March 19 - Ban Smoking; Say Goodbye To Smokers...and their dollars - As a smoker I have not and will not patronize any establishment that doesn't allow smoking. I have not been to a movie in at least a decade since smoking was banned in theaters. It's not out of the inability to smoke. It's out of principle. If I exist, there are others who feel the same.

In a bar, smokers outnumber nonsmokers (a number of whom will have a cigarette with a drink!). The venue hardly lives up to the same percentages as the general population. Scott Wexler is right. Smokers do stop going to bars when all the fun is taken out of it. Count me as one of them and that includes taking my money with me.

Not much more to add to this piece by Audrey Silk of N.Y.C.L.A.S.H.  The experiments in California and Delaware have proven that smoking kills small businesses.  In California, the largest state and a tourist destination, the growth rate in the hospitality if half that of the United States as a whole.  In Delaware the anti-smoking politicians are faced with staggering losses reported by bars, restaurants and casinos.  Meanwhile hot spots like Las Vegas, where smoking is not an issue and property rights are respected, are booming.

March 19 - Anti-smoking Politicians Feet To The Fire - Opponents of Pueblo's total smoking ban have raised enough signatures to force recall elections against City Council President Bill Sova and Councilman Mike Occhiato, two of those who voted for the ban in December.

City Clerk Gina Dutcher said Sova and Occhiato now have five days to resign, or the City Council must, at its Monday meeting, consider the alternatives being offered by opponents.

These two anti-tobacco zealots are mighty miffed that the people of Pueblo, Colorado rose up and knocked them off their perch for overreaching.  Despite intense local opposition to the smoking ban, these two bulldozed it through and now may lose their jobs.  The story from Pueblo is inspiring for people everywhere who are sick and tired of hyperactive politicians who who kowtow to special interests.

March 17 - Down To The Wire In Delaware - A close vote is expected Tuesday when the Delaware House considers a bill amending the state's 4-month-old indoor smoking ban by exempting bars, taprooms, casinos and some other places catering to adults.  A News Journal poll of House members last week found 19 in favor of allowing smoking in some places where it now is banned, nine opposed to easing restrictions and 11 undecided. Two could not be reached.

With 23 amendments pending that would alter House Bill 15, exactly what legislators will be voting on this week is up in the air. Many legislators said they cannot say how they would vote until the amendments are added or rejected.

The unpopular and financially devastating state-wide smoking ban could be modified significantly if only two of the 11 undecided vote yes.  The pressure from anti-tobacco is intense for if Delaware liberalizes its law even slightly the house of cards erected by the tobacco control industry will be weakened enormously.  

Almost immediately after California's equally unpopular and financially disastrous bar smoking ban went into effect, the state Assembly overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have repealed the bar ban.  The bill went to the state senate where it was bottled up by committee chairs who swore they would never allow the senate to vote on it.  The bill then expired even though it would have been passed by the senate.  It's encouraging that Delaware's Senate President Pro Tem Thurman Adams Jr., D-Bridgeville, said he will not use Senate procedures to bury the bill in a hostile committee.

"It deserves to have a debate and a vote," Adams said.

March 14 - Oh, To Hell With It, Let's Ban Smoking Everywhere - The anti-tobacco industry has been shrieking like harpies over the perceived efforts by the Florida legislature to weaken the state-wide smoking ban voted in by the people.  Thwarting the will of the people, they screech as legislators, listening to the constituents, attempt to cause the least harm to as few businesses as possible.

One legislator has had it with the squabbling and is proposing that smoking be banned everywhere, including standalone bars which were not touched by the constitutional amendment that was voted in last November.  The amendment does permit the legislature to go further than the banning smoking in restaurants and office buildings.  Also proposed is banning smoking in outdoor restaurant patios.  Anti-tobacco, of course, is silent about this "thwarting the will of the people."

March 12 - No-Smoking Day in the UK - But smokers are sick of it  - (press release) ‘Smokers are sick of No Smoking Day. They are made to feel guilty about their habit and that puts them under pressure to quit, which is the last thing they need. Smokers know if they want to give up. They don’t need the nanny state to tell them when to do it.’

March 12 - A debate for liberty - A debate on the FOREST'S website for a sad event (UK's No-Smoking Day) - Lord Harris of High Cross, chairman of FOREST, engages his opponent Lord Laird of Artigarvan, a former Ulster Unionist MP in the debate for liberty. Check it out!

March 11 - Smoke Nazi-Free Dining Will Pack Them In - Reality hasn't been kind to the anti-tobacco fanatics lately.  When they promised Delaware that happy days would here again if only restaurants, bars and casinos banned smoking, the gamblers, diners and cocktailers deserted the state while the border towns in neighboring states reported skyrocketing business.  Now New York City gets a close-up look at the unraveling lie that banning smokers (and a quarter or a third of the customer base) is good for business.

Due to a quirk that makes Grand Central train station exempt from New York City's anti-business smoking ban, the eateries and bars in the old train station is poised to make a killing.  Smoking sections are being expanded in anticipation of the hoards of New Yorkers who will be booted out of their favorite restaurants and bars at the end of the month.  The hottest place in a town that prides itself on its sophistication will be a train station.  The hospitality industry would, if it has any sense, document the booming businesses at Grand Central and contrast that with the declining sales everywhere else in the city.  Expect, however, the restaurants and bars that are losing money to demand that the exemption at Grand Central be terminated.  Divide and conquer, the real success of the anti-tobacco industry.

March 11 - Let Them Smoke And They Will Come.  Ban Smoking And It's Bye Bye Toledo - A resident reports that the Professional Bowlers Association abandoned Toledo, after a 20-year run, as the location for its national bowling tournament.  This year the event moved to Taylor, Michigan.  Although the local anti-smoking press has ignored the snub, the word is out that the association was skittish about continuing its relationship with a city that is in bed with the anti-tobacco, anti-business crowd.

During the tournament last year the city was embroiled in a court case over its smoking ban.  Although the smoking-ban law imposed by the activist health department ultimately was resolved in favor of freedom of choice, the PBA executives obviously realized the city government, from the anti-smoking mayor down to the radical health department, will not rest until all the good times are extinguished.  Most people who come to town to watch the tournament smoke and many of the bowlers themselves smoke.  Better to take the tournament to a city and state that still values property rights and where the customers are right.

February 26 - The tobacco death toll - Mercilessly, tobacco keeps harvesting an endless number of premature victims. Day after day millions of cigarettes are produced by criminals who KNOW that each and every one of their customers will DIE – and there is no escape, and no more unquestionable truth: if you smoke, you die.

This is the case of the late John McMorran, of Lakeland, Florida. He smoked cigars, drank beer and ate greasy food –and now he has paid the price for a life that stands as an insult to the health crusaders. John was born June 19, 1889, in a log cabin in Michigan, and he was the oldest American living – but he could have lived longer. And that is not all; it is well known that smoking causes blindness and ear problems.  In fact, “McMorran's eyesight failed in his final years, and people needed to shout for him to hear them.” What a waste. This is what tobacco does to you. May this epitaph stand as warning to the young, so that they learn to NEVER make John’s mistakes, and turn into statistical deaths.

February 26 - The Italian Massacre - In the meantime, we get a full dimension of what tobacco does to people in other countries as well. The Italian daily “Libero” has just reported updates on the Tobacco Massacre of  Milan last February 6^th. Out of a population of 2.2 million in that city, there are 646 people whose lives will, inevitably, be cut short – shortly after they turn 100. Two of them are already 110, five are 109 and 12 are 106. Another 217 are only 100, 167 just turned 101, and 115 are 102. But that’s not over. Over 35,000 Milanese are in the age range between 85 and 94, and another 92,000 are between 75 and 84.

You can see them in the polluted Italian city with their dogs, in the typical little bars, indulging in despicable habits such as coffee, grease-filled brioches, alcohol and – worst of all – smoking Tuscan cigars that stink more than any diesel tailpipe, poisoning their peers. Some of them even “do” cigarettes, having indulged in the deadly habit for over 94 years. Imagine how dirty their lungs are. According to the daily, in fact, the overwhelming majority of these people either smokes, drinks, or eats fatty foods. Most even do it all. No wonder the heroic health authorities must intervene to stop the carnage. It’s either now or never! For more information see World's Oldest - All Smokers.

February 26 - Keeping The Grease Flowing - "We're dealing with a monster. But we can dismember the monster one limb at a time," said Dr. Oscar Lovelace, who spoke at the forum Monday evening.

Truer words were never spoken.  Poll after poll confirms that the American public is sick and tired of the stranglehold the trial lawyers have placed on society.  Many do consider the tort industry a monster and dismemberment is a goal supported by all right thinking citizens who are outraged over the massive transfer of funds from individuals and corporations into the pockets of politically connected lawyers.

Too bad Dr. Oscar Lovelace was speaking about secondhand smoke and not the lawyers who cobbled together a rally to pledge millions to ban smoking in Charleston, South Carolina.  The anti-tobacco lawyers are laying their money, stolen from smokers in the tobacco settlement, into the sweaty palms of Jeffrey Wigand, a podgy grifter notorious for stealing corporate documents to bring down the corporation that had fired him.

Wigand now runs an outfit called Smoke-free Kids.  He also appears in the traveling carnival show of anti-tobacco freaks and geeks shunted around the country to drum up business for smoking cessation treatments.  Smoke-free Kids wants to ban smoking from "public" places in Charleston.  The "public" places, as always, are actually private property in which the public can enter, if it chooses.

The South has not been fertile ground for prohibition but anything is possible when the criminals are willing to buy legislation that delivers to their crime bosses' bottom line.  In any case, the repulsiveness of shysters bleating for prohibition to assuage their guilt while using the money of their victims is a sight that makes decent people shudder in disgust. 

February 26 - Mississippi Passes A Smoking Ban - The House Public Health Committed passed a statewide smoking ban that everyone can live with.  Everyone, that is, except the approximately .0003 % of the public that wallows in anti-smoking neurosis.

The bill leaves bans smoking from government offices and public transportation but private businesses are untouched or as House Public Health Chairman Bobby Moody, D-Louisville, puts it:

"You can do whatever that business's policy is. If their policy is to allow smoking, you can smoke. If their policy is to not allow smoking, you don't smoke"

Such a truly progressive statement is a breath of fresh air on top of all the repressive, totalitarian and hateful rhetoric issuing from such bastions of "progressivism" as New York City and Massachusetts, and speaks volumes about why the anti-tobacco elite continues to denigrate the South, especially Mississippi.  Imagine allowing the businesses and the customers to whom they cater to reach mutually agreeable arrangements without the benefit of the iron fist of government.  How refreshing and how rare.

February 24 - New Yorkers, Join The Party In Hoboken - On March 30, 2003 the Bloomberg smoke-ban arrives in New York City, and the smokers depart.  They're heading for a Bye-Bye New York City Bash at Hoboken's famous Frankie & Johnnie's Steakhouse, a place that earned its fame as a speakeasy in the '20s.

Smokers who've had it with being banned are deciding to vote with their feet.  "We're going where the bars and restaurants like our company and the welcome mat's the only thing that's tossed outside the door," says an upbeat Audrey Silk, the organizer and founder of New York City C.L.A.S.H.  That's Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, one of the key groups in the ever-growing movement for smokers' rights.

There are a hell of a lot of smokers in New York City.  Now is the opportunity to stand up and tell the nannies running the city to shove off.  Stop whining and do something about it.  You'll meet some like-minded people and have a great time.

February 24 - Why Not Have The "Health" Charities Take Over The Legislature? - The Florida Tri-Agency Coalition – comprised of the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and American Lung Association – said it is "deeply troubled and perplexed" by the Senate Select Committee on Constitutional Amendment Implementation making recommendations the group said significantly deviate from the original intent of the amendment.

And what has drawn the ire of these un-elected pharmaceutical front groups?  Not much, as this sympathetic story makes clear.  What seems to have gotten the ersatz health groups in a lather is that the Florida legislature, as it was elected to do, is implementing the anti-smoking legislation in a way that will harm the fewest businesses the least.  

Although the above special interest groups bought themselves a constitutional amendment, there still are a few safeguards for self-government in place.  The legislators should tell the groups to go to hell and implement the amendment as they see fit.

February 24 - California Conquers Oklahoma - The state legislature, control by the Democrats, is poised to rip up property rights.  With a few minor exceptions, private property where the public may enter will soon be forbidden from allowing smoking.  Restaurants, private office buildings, all must throw smokers out onto the street.  

Last year the then governor attempted to effect an end-run against the legislature by imposing a state-wide smoking ban.  His attempt to bring prohibition to the state was overturned by the courts.  Now there is a new governor and a legislature prepared to trample on property rights and the business practices of the taxpayers who pay their salaries.

Oklahoma seems an unlikely state to violate the deeply-held belief that property rights are sacred.  A ton of money, however, has been poured into the state to buy the legislation that anti-tobacco is peddling.

Wanda Hamilton finds a silver lining in the coast-to-coast smoking ban frenzy.  Hearing that yet another state is cutting funding for anti-tobacco propaganda, she notes:

February 20 - Michigan Ban, Students Weigh In - In defense of restaurant autonomy in determining smoking designation, Zaagmar noted that about 3,000 restaurants in Michigan have already banned smoking from their premises. He also indicated that although the law currently allows a restaurant to allot up to 50 percent of their seating to smokers, most only use about 10 percent.

That's about all anyone needs to know to oppose a California-type smoking ban.  Since "choice" is of overwhelming value in this society it makes sense that it should be offered in restaurants.  Those restaurants that wish to prohibit are free to do so.  Those that permit smoking should also have that right.  The market place, not the social engineers should decide.

This story makes note of a study conducted by the Michigan Department of Community Health that found second-hand smoke kills up to 1,900 non-smokers each year in Michigan.  The reporter may not know it but the health department did not conduct any such study.  All the grant junkies did was take some old discredited secondhand smoke reports and extrapolated the results to fit the population of Michigan.

Not one study of ETS has found any significant health risks from exposure to secondhand smoke.  If asked to identify even one of the 1,900 non-smokers "killed" in Michigan, the health department would not be able to do so.  They are numbers pulled out of a hat, much as a third-rate magician pulls a rabbit out of a top hat.

February 17 - Potty Mouth, Symptom Of Anti-tobacco - Anti-smoking advocates sure know how to hurl insults at those who defend smokers’ rights. In response to an opinion piece of mine that ran recently in a daily newspaper, I received an email from “Harry” in Milwaukee saying if “Bast promises not to smoke within ten feet of me, I promise not to poop on his salad bowl while he’s eating.” Only he didn’t say “poop.”

Thanks, Harry. I hope the guys you have lunch with know about your curious habit.

Defending smokers isn’t popular, but if you care about jobs, property rights, the rise of the Nanny State, and the use of junk science in public policy, you just can’t look the other way when smoker abuse occurs.

It's a puzzling phenomenon that cries for research.  Why are anti-tobacco shills so childishly fascinated with scatological metaphors and fart talk?  It could be that, like stagnant infants who discover the joys of soiled diapers, they haven't progressed as they should into adulthood.  Whatever the reason, they pollute the public discourse and ultimately do their cause no good, invalid though that cause is.

Joseph L. Blast substitutes potty talk for rationality and makes the case that the majority of the people, this time in Chicago, are opposed to city-mandated smoking bans.  He notes the economic peril to small businesses when politicians, egged on by financially-motivated special interests, usurp property rights.  He notes that the secondhand smoke scam is fueled by junk science spreading hysteria that has no basis in reality.  He does this all quite effectively without resorting to the potty mouth that defines anti-tobacco.

February 17 - Colorado Smoking Ban Ignites Passions - Passions are flaring as this week's deadline nears for signatures on recall petitions against four City Council members who supported a controversial smoking ban.

Last week, Clean Indoor Air Pueblo, a group working for the ban, shut down an Internet forum after it was inundated with anonymous and threatening e-mails...

...e-mails have labeled supporters of the ban "Nazis" and, in one case, advocated tar and feathers for "people like Jennifer Beasley," program coordinator for the southern region of the American Lung Association of Colorado, who has been working for the ban.

"I had hoped we could keep it clean and promote a healthy discussion on this," said Chris Nicoll, a volunteer with Clean Indoor Air Pueblo. "It's gone beyond a public debate now. I think you cross the line when you start harassing people at work."

Although threats and name-calling are never appropriate for public debates, it's difficult to work up much sympathy for the goons that work full time denying people their rights.  Although the message of running the anti-business, anti-freedom control freaks out on a rail is a bit crude, its encouraging that the populace is recognizing that ersatz health organizations like the American Lung Association are the instigators for every smoking ban.

February 12 - Never Give Up - Two state legislators have teamed up to ban smoking across the state of New York and that’s not pleasing Audrey Silk, a local smokers’ rights champion. 

Silk, the founder of the Brooklyn-based Citizens Lobby Against Smoking Harassment (CLASH), is a visible fighter against the growing tide of legislation, which Silk says discriminates against smokers.

“There is no such thing as giving up hope —  that [the law] can’t be amended, that it can’t be repealed,” Silk said, noting that Delaware is revoking a portion of their no-smoking laws.

Smoking bans and unjust tobacco taxation will end.  Because the anti-tobacco agenda is based upon such shoddy premises and has only been enacted through deception and fraud, it is only a matter of time before the laws enacted by the tobacco control industry are revised or overturned.  Speeding that process are true activists such as Audrey Silk.  More are enlisting in the fight each day.  Anti-tobacco should be scared.  Very scared.

From Delaware United Smokers Association to Editor, Delaware Post:  

My name is Mike Dore of the Delaware United Smokers Association. I noticed your online poll results being the exact opposite of what was the fact and what was printed on February 5, 2003 in the Delaware Post. Could you kindly explain why this is the case? Please see the following URL taken with a screen capture before the poll ended.

From the Delaware Post to Mike Dore:

Thank you for writing. There was apparently an extremely heavy vote after we took the results on Monday, which is when we always take the results. We suspect -- because of the software's limitation -- that the entire vote is potentially skewed and for that reason have suspended our online poll -- all polls, not just those about smoking.

The following statement will be printed in this week's paper: 

Because of problems associated with the online poll¹s software, the Dover Post has concerns about the accuracy of the poll in last week¹s paper. For that reason, we have suspended the poll until further notice.

February 12 - Delaware Says End The Ban( But Don't Tell Anyone) - Right off the bat we acknowledge that online polls have no validity.  It appears, however, that the news organization that offered one poll to its online viewers takes them more seriously than is warranted.  

As the screen shots of the ongoing poll results demonstrate, three quarters of the respondents were voting to end the smoking ban in casinos and bars at the time the poll closed.  The final results, as printed on the newspaper, tell the opposite story.  Is such a turnaround possible, even in a poll that "is not a scientific poll and is intended for entertainment purposes only?"  Not likely, as even a representative from the newspaper admitted.

February 11 - Chicago Opposes Smoking Ban - A healthy plurality of those who live in Chicago are opposed to restaurant smoking bans.  With 49 percent opposing and only 42 percent saying they want a smoking ban, the city council has a clear mandate to junk any plan to take away the right of business owners to set their own smoking policies.

Quick prediction:  Anti-tobacco will very soon be releasing its own poll and the results will be very different.  As always, the anti-tobacco crowd will report that 70% percent of the residents want the city to ban smoking in restaurants.  Wherever this poll is taken 70 is always the percentage that agrees with anti-tobacco.  It's long overdue for them to rig their "methodology" again since people are now on to their "survey" scam.

February 10 - Misery Loves Company -  "I think it will have an adverse, material impact on Atlantic City," said McKee, a former Trump executive. "Then you have to build some kind of accommodations for the smokers to take care of them, and they're never happy with that. They leave the (gaming) floor and once they leave they might as well keep going."

In Delaware, racetrack operators blame a smoking ban enacted Nov. 27 for an unprecedented 10 percent decline in slot-machine revenue over the past two months. Until the ban began, slot revenue was 9 percent ahead of the previous year's results.

"I can tell you that a large number of our smoking customers cashed in their rewards-program dollars and are sending back our direct mail, saying they're not coming back," said William Fasy, general manager of Delaware Park in Wilmington.

A large number of those lost customers are hitting the casino's in Atlantic City.  New Jersey is not the only state to benefit from Delaware's unpopular and ruinous smoking ban.  Residents are deserting the state for the nearby states of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania as well as New Jersey.  It's too soon to say whether the Delaware hospitality and gaming industries are behind the new attempt to ban smoking in New Jersey but it is a matter of public record that out-of-state special interests are sticking their noses in that state's business.

A front group named SmokeFree Educational Services in New York predicts that New Jersey will ban smoking eventually.  Says a flack for the group:

"It might be this year in New Jersey or next year in New Jersey, but it's going to happen."

February 6 - Tanking In Delaware - Cigarette in hand, she wraps her arms around her knees and pulls them into her chest. It's a teeth-chattering, body-shivering cold kind of night.

"This just sucks," Bryant, 21, said, as the sounds of the band Juiced spill outside.

Bryant is just one 20-something whose going-out plans have changed since the smoking ban went into effect Nov. 27.  Bryant said she and her friends used to go out about five nights a week, hitting spots like Dover Downs, Froggy's, the Lobby House and W.T. Smithers. Since the ban went into effect, they find themselves only going out about once a week and heading to Maryland and Pennsylvania more often.

"When I do go out in Delaware now," she said, "I end up spending most of my time outside in the cold."

And as going-out patterns continue to shift, the owners of those establishments wonder if they'll end up being left out in the cold, too.

With small businesses tanking right and left, the drive to revise the insane Delaware smoking ban is gaining momentum.  With restaurants, bars, night clubs and casinos a short drive away to more civilized states, Delaware is a microcosm of what happens when ideology trumps decency and common sense.  Even the anti-tobacco press is catching on.  Early closing of once popular places and acres of empty space are hard to ignore.  

February 6 - Turning Producers Into Criminals - It was around dinnertime at Tom's Tavern, and only one person was breaking the law. Jeff, who asked that only his first name be used, was smoking a Newport as he drank a bottle of Budweiser.

''If they didn't allow smoking here, we would not come here,'' the Sharon resident said as he sat at a table Monday.

That is exactly the attitude tavern owner Tom Gianfrancesco is worried about. So to avoid losing business to competitors, he is challenging a new Wrentham regulation that bans smoking in restaurants by maintaining a smoking area.  Gianfrancesco planned last week to file a lawsuit in US District Court against the town because two other establishments, one less than a block away, have been granted waivers by the Board of Health to allow customers to light up for one more year.

Small business is the foundation upon which small town prosperity is built.  Everyone understands that, including the politicians who pay lip service, yet city after city is criminalizing behavior that by any rational standard cannot be criminal.  While the myopic city fathers cry about declining tax revenues they persecute the producers while turning over law-making to the anti-smoking parasites.  

Wretham, Massachusetts is no different from the many other cities in that anti-tobacco state that believe they can repeal basic economic laws.  Rather than going broke one owner is taking it to federal court.  The results of these suits have been mixed, with a distinct bias in favor of the prohibitionists.  With no evidence that secondhand smoke is harmful to non-smokers, the push now is to "denormalize" smoking.  Such tactics have no place here and have not been in use since fascist Germany plunged the world into a horrible war.  Over time, as the law suits grow, the ugly face of anti-tobacco bigotry and intolerance will be scrutinized and ultimately repelled.  

February 6 - The Fight Moves To The Legislature - Anti-tobacco bought a constitutional amendment in November that removes the responsibility of business owners from setting their own smoking policies.  To bad for the owners, they still have the responsibility of making mortgage payments, making payroll and supporting their families.  Anti-tobacco certainly isn't going to chip in to make up the losses when over a quarter of the customer base is told to take it outside.

The amendment must be implemented by the state legislature and the business community is hoping that it listens to its pleas for mercy.  Anti-tobacco, dressed to the hilt, will also descend upon the legislature threatening to sue if they don't get their way.  It should be easy for the politicians --  tax producers, employers, citizens on one side, greedy special interests on the other -- but in this ambiguous age too many have a hard time doing the right thing.

February 6 - Democrats Hell Bent On Banning Smoking - Whatever happened to the Democrats?  Not long ago they celebrated liberty.  Now they are the party of prudery and Puritanism, the like of which hasn't been seen since the 17th century.

Erie County New York, home of the tough and snowy city of Buffalo, is poised to throw smokers into the snow banks.  The county legislators are divided on the issue by party affiliation.  The Democrats want prohibition while the Republicans are against taking away property rights.  As usual the well-funded anti-tobacco activists are in the thick of things, passing out bad information.  

February 4 - Prohibition Hits Ireland  - Ireland will ban smoking in all workplaces, including pubs and restaurants, starting in 2004, Health Minister Michael Martin said today, angering tobacco manufacturers and publicans who called the ban unenforceable and an infringement of personal liberties.

But regardless of how the ban will be enforced, "it's a very good day for public health, and it's a very good day for politics," said Dr. Fenton Howell, chairman of Action on Smoking and Health, a nonprofit advocacy group, who cited Mr. Martin's quick enactment of the ban.

"He hasn't succumbed to vested interests on this," Dr. Howell said.

Oh really?  Sounds like Health Minister Michael Martin has signed on with Big Drug's smoking cessation marketing plan for Ireland.  Such are the vested interests that are responsible for the sorry spectacle of a health department bureaucrat ripping the property rights of an entire country asunder.  

The justification for the ban is a "study" that found people who work in an environment where smoking is permitted are 30% more likely to get heart disease.  Health Minister Martin knows very well that a 30% risk reported by an epidemiological study is no risk at all.  We know that a fraud is being put over on the Irish people.  The pharmaceutical stooges from the above story also know it is a fraud.  They are laughing all the way to the bank. 

January 31 - Smoking Ban, The Personal - The news reports from Delaware reporting the financial devastation caused by the state-wide, 100% smoking ban focus on the aggregate rather than the personal.  Certainly the overall decline in bar, restaurant and casino receipts are proof that smoking bans are poison for business.  Such reports often ignore the people who have put their entire lives into an enterprise, made it successful and now must bail out because anti-tobacco and the politicians have yanked out the welcome mat from under the customer base.

Soon, Carol Pleasanton of Dover will pack up the photos and other mementos because she and co-owner Kenneth Deimler have put the popular spot at 312 W. Loockerman St. up for sale.

"I am really going to miss the customers," Ms. Pleasanton said.

"Customers? We don't have any more of those. (Gov. Ruth Ann) Minner took care of that with her smoking ban," said Mr. Deimler.

The ban has been in effect for only two months but in businesses such as My Place Bar & Grill any cut in the profit margin can be disastrous.  As these two owners pack up their memories they surely will take comfort that Gov. Minner and her cronies in the legislature, comfortably ensconced in their taxpayer-provided offices enjoying their expense accounts, government cars and per diems, are hard at work making Delaware safe from secondhand smoke.  The legislators will also have to figure out how to replace all the tax revenue that has evaporated from the bar, restaurant and casino business.

January 31 - Calling All Snitches - The smoking ban in Tempe, Arizona is not going well.  After the law first went into effect there were a flurry of complaints from weasel anti-smokers but getting the evidence took too much work to build iron-clad cases.  The city then ordered the police to send undercover officers into the bars hoping to catch the customers lighting up.  Citations did increase but so did the outrage of the citizens revolted at the waste of police resources combating what is truly a non-crime.

Undercover stings are now out but the geniuses that detest smoking and smokers are now encouraging concerned citizens to file their complaints online and anonymously.  No proof is required and there is no risk in filing a false report.  It's as easy as clicking:

Report Bar Smoking

The news story doesn't discuss what happens when 10,000 reports are filed just to strew confusion and mess up the anti-smoking paradise that is Tempe.

January 31 - Nonsense, And Fascism, From Georgia - A Democrat (why aren't we surprised) representative announced that he will propose a bill making it a crime to smoke in a car where a child is present.

"We've got to start somewhere," he says.

That's just what Adoph Hitler said about his law to reduce the number of Jewish professors in the universities to a percentage reflecting the Jewish population.  The final solution followed ineluctably.

January 29 - Bad For Business, In Spades - "...outside on a park bench, Nadine Younger is fuming.  Younger, who comes to Harrington about once a week from her home in Washington, D.C., hates having to leave the building every time she wants to have a cigarette.

"I don't like it but I do it," said Younger, a 44-year-old legal secretary. "But not anymore. I won't come back. I'll go to Atlantic City instead."

People like Younger have officials at the state's gaming venues worried. With the smoking ban hurting traffic since it took effect Nov. 27, and the prospect of new smoker-friendly slots in Pennsylvania and Maryland, casino operators said they feel like they're playing against the odds. And, in some cases, they're already trying to cover their losses. Dover Downs, for example, said the drop in traffic has prompted it to reduce hours at one of its casino restaurants."

The Delaware smoking ban as been as bad for business is as the casino operators feared but the state persists in putting a sunny face on financial disaster because it now says it expected the losses to be greater.  Nothing better demonstrates that anti-tobacco is a mental disorder than the reaction from the state officials.  Now, that it is too late to prevent the ban, they are admitting that they knew the smoking ban would cause the casinos to lose business but not to worry, it could have been worse.

It will get worse as regulars like Nadine Younger take their business to more civilized states.  The ban is a disaster as analysts on Wall Street have noted but even they, the hard-bitten captains of capitalism persist in whistling past the graveyard.  Says one, after noting that projected revenues are down by millions and that the decline is assuredly due to the smoking ban:

"In the event that the current laws remain in place, we would not be surprised to see other changes made which could include the addition of more slots, legalization of table games and/or sports betting."

He also noted that the casino recently opened a 232-room and potential expansion of the casino will attract more people.

The investors would be wise to get another financial adviser.  The expansion of businesses that are seeing its customer base decline is not what the doctor ordered.  Instead of pretending that multiplying empty space equals bigger revenues, the casinos, and their investors, should rush to court and overturn this odious smoking ban. 

January 24 - This Will Really Draw Them In - As opponents of the smoking ban rally to change the legislation they say is choking business, the state's tourism office is using the ban as a selling point.  The tourism office, in partnership with the state Division of Public Health, recently launched a $60,000 print, radio and billboard campaign designed to lure people from neighboring states to Delaware, selling them on the idea that they can "Eat, drink and breathe easy!" in the First State.

"We are the first state in the region to pass a comprehensive smoke-free law," the print ad reads. "So come visit us and enjoy a refreshing night out, since all our restaurants, bars, casinos and bowling alleys are now smoke-free."

"Basically, we're inviting them to come over and see what it's like to experience a smoke-free dining experience," said Janet Wurtzel, director of the state's tourism office. "It's something different that you can experience, being in a smoke-free restaurant vs. a smoke-free section."

Ms. Wurtzel needs a reality check if she wants to keep her job.  Non-smokers don't make their travel plans according to smoking bans.  Smokers, however, do.  Non-smokers stumbling into Delaware will not notice that the state has banned smoking from restaurants, bars, casinos and all places where people go to drop money and have a good time.  Smokers, seeing Ms. Wurtzel's advertisement, will mentally cross off Delaware from any travel plans while those who travel there uninformed will, upon realizing that they are welcome nowhere in the state, never return. .  Adding to Delaware's woes, smokers who live in the tiny state also have no need to drink, dine or gamble within the borders.  Within minutes, most of the population can enjoy the restaurants and bars in more civilized states.

The math is quite simple.  Those who hate smoking form a tiny fraction of the population.  Smokers make up around 30%.  Only the deluded -- or bureaucrats such as Ms. Wurtzel -- would conduct a marketing campaign that appeals to less than one percent of any population while simultaneously repulsing one third of potential visitors.  

Quick prediction:  This ad campaign will disappear pretty soon but not soon enough to rescue from financial ruin the hospitality industry of Delaware.

January 24 - Dallas, Home Of The Texas Sissies - City leaders snuffed out smoking in restaurants Wednesday, passing an ordinance that exempts stand-alone bars, pool halls and tobacco shops that have separate areas for smoking.  The ban, approved 10-3 by city council members, also bans smoking in public places, including hotel bars and lobbies, country clubs, bingo halls, hospitals, libraries, schools and transit system vehicles. Many of those places already ban smoking or had areas restricted by the city.

Proponents of the Dallas ban, including Mayor Laura Miller, said only a ban can protect restaurant patrons and workers from secondhand smoke.  Most of the council backed away from Miller's original proposal to ban smoking in stand-alone bars and pool halls, a further restriction they say will not be considered in the near future.

Neither anti-tobacco nor its stooges in government have every satisfactorily explained why the presence of food increases the danger from smoke.  If it's hazardous in a hotel lobby -- one of the so-called public places now under control of City Hall -- it surely is hazardous in a stand-alone bar, pool hall or tobacco shop.  

At any rate, the promise not to consider expanding the smoking ban in the future is as empty as the "science" that paved the way to prohibition.  Before that day comes, the restaurants should refuse to comply until bars are treated as every other business.  At some point the people who actually make the city run will realize that massive and open non-compliance will end the smoking ban in two months.

January 21 - The Race To Be First Quickens - Last month Norway announced that it won the prohibition sweepstakes by becoming the first nation to prohibit smoking in "public" places.  Now the tiny, landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan hopes to top Norway be being the first to ban smoking entirely.

The BBC thinks that's a good thing and warrants a multi-paragraph write-up of the Bhutanese history of intolerance towards smoking.  What the reporter neglects to do is dig a little beneath the smoke-free rhetoric so beloved by Britain's premier anti-smoking "news" organization.  He would surely find that Bhutan's prohibition will reap big awards from the purse of the global Big Mamma, the Word Health Organization.

January 20 - Smoking Out The Pharmaceutical Stooges - Opponents of the suspended smoking ban say it was brought to Pueblo by outside groups, including one partly funded by a company that sells products to help people quit smoking.  While addressing members of the Common Sense [ban opponent] group Wednesday night, attorney Joe Losavio said the ban was based on a sample law written by a national antismoking group.

Losavio also said one of the groups that helped get the ban enacted receives money from a foundation set up by a founder of Johnson & Johnson, a company he said sells smoking-cessation products.

The word is finally getting out that smoking bans are merely a politically-imposed marketing strategy for smoking cessation devices.  Corporate profit, not health, is the goal of all proponents of prohibition.  Although it is no secret that pharmaceutical money funds the so-called activists clamoring for prohibition, the mainstream press downplays or completely ignores the financial interests that drive smoking ban legislation.  Every legislative body that imposes a smoking ban is partnering, with no obvious remuneration, with Big Drugs.  Such partnering is reprehensible -- not to mention criminally shortsighted -- in that it inevitably takes money away from local businesses that lose money because of smoking bans and gives it to Big Drugs to market its ineffective smoking cessation devices.

The people of Pueblo have figured it out and will use it to run the anti-tobacco stooges out of town.  Prohibition has been suspended while the city council reconsiders its Drug Company-written smoking ban. 

January 20 - Undercover Cops Uncover Smoking - This will surely please the citizens facing service cuts and higher taxes.  Four police officers are staking out bars in Tempe, Arizona, hoping to snag the most heinous menace to society: the smoker.  Although it is a free country (or claims to be) and slavery ended a century ago, the Tempe smoke Gestapo is nonetheless convinced that non-smokers are being shanghaied to smoky bars where captive workers dispense drinks under threat of the lash.

In reality, of course, the market place decides quite efficiently and fairly what establishments allow smoking.  Patronage is voluntary and any worker unhappy with his work environment is always free to seek employment elsewhere.  That is freedom.  As the news report notes:

• "At one busted bar, police said nine of 10 patrons were smoking."
• So much for banning smoking and the bars and restaurants will overflow with nonsmoking customers.
• "In some bars, even the bartender was smoking."
• So much for "protecting" the health of the employees.

January 20 - Smoking Ban: Higher Priority Than Reducing Murder Rate - In a glaring example of prohibition trumping true public health and safety, the mayor of Toledo gives the imposition of a 100% smoking ban more importance than reducing a deplorable homicide rate.  The rabidly anti-tobacco Toledo Blade led its coverage of the mayor's state of the city address with his pledge to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants and touches, much less in depth, upon his pledge to reduce the murder rate.

As in New York and other big cities, the inability to deal with actual problems that are of concern to the citizens is camouflaged by the frenzy to impose prohibition.  So much easier to deal with law-abiding business owners than those unruly murderers who just won't get with the program.  Any city that imposes a smoking ban is a city that refuses to deal with real problems.  Bank on it.

January 17 - Law To Ban Tobacco Sales Introduced - With the frenzy to grind up freedom and throw it in the trash can of history, a refreshing story comes from the northern plains.  A North Dakota legislator introduced a law that makes it a crime to sell or smoke tobacco.  Sellers would face up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, while casual smokers or smokeless tobacco users could go to jail for 30 days and be fined $1,000.

"The education approach is obviously not working in North Dakota," said Rep. Michael Grosz, R-Grand Forks. "Should we not prohibit the sale and use of tobacco just because it may be difficult to enforce, and let nearly 1,000 North Dakotans die every year?"

Indeed.  There really isn't any rational argument against his bill.  Education truly isn't working since the percentage of smokers hasn't declined one iota in over a decade.  A decade that has seen billions spent on anti-tobacco education.  Anti-tobacco tells us that smoking is a most deadly practice, leading to an inevitable, premature and horribly painful death.  All of society's ills are caused by smoking so why is it allowed to persist?  Who can argue against this bill?  Why anti-tobacco of course!

At a hearing where the House Finance and Taxation Committee voted 9 to 4 in favor of tobacco prohibition, a line up of anti-tobacco special interest groups denounced the bill in no uncertain terms.  Given the chance to support their goal of a smoke-free society The American Lung Association, American Heart Association, North Dakota Medical Association and North Dakota Public Health Association all spoke out against the ban on Tuesday, much to the dismay of some lawmakers on the committee.

Even in written form their panic was palatable.  How can this be?  To oppose this bill is the only proof anyone needs that all the talk about health and reducing death rates is a complete lie.  The anti-smokers are frantic that the cash flow they receive from cigarettes may come to an end.  Their greed can their only motive since, if what they have been preaching for years is true, allowing cigarettes to be legal means that those who permit it have blood on their hands.

As of yet there is no indication as to whether the legislation is actually a tongue in cheek commentary on hysteria but it sure outed the "health" organizations as a bunch of money-made hypocrites.

January 17 - With Business Decisions Such As These, No Wonder They're Going Broke -  New Yorkers see themselves as hardnosed realists who suffer from no illusions.  That may be the old New York but the new New York appears afflicted with delusions that border on insanity.  How else to explain two recent developments initiated by two large business organizations.

Dismayed by sagging sales, a group of business and trade associations that sell cigarettes joined together to address the problem caused by New York State and New York City's outrageous tobacco taxes.  Half a billion in sales has been lost to Indian reservations and out-of-state vendors in 2001.  The drain increased in 2002 and will likely be more than a billion dollars this year.  This is a bread an butter issue for the members of the group that represents the small convenience and Mom and Pop stores where lost sales equal bankrupt businesses.

Issuing a Press Release that advocates cracking down on smokers!  Instead of taking their legitimate complaints to their representatives and demanding the tax situation be rectified they are advocating punitive measures for people who refuse to pay a fortune for over-priced (taxed) goods and those who do sell smokes at a reasonable price.

Audrey Silk of N.Y.C.L.A.S.H saw red when she read the press release and fired off a letter to one of the members.  Her observations are no more than common sense, something that seems to have fled the business person's brain.

January 17 - Times Are Tough, Let's Make Them Tougher - Operating with the same brilliance as the convenience store owners who want to punish the smokers, a major New York State restaurant associations has thrown its lot in with the very people who are completely indifferent whether restaurants go out of business or not.

Decreeing that prohibition is the wave of the future, The New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 7,500 eating establishments, will call for a blanket smoking ban similar to one enacted recently in New York City.  The association apparently believes that if it joins with the prohibitionists in demanding that a state-wide law, its members' financial fortunes will raise.  The old "level the playing field" will ensure that smokers are trapped in non-smoking establishments.  The reality, as has been proven in California, is that smokers simply will not dine out nearly as much as they would if they were offered real choice.

Other restaurant/bar associations have not yet joined the prohibitionists.

January 17 - The Puritans Win - Expect Massachusetts to succumb to the prohibitionists this year.  The anti-tobacco control enterprise is on a role and the Bay State is long past having any respect for personal liberty.  The arguments made by the political stooges pushing the state-wide smoking ban are taken verbatim from anti-tobacco's talking points.  Leveling the playing field and reducing health costs are the mantras that pass for political discourse in the state these days.

It's a sad commentary on a state where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired 200 hundred years ago.  The country has long since passed New England and New York by and their waning influence is deserved as they impose a rigid oppression on their own citizens.  

January 15 - Florida Prohibition Court Challenge - The state's cigar industry said it has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn an amendment passed into the Florida constitution Nov. 5 prohibiting smoking in enclosed indoor workplaces.

Sharp said his group is trying to protect an industry whose heritage is at the very foundation of Florida's cultural and economic history.

"This is not about banning smoking," said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America. "It is about economics and industry survival.  More importantly there are thousands of jobs and a multimillion-dollar infrastructure that will be wiped out if this amendment is not overturned."

The economic facts are clear.  Prohibition costs money.  When businesses are ruined by banning smoking, the money must be made up elsewhere.  The "elsewhere" are the tax payers since each restaurant and bar that takes in less taxable sales receipts drains the public coffers.  The Cigar Association may be fighting for its survival but its fight benefits each Florida resident.

January 13 -  Coach Ditka Slams Smoking Ban - Secondhand smoke "might make your hair smell," but it's not a proven health risk, Bears-coach-turned-restaurant-owner Mike Ditka said Thursday, leading the charge against a proposed restaurant smoking ban in Chicago.

With a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other, Ditka said his steelworker father was living proof that it's baloney for medical experts to claim that exposing a restaurant employee to an eight-hour shift's worth of secondhand smoke is the equivalent of smoking a half a pack of cigarettes.

Anecdotal evidence aside, it is an indisputable fact that secondhand smoke has never been proven to cause any ill effects for non-smokers.  The anti-smokers have spent millions of dollars to come up with credible evidence that can be used to ban smoking.  When they couldn't find any, they made it up.  Now they have pretty much given up on proving that secondhand smoke is hazardous and have moved on to justifying smoking bans strictly as a method to force people to quit smoking.  Such behavior engineering doesn't go over well with Mike Ditka, a popular Chicago businessman.

It appears it doesn't go over too well with other residents of that city and the slam-dunk that the tobacco control industry anticipated has been thwarted by vocal opposition to the plans by two, out of a total of 50 council members, to ban smoking in restaurants.  That such a tiny minority of city officials wishes to impose their will upon several million residents is indicative of the anti-democratic methods used by anti-tobacco to get its way.  Steamrolling property rights and trashing cultural norms, anti-tobacco will not rest until every location in the United States is identical.  Already New York City has been transformed to Santa Monica on the Hudson while San Francisco is just as bland as Lubbock, Texas.  As one Chicago resident notes:

"This city is rich in character--full of taverns, neighborhood joints, steakhouses and family restaurants. A smoking ban would completely expunge that character. It would absolutely reduce this city to another generic, dime-a-dozen, two-bit town," said Glenn Garlisch, a waiter at the Chicago Chop House, 60 W. Ontario.

January 13 -  Suffolk County Equivocates - In a blow to New York City prohibitionists, Suffolk County may delay the imposition of its smoking ban for three years.  Hospitality interests have indicated that they will go along with prohibition as long as they have a sufficient period to adjust to the expected loss of business.

Although freedom of choice would satisfy everyone but anti-tobacco special interests, the delay is good news for the restaurants and bars.  As one of the counties adjacent to New York City and suburban counties that have imposed total prohibition, Suffolk county will be able to observe the loss of business in the city and smoke-free counties for three years.  The bars and restaurants in the county will also benefit from the smoking bans in surrounding areas as diners flee the intolerance to enjoy themselves in more civilized climes.  The American Cancer Society, of course, is livid and hopes to derail the compromise.

January 13 -  Helena Ban Focuses Now On Property Rights - Win a little and loose a little.  The legal fight opposing the arbitrary smoking ban enacted in Helena, Montana continues with a judge ruling in favor of the city on five of the six points counts filed by casinos.  In essence he ruled that the city does have the right to ban smoking in all "public" places although another judge's ruling on the constitutionality of the ban means that the smoking ban is not currently being enforced.

The sixth count, however, is still very much alive.  That count deals with property rights issues, specifically the "takings" claims.  The casinos assert that since the smoking ban will reduce their revenues, the city is required to compensate them for the loss of business.  At the point any locality is required to pay out tax dollars to compensate businesses ruined by government-imposed smoking bans, the push for smoking bans will be over.  Taxpayers will never tolerate subsidizing business to correct the bad effects of smoking ban laws.

January 13 -  Pennsylvania Pre-emption Frustrates Anti-tobacco Goon Squad - The state law's preclusion of strict new local laws has been frustrating anti-tobacco activists for 15 years, said Bill Godshall, head of SmokeFree Pennsylvania.

"It absolutely does nothing to protect people from smoke and takes away the rights of local governments to control tobacco," Godshall said.

Across the country, 31 states have similar laws preventing local governments from banning smoking, according to the American Lung Association.  Getting states to change those laws is a daunting task for smoking ban advocates, who are largely volunteers with passion but not much money.

Passion but not much money?  And the media is defensive about charges that it is biased!  There is no more well-funded bunch of activists than anti-tobacco.  To include the American Lung Association in a story where anti-tobacco is pleading poverty is incredible and would be laughable if it weren't so outrageous.

Although anti-tobacco claims to be opposed to state smoking laws that pre-empt local laws, it is, as usual, speaking with a forked tongue.  California, Utah, Maine, Delaware, Vermont and Florida, all touted as prohibition success stories, have pre-empted local laws.  Each of these state laws were written by anti-tobacco operatives.  So much for the rights of local governments.  Of course smoking in private property such as office buildings, restaurants and bars is not the business of any government, local, state or federal.  Once politicians realize that, they can move on to the issues tax payers actually care about.