August 25 [12:30 GMT] - Campos: Weight study's data tortured - Just a couple of days ago we were talking about "epidemiological Marxism", and here it comes again - and again about fat. Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, shows in this article how the "experts" manipulate (torture) data to show that overweight and fat people are at risk when they are not. The ideological postulation is that being overweight is "bad" for you, and that puts you "at risk". Don't let reality permit you to disagree! Torture the data and bend the rules until they fit with ideology! We need a nation of healthy people -- even when they are healthy already -- oops, then call that prevention! Long live virtual epidemics, and the power and grants they bring! Long live the Therapeutic State and its epidemiological Marxism, all around the world!

The comments of a US reader: "What I think is going on here, is that really all this boils down to our public health officials finding ways to blame us for our poor health, so they can basically do nothing to address why we spend about twice as much per person per year on healthcare, yet have the lowest life expectancy of any developed nation, about half again as much cancer, heart disease, etc, a higher infant mortality rate than other developed nations, etc. even though we smoke about 2/3 rds as much as most other developed nations. If our public health authorities didn't blame what we eat, drink, smoke for our poor health, (oh! and by the way, for those who do not eat poorly, drink or smoke, we have secondhand smoke) they would have to take some responsibility for failing to do the job we pay them to do."

Rewriting history

August 25 [12:30 GMT] - Tom & Jerry in trouble in for smoking scenes - Yep, even good old Tom and Jerry must be straightened up by the crooks. One idiot picks up the phone complaining that the 65-year-old cartoon shows some smoking scenes and that's all it takes. The idiots at the other end of the phone, instead to tell him to bugger off as they should have, promptly agreed to edit "any scenes or references in the series where smoking appeared to be condoned, acceptable, glamorized or where it might encourage imitation". And listen to the justification: "Ofcom said it recognized smoking was more generally accepted when cartoons were produced in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, but noted that the threshold for including such scenes when the audience is predominately young should be high." It's gonna take a whole lot of smoking for young kids to come out from all this insanity, that's for sure. In the meantime, we have far too high a threshold of tolerance for the notion that one idiot --  who cannot prove one death from smoking (since no "health authority" can) now has carte blanche to prevent EVERYONE from viewing something in its entirety.

Evasiveness

August 24 [15:30 GMT] - Fun with public health (or, where did all the bodies go?) - Libertarian Dave Hitt decided to ask eight prominent anti-smoking operatives to name one person who has been killed by second hand smoke. The results? Inevitably, none of them could do it. Read his amusing account of “hitting” everyone from “Insider” Jeffery Wigand to the perennially slippery Stanton Glantz with the question that no one can answer. And while you’re on his site, check out his podcast page.

Prohibition

August 24 [15:30 GMT] - A significant step on the road to criminalization - In  South Carolina, a significant step towards prohibition has been taken by introducing penalties for minors found in possession of tobacco, specifically, “a $25 fine, community service and forced enrollment in an approved smoking-cessation program.”

Anti-smokers love to use the term “de-normalization” to describe their quest to remake public opinion so that people will acquiesce to rolling tobacco into the War on Drugs. One way to do this is graduated prohibition: smoking sections one day to “accommodate everybody”, smoking bans the next to “promote everyone’s health” and criminal penalties, one step at a time, until a full-scale criminal prohibition is in effect. Although not all slopes are slippery, only the obtuse would deny the evidence that this is the direction of the tobacco wars.

Theatre of the Absurd

August 24 [15:30 GMT] - Diluted smoke shows magical properties in the Bahamas - "Second hand smoke releases the same 4,000 chemicals as smoke that is directly inhaled, but in even greater quantity," Bahamas Health Minister Bernard Nottage recently observed.

Could you run that by us again, doc?...

In seeking to offer a “scientific” argument for his government’s new anti-smoking drive, the health minister of this laid-back island instead proved -- with direct evidence -- that rum punches consumed under a strong sun are linked with a decline in cerebral functioning.

Junk science

August 22 [15:50 GMT] - Quantifying the unquantifiable: the grotesque Marxist economics live on - It is a well-known fact that the Marxists of the 19^th and 20^th century wanted to create a planned economy without money, with controlled supply and demand, and where the anti-capitalist ideology bent mathematics, logic and reality to emotions and political ideology. The "success" of such a schizophrenic approach is unquestionably demonstrated by the fate of the USSR. The lesson has not been learned, and the ideology has just changed targets. Yesterday those who demonstrated that an economy without money and market is impossible were called names and were punished for stating that it is impossible to calculate what is not measurable. Today those who say that the number of deaths and social costs attributed to one of the suspected factors of a multifactorial disease cannot be calculated routinely are called names, lose their jobs and their information is desperately suppressed - this time at a global scale. The new application of Marxist economics is in multifactorial epidemiology, also known as junk science.

Here we have a nice example of reversed calculation parameters applied to obesity. Ideological postulation: "X (obesity, smoking...) kills". Problem: how do we create a reverse "science" that demonstrates that X kills? (remember: we do not know that X kills - we believe it). For over a century we have used the Body Mass Index as a reference threshold. Recently we propelled the trash concept that those who are over the BMI are at risk. But reality is demonstrating that it's not so. In spite of statistical trickeries it's becoming impossible to suppress that the overweight (except for the extreme, morbid obese) fare better than those of us who are supposed to be at "low or no risk" (note: the article calls this a "perverse result" ! ). That alone should be sufficient to trash the hypothesis (and the "mathematics" about deaths and costs based on it) that those who are over the "safe" BMI are at risk.

When reality refuted the Marxist economic "science", it taught nothing to the ideologues. They simply came up with new theories (that they called "science" and "mathematics") to maintain their power and to bend reality to their idiotic ideals.

Guess what: since the "fatsos" fare better than the rest of us, then it is time to trash the BMI and to find other "predictors" - new crystal balls that justify the ideological postulation that "300,000 die of obesity each year in U.S. (about 30,000 people in Britain)... [something that has] overtaken smoking as the main cause of preventable death." The fact is that not even for smoking can deaths, causality and costs be calculated, because the calculations are based on unquantifiable, useless data (and the methodology of data collection is questionable).

There are people who simply don't want to accept that certain things cannot be calculated, and that the whole story of the "preventable deaths" and "potential years of life lost" from lifestyles is largely a fraudulent concept. So, yesterday's Marxist economists have become today's healthist epidemiologists and health activists - but the stupidity lives on.

Politics

August 22 [15:50 GMT] - What’s the real scoop on Carmona’s departure? - Everyone is speculating that the recent departure of U.S. Surgeon General might somehow be connected to his report on tobacco and his aggressive anti-smoking stance. We at FORCES weighed in with the notion that he might have stepped aside to groom for a run at public office, perhaps as some sort of anti-smoking legislative superhero. Instead, the writer of this article thinks that he might have been fired as a political punishment and to appease “owners of bars, restaurants, hotels, and bowling centers in the so-called hospitality industry as well as those that profit from tobacco sales, including the tobacco industry, grocers, liquor, beer, and wine wholesalers.”  We certainly hope that the writer is right!

Smoking bans

August 22 [14:20 GMT] - A win for common sense! Smoking or non-smoking gives bar owners and customers a choice - In St. Louis, Missouri, the smoking ban issue was recently resurrected after a defeat, leaving local bar owners feeling betrayed. But in a surprise turn-around, the bill that eventually passed will give the hospitality industry the choice of going smoking or non-smoking, with appropriate signage posted. Courageous Councilman John Campisi, a sponsor of the bill, had this to say: "I just feel that the freedom of speech and the freedom of choice should be everybody's choice when they walk into an establishment, whether it be a bar, restaurant, casino or any kind of public mall," Campisi said. "I think everyone should have the choice of whether or not they want to smoke or not smoke. I don't smoke but I still feel as though we should have a choice."

August 22 [14:20 GMT] - More fuel for the fight against smoking bans - From the Clear the Air blog, here are some fascinating figures on the very high cost of smoking bans and the emptiness of  claims about the health threat of second hand smoke. Included is a long list of hospitality industry closures since the start of the Minnesota smoking ban and a fascinating analysis of the American Cancer Society’s own air quality testing is included, with the conclusion that “the American Cancer Society air quality testing proves secondhand smoke levels are up to 25,000 times safer than OSHA indoor air quality regulations.” Check it out!

August 22 [14:20 GMT] - …and calls for a full scale congressional investigation into the pharmaceutical nicotine interests which fund smoking ban efforts - FORCES wholeheartedly supports such an investigation, in light of the real evidence about health and smoking bans, and with years of mounting concern about conflict of interest in connection with the sources of anti-tobacco activist funding. Start putting pressure on your lawmakers!

Health Gestapo

August 20 [19:00 GMT] - What happened to a free country? - A short, simple letter, written by a simple person to a publication. Sometimes, that says more than a thousand, sophisticated words. Actually, it says it all about the fraudulent health Gestapo that must be destroyed.

August 20 [19:00 GMT] - A victory for the tobacco industry and for common sense - but the sick mentality remains - We are glad to hear about this victory - although Philip Morris is certainly not our favorite pal. What is even more interesting is how the story is presented. Let's assume, for a second, that most of what is said about tobacco and the tobacco industry is true (a very long shot) and that, all of a sudden, Big Tobacco (or any other industry) comes to know that its product may be harmful. What are they expected to do, in real life? Self-destruct and disappear? Apparently so.

These corporations were faced on one hand with what is clearly junk science based on opinions, conjectures, speculations and attributions - but absolutely not on science - a reality that still applies today (that's why antitobacco absolutely refuses any scientific debate). On the other hand they had a century-old established product, stockholders, hundreds of thousands of employees (thus families) to support and a real, strong economy based on one product: cigarettes. What do to? When the industry had a backbone, more than hiding the "health hazards" of smoking it disregarded them, because they were based on junk science propelled by a bunch of nuts - and that was the historical error. Big Tobacco should have taken the con men seriously - thus to court with all it had - at the very beginning and in a pro-active manner and when it was still possible to break their back, suing them instead of waiting to be sued all the time.

Back to the issue - and given the enormous economic and social importance of the tobacco industry - it would be interesting to ask the idiotic smart asses who populate antismoking organizations and the legal establishment what they would have done if they were in the shoes of Big Tobacco. Shut down a giant industry? Maybe tell the world "don't buy our products because idiots XYZ say without scientific evidence that our product kills"? Should we shut down industries every time junk scientists say that their product is "bad for you" and produce truckloads of junk science to "prove it"? Or maybe write huge, warning manuals (that nobody reads, anyway) warning about all the possible negative permutations that the twisted fantasy of the health nuts can come up with? Finally, should we expect that automakers, alcohol producers, skiing products manufacturers - and a thousand other products that cause demonstrable (not imagined) deaths - unilaterally go out of business because their products may kill? Do you really believe that consumers are stupid enough to be unable to make their own choices? Come on, you idiots, is that what you want?...

Smoking bans are good for business - didn't you know?...

August 20 [19:00 GMT] - Smoking bans: the financial toll continues to tell the story  - A revenue downturn of 36 percent is an enormous hit, but that’s just what happened to charitable gambling revenues in Minnesota in the first two months of a new smoking ban. A spokesperson for the state’s Gambling Control Board notes that "officially, the board is neutral on the (smoking ban) policy, but we have seen the impact." Once more, the anti-smokers’ cynical assurances about the positive financial impact of smoking bans have been contradicted by the facts.

Prohibition

August 20 [19:00 GMT] - Prohibitionists target the stars - Here we have it: an unintended consequence of California's smoking ban: Hollywood stars caught smoking outside and influencing young people to smoke. The anti-smoking brigade first insists that people be forced to smoke outside -- then wring their hands because well-known people who are forced to smoke outside are then recognized and photographed and editors actually PUBLISH such photographs. This song and dance, this staged outrage is, of course, yet another “public spectacle” enacted as a “normalization” of intolerance and as a prelude for a criminalizing smokers. They can’t say that they want smokers in jail – but that’s what they want. They can’t say they want strict censorship based on the criteria they provide – but that’s what they want. Why can’t these people just creep out from under their rocks and be honest for a change?

Bloomberg Über Alles

August 19 [10:00 GMT] - Bloomberg wants to become planetary nico-Nazi (more here...) - Not that we mean to trivialize it, but it must be stated that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pledge of $125 million for an anti-tobacco campaign is pretty small next to the global resources – including huge taxation – that have already been mustered against tobacco. Bloomberg claims that private philanthropy has neglected anti-smoking, as if somehow tobacco has not yet been eliminated because the issue has been consigned to the back-burner. But in total governments and the private sector have moved billions in the anti-smoking effort over the last 10-15 years. And people still smoke. In New York, Bloomberg has moved smokers out on the street where they are highly visible. To project an image of success, the anti-smoking campaigns will now have to try to make them invisible so that it can be claimed, with a patina of credibility, that smokers are simply no longer around. The only way to do that is to roll smoking into the War on Drugs -- criminalizing it and throwing smokers in jail.

From the FORCES archives

August 19 [10:00 GMT] - The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States - If you read just one item about the war on smokers this year, let this be it. It’s actually a brief general history of prohibitions in the United States, and even if you’re a convinced Drug Warrior, it will give you food for thought. Certainly it illuminates the question of why so-called tobacco control has readily morphed into a persecution run. Originally delivered as a speech to the California Judges Association at their 1995 annual conference, it failed to have any impact on preventing the dangerous climate of intolerance we witness now, and which was confidently foreseen by USC Law School Professor Charles Whitebread.