can be hazardous, is troubled by the rash of laws that impose lifestyle control.  Noting that there are a multitude of activities, substances and conditions that could affect pregnancy, Dr. Siegel is disturbed that anti-smoking zealots are concerned only with smoking.  Laws such as this will lead to discrediting the tobacco control movement, something that we wholeheartedly desire.

Population Control

June 15 - Packet jackets to be banned in Australia? No boundaries to fanaticism - "The Australian Medical Association (AMA) wants trendy new 'jackets' that block graphic anti-smoking messages on cigarette packets to be banned... "The people producing these covers are trying to make a killer habit look good, they must be stopped... 'Hiding anti-smoking messages is as big a crime against public health in Australia as producing cigarettes and the marketing of cigarettes. ' Dr Haikerwal said."

Dr Haikerwal should be reminded that conning the public with false information on smoking like his antismoking enterprise does is also a big crime - a very big crime, in fact, that should be rewarded with long-term imprisonment. This self-righteous, fanatic trash knows no boundaries whatsoever, and must be stopped - whatever it takes.

Straightening up Drinkers

June 15 - Join together to chow down on yummy grants – People who have long been involved in the fight against the antitobacco fraud may remember Join Together – a gang joined at the hip with heavy-duty pharmaceutical money from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. JT was actively involved in antismoking disinformation to youth. Then - to the relief of all - JT sort of faded out of sight. But now the pharmaceutical group is back with the roar of yet more Big Drug mega-grants. They have the same old prohibitionist agenda aimed at young, innocent targets – but with a diversification this time: anti-alcohol rhetoric and disinformation. Their “remedies” are also the same old, same old: more taxation, more restrictions, more repression, more control – and, of course 6-digit death tolls -- can’t forget those -- for emotional appeal. Their “solutions” are, of course, as inevitable as they are predictable: (pharmaceutical) therapies, therapies, therapies, therapies.

“Save lives, save lives!” is the universal cry of all morbidly obese grant-eaters. In the front page of the JT site there is a question: “How Much is Too Much?” This is a question we should really ask ourselves as well – and then start doing something about it.

June 15 - Marketing booze to the kiddies - A huge percentage of the liquor industry's profits comes from sales to minors and, in a hilarious example of comparing oranges to apples, sales to those who abuse alcohol.  Demonstrating the scientific precision that defines junk science practitioners, the researchers' "estimate" of these alcohol sales ranges from just over a third to nearly one half of all alcohol sales.  That's a pretty broad span,  which should immediately relegate this study to the recycling bin.  Instead it finds a niche in the Washington Post under the byline of a columnist whose credulous repetition of special interest campaigning appears under the headline of "Unconventional Wisdom."

The conclusions of this "sobering" study are conventional in the extreme.  Big Booze is growing obscenely rich marketing its deadly product to those not yet old enough to buy it and those whose lives have been ruined by drunken addiction.  Of more use to the readers would be, at the very least, the disclosure of what organization funded this study.  Considering its triple assault on tobacco, obesity and alcohol, it is very likely that the bucks needed to crank out this call for tighter regulation of the liquor industry, as well as the implicit endorsement of litigation to recover costs borne by society, came from the bursting portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  RWJF, whose billions come from the pharmaceutical industry, which has both the will and the means to attack the industries from which it hopes to carve off a hefty slice of customers.

June 15 - Doing the right thing - For 13 years the North Beach section of San Francisco has hosted a jazz festival held in historic Washington Square in the summer.  This year the city's Recreation and Park Commission, kowtowing to anti-alcohol special interests, decreed that no alcohol could be sold on city property during the event.  Drying up the festival would cost the organizers $40,000.  Rather than follow the lame example set by the tobacco industry the organizers simply pulled out and cancelled the popular event.  To their credit the organizers rejected the offer of a tax-funded grant dangled by Park and Rec to induce the festival to proceed with the event after its financial legs had been amputated.

News reports of the final hearing before Park and Rec indicate that prior festival alcohol sales had not led to the drunken bacchanalia anti-alcohol interests cited as justification to install prohibition.  Last year a total of four people were arrested for public drunkenness.  Facts, as always, were trumped by ideology and the ideology of the day in San Francisco is prohibition; of alcohol, of smoking, of fun.