September 26 - Race To Be The First "Smoke-free" Country - ''We've banned smoking in public places in 18 districts. But in individual houses or behind a rock we cannot see what people are doing,'' says the Director of Bhutan's Health Department. Perhaps woodland Cigarette Cop patrols and surprise raids on private homes are the answer. 

They've been trying to eradicate tobacco in Bhutan since 1729, but they're determined they'll rid their nation of the habit, once and for all, before the end of 2003. They've even promised everybody's favorite bunch of cheer spreaders, the World Health Organization, that they're going to get the job done.

Strangely, as Bhutan has ratcheted up anti-smoking in recent years, it has seen a dramatic increase in numbers of young people taking up cigarettes. So the Health Director is going to make the ban absolute, apparently on the theory that forbidden fruit will not entice youngsters, the way discouraged fruit does. 

It's a lesson Hitler also failed to learn. Under the Nazis' anti-smoking campaign (a virtual model for today's in the USA) youth smoking also surged. Maybe Bhutan will learn the lesson it has missed, since 1729, in 2004. Maybe California will follow Bhutan's lesson plan. Or will the whole "land of the free" enroll in this advanced course? FORCES will keep you posted.

September 26 - ...Or We'll Break Your Kneecaps - Twenty Los Angeles-area bars have agreed to comply with the statewide smoking ban after a judge threatened their owners with major fines or jail time if failed to enforce the law, an attorney said Wednesday.  Attorney Michael Linfield filed several lawsuits representing BREATH, the California Smoke-free Bars, Workplaces and Communities Program, on behalf of the general public to force some bars to enforce the law.  BREATH is an acronym for Bar and Restaurant Employees Against Tobacco Hazards. The program is statewide project of the American Lung Association of the East Bay and funded through tobacco tax revenues.

Bar owners, bartenders and customers want to do what people have been doing for centuries: have a smoke with a drink. This is a new century, though, with its own revamped Gestapo. Anti is proud of her Cigarette Cops. America should be ashamed.

In a circular bit of fascism that only America could invent we have a non-profit "health charity", granted a huge sum supplied exclusively from California smokers through a special cigarette tax.  The "health charity"  then takes that grant and sues private businesses for permitting smoking on their own property.  Smokers are therefore financing the very goons that are persecuting them and who are litigating payroll-meeting, taxpaying business out of existence.  Not since Nazi German have the victims been forced to fund their own destruction. 

September 25 - Toledo Politicians Hide Their Heads In The Sand - Bar and bowling alley owners said their businesses are suffering from Toledo’s new smoking ban, during a marathon hearing last night in front of Toledo City Council’s health committee.  Several councilmen suggested they may have made a mistake by voting for the ordinance, but none openly endorsed a change in the law.

Toledo, Ohio joined the barroom smoking ban bandwagon. Anti-smoking advocates keep droning on about nonexistent "second hand smoke" peril. They are preparing studies, but tell us in advance, they're sure the ban is creating a net increase in business. FORCES is likewise sure that studies by anti-smoking advocates will be as rosy as they are false.

Now what do business owners actually affected by the ban have to say to the Toledo City Council's health committee? "It’s a disaster," reports nightclub owner Kip Diacou, "and I am pleading with council to rethink your position." Café owner Jamie Church says, "We could be out of business as early as Christmas." Are the representatives listening to their constituents? As this article explains, "several councilmen suggested they may have made a mistake by voting for the ordinance, but none openly endorsed a change in the law."

Well, God forbid, the council should move to correct an admitted and plainly disastrous mistake. Anti-smoking is anti-logic. The strident harangues of prohibitionist zealots are ringing in the ears of councilmen and legislators all over the country. Thus have they become deaf to the people they are supposed to represent.

Such are the conditions under which vaunted democracy degenerates into tyranny. Such is the insidious nature of rampant anti-smoking, the new incarnation, of hateful hysteria. It does not stop at cigarettes, it never stops at anything, until it is recognized, and forcibly extinguished.

September 24 - Ban Costs Keep Rising - Anti continues swinging her big pocketbook in assault on New York. FORCES recognizes her usual lying tactics, at once alarming and cajoling credulous legislators, while releasing her biased poll results, and spreading more "second hand smoke" hysteria. Anti says New Yorkers just adore having all their most personal choices usurped by the government. No. The people do value individual dignity and liberty. They will not tolerate price-fixing and taxation at 700% rates. They are fed up with Big Lies and Hitlerian anti-smoking laws. Affected parties, such as bar and restaurant owners, together with an increasingly indignant and motivated citizenry, are taking to the streets. At least they can still smoke in the streets. This week. The time has surely come folks, to emerge from all those smokeasies, and to throw your legislators out into the cold. They belong there. Not you.

September 24 - Smoking Ban Blarney - Rudy Guiliani took a sideswipe at Mayor Bloomberg during his recent visit to Dublin, saying of an Ireland-wide smoking ban due to go into effect Jan.1 that smokers and non-smokers alike should be allowed their preference.

Bloomberg's spin doctors have been telling us lately that our business has increased since his ban went into effect March 30, and that we as an industry have taken on more employees.

Bull. If the growing unemployment lines, and the equally undisputed fact that New York City is not responding positively to the improving national economy aren't proof enough, here's more:

Des O'Brien knows whereof he speaks.  He is part of the hospitality that is taking big hits because of Mayor Bloomberg's smoking ban.  While Bloomberg spins and promotes a total smoking ban in Ireland, workers are being laid off and business going broke in New York City despite the promises by the mayor and his anti-tobacco handlers that customers would be lining up once smoke had been prohibited.  Ireland should listen to Des O'Brien and ignore the crazy ravings of the anti-smoking Bloomberg.

September 23 - But We Were Told The Customers Would Be Packing It In - Call them smoke-easys.  Private clubs and civic organizations, which have struggled with declining membership for years, have suddenly become the hottest night spots around.  The reason is an exemption in the state smoking ban for nonprofit clubs. And local clubs are eagerly jumping through the loophole.

All of a sudden residents of New York state are becoming very civic minded, joining service clubs in droves.  Strangely the boost in membership comes at the same time the legislature and governor foolishly imposed prohibition upon all restaurants and bars.  As always anti-tobacco has been proven to be a liar.  Banning smoking is poisonous for businesses and given the choice of frequenting a "smoke-free" bistro or bar, smokers will just stay home.

September 23 - Snuffing Out An Exemption - There is only one small bar in San Carlos, California, where smoking is still legal. The bartenders are all ownership partners and virtually every patron smokes. It comes as no surprise, however, that Anti cannot tolerate citizens doing what they want, in even one place, ever.

September 23 - "Private" Anything Going The Way Of The Dodo Bird - Smoking even in the privacy of your own car could be banned under one of at least five state bills introduced in the past year to limit where a person can light up.  From public beaches to carnivals to a person's private vehicle, the legislation would make it more difficult for smokers to take a drag.

"With concern for public health, I would be pleased [if smoking were banned], but that's not what we're doing," said Assemblyman Alexander "Pete" Grannis, the Legislature's leading anti-smoking advocate and a sponsor of many of the pending bills.

"This is a well-planned strategy to essentially eradicate tobacco use using back-door methods," said Audrey Silk, co-founder of the New York City-based pro-smokers group CLASH.

"This is completely about controlling one group of people using a legal product," Silk added.

And why, pray tell, Assemblyman Alexander "Pete" Grannis, are you not banning smoking.  By allowing this scourge to continue you are complicit in the slaughter of millions.  If smoking is as bad as you say more effective measures are needed than the useless laws you have written.  You and your anti-tobacco cronies have blood on your hands.

If, on the other hand, you wish to blur further the distinction between private and public, your silly laws may do the trick.  Imposing prohibition upon private businesses was the first step, hassling smokers outdoors and in their cars is the second step.  Bashing down the doors to homes is Grannis' goal.  He wants to impose his morality, by force, upon the people who pay his salary.

New Yorkers would be very wise indeed to check N.Y.C.L.A.S.H. out.  This organization knows exactly what Grannis and his handlers are up to.  With sheer grit and determination the organization has launched a legal action against the smoking ban.  They need your help.  Give it to them.

September 22 - Tobacco Prohibition Bill Rolls Forward - If regulation of breweries, distilleries and bars was given over to devout alcohol prohibitionists, they might start out by watering vintage wines to half strength, but they would want to close down the industry altogether. Such minds might consider an offer of ethanol transfusions, at walk-in clinics, an adequate replacement for cocktails in social settings, a necessary temporary appeasement, to addicted fools.

In this era of the rampant anti-tobacco crusade, granting regulation of tobacco products to the Food and Drug Administration, would produce similar "remediations." If cigarettes are adulterated people will inhale far stronger cigars instead. If all tobacco products are adulterated or banned, real tobacco products, on the black market, will fill the void unappetizing substitutes never can.

The modern anti-tobacco movement, typically for such movements, lapsed into fanaticism, decades ago. Twenty-first Century society tolerates madness in the courts, and is ominously content in ceding personal choice, to purblind bureaucrats. Anti thinks she is marching us all to Utopia. She is dragging us into delusion and division. Protest imposition of FDA tobacco regulation. Or prepare for Tobacco Prohibition, all attendant miseries, and a nanny state encroaching ever more, into every most personal aspect of our daily lives.

September 22 - European Prohibition In The Works - Anti marches on in Europe. Issues of national sovereignty are inflamed over a proposed European Union barroom smoking ban. It has similarly been suggested that a national Canadian smoking ban could be just the tap necessary, to tip over Quebec, into secession. All this over smoking a cigarette, in places where business owners and customers agree, they want to smoke. Because they've been doing so all their lives, and because they rightly suppose, that second-hand smoke danger is a prohibitionist's propaganda ploy. Have we mentioned before that Anti is nuts? Yes we have. Too bad the world listens to her.

September 19 - Smoking Fines Passed Out As Sales Decline - Health inspectors have written 524 tickets for violations of the city's new smoking ban, officials said yesterday.

"The smoking ban has devastated my business," said Hogs and Heifers owner Michelle Dell. "I may have to lay off workers soon. We need help before it's too late."

Vincent Fyfe, head of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, said his members are reporting a 20 to 40 percent drop in liquor sales.

Businesses in New York City are suffering yet the tobacco control industry still has the ear of politicians who should know better.  Who is the best judge of whether the customers are staying away?  The business owners or the ideologues whose salaries are paid with taxes or tax-deducted grants?

September 19 - Maintaining The Ruinous Status Quo - The state Senate's leadership stood by the provisions of New York state's nearly 2-month-old smoking ban in public workplaces Tuesday despite lobbying by bar owners and some Republican members for exemptions to the law.  Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who called his members to Albany Tuesday for a one-day session, said the issue to him has not changed since the Legislature voted in March to prohibit smoking in virtually all public buildings starting July 24.

"I am hearing from people everywhere I go who are smokers who are saying, `Thank you for that bill ... it was just a natural reaction to light up cigarette after cigarette while you're having a drink,"' Bruno said. "They're really saying it was the right thing to do because they want to stop smoking."

At the risk of offending Senator Bruno, we'll label that preposterous statement as a flat out lie.  Anti-tobacco has been quite successful at instilling guilt in smokers but to believe that smokers everywhere are thanking Senator Bruno for banning smoking in bars is as much of a stretch as it is to believe that this buffoon spends any time time rubbing elbows with working class people who admit to smoking.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Wanda Hamilton gazes into her crystal ball and examines the future after the caring senator has enacted more improvements to society:

Year 2012, Albany, NY: State Senator Bruno says he has heard from countless overweight people that they are happy about portion control and the ban on meat, fat, and sugar in restaurants. They said that before they just naturally ordered high-calorie food, including dessert, when they ate in restaurants, so now they can still go out to eat frequently and not have to worry about packing on the pounds.

"It takes some getting used to," one constituent told Bruno, "but after awhile tofu and soy 'steak' tastes pretty good, especially when served with oven-roasted potatoes with no butter or sour cream."

Restaurateurs complain that their business is way down and that many of them will close. Bruno shook his head and said, "Their business will pick up and be better than ever, just as it was in California after the fat and meat bans."

According to Joe Smith, the owner of Joe's Steak House, the only business he has is from red wine and bottled water sales. After the sale of beer and liquor were prohibited two years ago and all bars in the state closed down, restaurants serving red wine, fruit juice, and bottled water (the only beverages still permitted to be sold by commercial establishments) saw a big upturn in their business. It is uncertain whether beverage sales alone will enable the smaller restaurants to stay in business.

Senator Bruno said that NY restaurants would thrive under the ban since vegans and the overweight from neighboring states would flock to NY to take advantage of healthy dining.

September 18 - New York Sick And Tired Of The Smoking Ban - Call for Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki, Antis everywhere — oh, and for their toady too, Philip Morris — you'd all better listen up. The people are sick of this deluded and overwrought anti-smoking campaign. They know you've gone over the top, into outer space, with this thing. Have you gone so far out you can't hear their call? Okay, then, settle on the far side of Andromeda. The rest of us will buy gray market cigarettes, drink in smokeasies, keep suing to reverse the havoc you've wrought, and thank God you've departed the galaxy.

September 18 - Challenge To Maryland Smoking Ban - It's a war, all right, and it's going to keep up for quite a while. Maryland restaurateurs are preparing to re-fight a battle they won just four years ago against a draconian smoking ban. It's the same kind of thing that's happening all over the world. Food and alcoholic beverage companies are coming under fire as did cigarette makers; more taxes, more litigation, more encroachments on personal choice, pertinent to these and other products and activities, will follow. Cigarettes are merely the most prominent present focus of a terrible movement.

There is a delusional brand of health dogmatism spreading among us. Its growth over two decades has been financed — through egregious taxation, corrupt litigation, self-serving "nicotine replacement" manufacturers, and "hellth" fanatics of every stripe — at a commensurate level with the world's major religions. Presenting itself as benign advocacy for the greater good, this is in fact, an insidious cultist psychopathy.

Cult thinking is simplistic and single-minded, zealous, exaggerated, fundamentally flawed. Its scope cannot encompass understanding of complex philosophical principles, such as the precious and concomitant values of personal judgment, responsibility, and freedom. Such values are therefore disdained and dismissed by adherents to healthist cultism.

The cult is simply, and by its very nature, tyrannical, incapable of critical and balanced thinking, impervious to sound reasoning, oblivious to the real harm it wreaks. Its support is ongoing. It will not quit. Neither will those among us who value a sane and civil society. FORCES does not advocate smoking. It advocates sanity. If you really like to smoke, okay, be moderate. If you eat or drink too much, well come on, use your head. Live well and long. Fight Anti. Fight her cult. So living in this culture can remain something worth doing.

September 17 - Conjuring Support For Prohibition - The smoke Nazis are agitating for a smoking ban in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  The usual lies about the hazards of secondhand smoke are thrown about but at this stage of the game that phony excuse is not the main selling point of the ban.  What seems to be driving this particular ban, other than the usual financial motives of the tobacco control industry, is a lemming-like impulse to follow the leader off the cliffs.  Civilized locales ban smoking, don't you know.  It's embarrassing says one anti-tobacco operative when his prissy friends and associates are ushered into a local restaurant and are subjected to the lascivious sight of diners enjoying an after dinner cigarette.

The goons are touting a petition that 1,500 residents have signed demanding prohibition.  Not much of a response considering that one restaurant owner has collected 400 signatures of just his customers who demand that the city keep its grasping paws off private business.  

September 17 - Monopolizing The Playing Field - Linda Kohls is the director of Fargo's American Cancer Society. Kohls says approving a no-smoking ban in Fargo is the first step of an ambitious plan. Ultimately, her organization wants the no-smoking ban to cover four neighboring communities.

"Our hope is that it happens not only in Fargo but also in Dilworth, Moorhead and West Fargo. Just so everybody is on a level playing ground," says Kohls. "We'd like to impact the health of the workers and the patrons of the places in all of those communities."

Kohls say if all four cities go smokeless, no one has an unfair advantage. It's the dilemma of Fargo and Moorhead's geography, being right across the river from each other. And, it might appeal to city leaders who fear their town would lose business to one that allows smoking.

Linda Kohl is an anti-tobacco operative.  She makes her living pushing prohibition.  She seems to be veering a bit from the usual anti-smoking talking points.  For instance she is admitting that banning smoking is bad for business.  The usual line is that banning smoking is good for business.  The American Cancer Society, an enormously rich organization that is not a business but has instead grown wealthy off looting the taxpayer and conning the gullible, passes itself off as an expert in business affairs and preaches that customers will flock to restaurants and bars once smoking has been prohibited by government.  Now one of its operatives, who couldn't get a job in private industry, is baldly stating that, banning smoking is bad for business.  Her solution is to ban smoking in every locality.  That way every business would lose money, not just those unlucky enough to be located in the one city that embraces prohibition.  Such is anti-tobacco's approach to business.  Make them all suffer.

September 16 - Ban Smoking And They Will Come.  Not - The Railway Hotel, on Britain's Isle of Man, took a ride on the Prohibition line. The hotel's barroom smoking ban, unlike the vast majority worldwide, was not imposed by fanatical legislation. It was voluntary. So now it's gone. Managers gave the venture a fair chance, but three months, was as far as they could afford to go: there wasn't room on the island for even one smoke-free pub; once patrons got a sniff of the Railway's prudish atmosphere, fully half of them, walked out. We've said it before. Second hand smoke risk is a filthy lie. Smoking bans are ridiculous. Smoking bans in bars are quintessentially ridiculous. The people are going to choose, freely where they still can, indignantly and rebelliously where prohibitionist laws are enacted.

September 15 - FDA Regulation Sneaking In Under The Radar - Legislators are drag racing with Philip Morris, for a new turn on Tobacco Road, toward Prohibition. A final payoff to tobacco farmers, inevitably funded by cigarette smokers, is potentially linked to Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco. Watch the accelerating progress of these plans closely. Big media is giving this minimal attention. Adherents to the anti-smoking agenda will be pleased to see these measures pass before the public takes notice of them; it would take a lot of effort to undo FDA regulation if once it comes to pass. 

Less flavorful, nicotine-reduced cigarettes, already exist. Such products do not satisfy the zealotry of tobacco abolitionists: minds of that ilk seemingly predominate at the FDA. Given control of it, there's little doubt FDA would move to ban tobacco, likely approving the mass marketing of new, lousy substitutes. These might be something like today's plastic nicotine inhalers, possibly with flavorings added: the point being, once again, something lousy, and inadequate. Indeed the agency might move quickly with such a plan to outrace inevitable controversy and resistance. Bureaucratic and fanatical minds would not recognize the futility of replacing an exquisite and venerable pleasure, tobacco, with a puerile and unappetizing medical device. 

The real possibility of a nightmare scenario makes derailment of the proposals discussed in the accompanying article of high priority to FORCES, its readers, and everyone who values a civil society. Bear in mind that the Surgeon General recently endorsed and recommended outright Tobacco Prohibition. It's just what the FDA would like to see too. If Congress moves the way it wants the agency, tyrannically empowered, could make its dream come true. Then, once and for all, Philip Morris could tiptoe away from its tobacco woes, market government-approved cigarette substitutes for so long as it pleases, and otherwise resettle in popular and diverse industries under its new name, Altria Group. Altria sounds like "altruism" doesn't it? So like a good corporate citizen, so unlike, a merchant of death.

Corporations are amoral. They do not care about their loyal customers. Smokers would pay the economic and social price of Prohibition, just as they have paid for tobacco litigation, and the anti-smoker pogrom, up to now. If Prohibition comes, black market tobacco products will fill the void, which ridiculous substitutes, never can. Imagine the ramifications. Under Tobacco Prohibition, smokers could face criminal charges for smoking in alleys, at the same time smug anti-smokers drink ethanol cocktails, in legally smoke-free motor fuel beverage bars. 

Such hypocrisy and cruel absurdity would meet with insidious popular resentment, disgust with government, disrespect for law. Following the course of anti-smoking developments, since the egregious Tobacco Settlement of 1998, this turn in the road was sure to loom. It can cause a massive crash. FORCES would like to avoid this, but Anti is fueled up, and hell-bent for a miserable end. Write your legislators, vote, make your voice heard. Smoking bans are being challenged with increasing success. Anti must be challenged on her other fronts, in this war she created, with equal determination. 

September 12 - Smoking Ban Proponent Says To Hell With Democracy - The chairwoman of Wheeling's Board of Health said she will continue to push for some kind of smoking ban in the village, even though elected officials resoundingly rejected an initial proposal that would have imposed the strictest smoking rules in the state.  Trustees shot the proposal down last week, citing concerns about the impact such laws would have on local businesses, particularly those on Restaurant Row.

"In these economic times, to put this kind of a restriction on our restaurants is ludicrous," Trustee Dean Argiris said. "This is nuts."

Trustees also expressed their anger about not being informed about the proposal before finding out about it through the media. The Board of Health's proposal called for a ban in all public places in Wheeling, including its restaurants and bars. The proposal also included a ban on smoking in village-owned vehicles and within 25 feet of a building entrance or ventilation system, making it one of the strictest bans in the state.

People are saying "enough!" to proponents of smoking bans. New York's Mayor Bloomberg kept his plan secret till after his election then twisted City Council arms to get his way. He is now the most unpopular Mayor in the city's history. New York's state legislature took its cue from Bloomberg, passing its sweeping ban suddenly, bypassing opportunity for public debate. But resistance to the New York bans has grown ferocious; court cases there shall provide the model for reversing the Boston Board of Health's unchecked tyranny as well. Tempests also brew in smaller teacups. 

The Health Chairwoman in little Wheeling, Illinois, is now being upbraided by the Village Board for conniving to revive a ban effort, which the Board had already resoundingly rejected. It's happening in tiny villages, great cities, and states alike: zealots who would impose bans on personal freedom are being exposed and properly reviled. At the same time, the proposed Irish smoking ban is meeting with massive popular indignation and assured rebellion, while the national ban planned for the Netherlands, is already being reversed, with thanks due to the freedom-loving Dutch people, their proud hospitality industry, and the efforts of FORCES Netherlands. Anti-smoking is meeting its match. The world over, people are saying "enough!", and now they are being heard. From Amsterdam to Dublin to Wheeling every voice counts in the cry for justice.

September 12 - Oshkosh Declines - A year or so ago, the tobacco control industry donated $500,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh to eliminate smoking on campus.  The goons were successful in getting rid of a smoking lounge in the student center.  The city of Oshkosh, fortunately, has more sense.  The city council last week defeated a proposal to ban smoking in restaurants.

September 11 - Teen Age Drinking - The nation needs to take drastic steps to control an epidemic of teenage drinking that is costing $53 billion a year, the National Academy of Sciences said yesterday, calling for curbs on glamorous references to alcohol in hip-hop music and movies, harsh penalties on stores that sell alcohol to teenagers, and steep increases in taxes on beer.

Rather than merely telling teenagers not to drink, the report said, adults must take action to deglamorize alcohol, and society must punish companies that profit from underage drinking.

The report marks an important shift in strategy that echoes recent antismoking efforts. If implemented, the recommendations would be the most dramatic crackdown in decades on alcohol makers, retailers and the entertainment media -- and would put the campaign against underage drinking on the same footing as the war against teenage smoking.

Increasing excise taxes could partly offset these "social costs" and lower alcohol consumption by teenagers, whose buying decisions tend to be sensitive to price fluctuations, the report said. While the size of any tax increase is a political decision, the scientists said, they predicted that a 10 percent increase would result in a 3 percent decrease in alcohol sales overall, with a greater decline among adolescents.

Another "Save the Children" campaign will be underway, with a hefty tax increase for adults.  It doesn't "take a village to raise a child", it takes observant parents who are responsible and are monitoring their children's activities. This is not news just another excuse to raise taxes on an "undesirable" product. 

September 10 - Smoking Ban: First Casualty Will Be Truth  - Anti-tobacco has decreed that Kentucky will be the battle ground to bring down the so-called tobacco states.  Lexington has fallen and the next city targeted is Louisville.  As usual, the local media is completely on the smoking-ban bandwagon.  One resident, an attorney, has issued a challenge to the media to cover both sides.  It's impossible to argue with the facts he presents.  Maybe this time anti-tobacco won't get away with its litany of lies.

September 10 - Anti-tobacco Mayor Gives Recovering Alcoholics The Back Of His Hand - Edmonton, Alberta wants a total smoking ban. Except at the alcoholics' rehabilitation lounge. Except, yes, the alcoholics' lounge has to go along too. Unless they serve liquor. Then they can smoke there! For a couple of years. Then not anymore. Okay maybe the dry-out center doesn't have to start serving booze today. Maybe not till tomorrow. No today. So follows the logic of Alberta legislators, who can smoke in their offices, but believe any other exemption could lead to a court challenge, that might overturn prohibitionist laws. Edmonton Mayor Bill Smith, a smoker, earnestly promised a few days ago to propose an official exemption for the poor souls with the d.t.'s, but now he says, if this was even considered, "we would be a laughingstock." Perish the thought.

September 10 - Cigarette Tax Hike To Be The Largest In The Nation - The Western Political Report says the bill was rewritten over the weekend and also includes a whopping cigarette-tax increase to $2.37 a pack, up from 87 cents. California's new tax would be the highest in the country outside New York City, creating a massive incentive to buy tax-free cigarettes from Indian stores or their Internet sites.

Normally a bill that raises taxes would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature, giving minority Republicans leverage in slowing down the legislation. But Democrats plan to make SB 2 "revenue neutral" by adding a tax credit for employers who will suffer from the costs of mandated health care for their employees. Under that arrangement, the bill could pass with a simple majority. Some Republicans promise to take the issue to court, but that fight would take years to resolve.

With the recall of California's governor imminent, the slap-happy legislators in Sacramento are generating an avalanche of bills hoping to slip them through before Gray Davis is booted out of office.  They are operating on the assumption that Davis is so petrified of being recalled that he will sign any bill that benefits an important, and rich, special interest.  As this insightful report notes, the huge cigarette tax is actually a payoff for the Indian tribes who have bought important politicians.  With cigarettes sky high, the residents will have no choice but to buy their smokes from the Indians who do not collect state taxes.  Of course the truly poor will have no choice but to buy their over-priced cigarettes from local vendors, one expensive pack at a time.

September 8 - New York Smoking Ban Goes To Court  - An Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association lawsuit seeking to throw out New York's anti-smoking law will be heard by federal district judge Lawrence Kahn on Sept. 9.  The motion hearing will be held at 9:30 a.m. in the federal courthouse at 100 South Clinton St. in Syracuse, N.Y. 

The law, which bans smoking in bars and restaurants took effect on July 24. Some bar owners contend that the measure is costing them business. People like to smoke and drink and if they can't smoke they won't drink, according to Scott Wexler, executive director of the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association.  The association is seeking to have the judge issue an injunction banning enforcement of the state's law while their lawsuit challenging its constitutionality goes forward.  (The Business Review, September 5, 2003)

There are several suits against the New York State and New York City smoking bans.  Of especial interest to smokers is the suit brought by N.Y.C.L.A.S.H. filed on behalf of smokers.  Most suits against unjust smoking bans are by necessity filed by the businesses that are being ruined by prohibition.  They have the financial motive and resources, after all to finance the suites.  N.Y.C.L.A.S.H. doesn't have deep pockets but has, through its tireless efforts, collected money to bring suit to overturn the smoking ban.  This band of activists deserves support from smokers everywhere.  If this ban can be beaten here, then it can be beaten everywhere.

N.Y.C.L.A.S.H. SUIT TO END THE SMOKING BAN

September 2 - Trash The Ban; Citizens Will Decide - Perhaps it started with hatred of cigarettes, that simple vice, but it grew into a marauding monster. Since Big Tobacco, in the United States, excluded itself from public debate about its product, via the 1998 Tobacco Settlement capitulation, anti-smoking has engaged in a propagandistic free-for-all. Fantastic cigarette taxes, mammoth Settlement payments, self-interested pharmaceutical companies, and "hellth" fanatics of every stripe, all pitch in: so Anti is vastly financed, a formidable mistress of propaganda, who holds great sway.

September 2 - Don't Restrict My Right To Permit Smoking At My Business - Here is a plea for mercy from a restaurateur facing a smoking ban. If what he means by "communism" is suppression of politically incorrect thought, and assault on human dignity, he's got the right idea, but the new oppressor's name is Anti, as in anti-smoking, anti-fat, anti-humor, and anti-human. This small business owner's fear of growing oppression, in the "free" world, would have seemed excessive a couple of decades ago. In those days, the threat government now makes to his free choice, and livelihood, would have been unthinkable. Will his plea be properly heard, or justly responded to, in today's political climate? It's an uphill battle. Just keep reading down this page, about the unthinkable things happening, from Saskatchewan to Sydney.

September 2 - Who Cares What You Think?  You're Only A Taxpayer - Abington, Massachusetts will have its barroom smoking ban. Bar owners don't want it, because second hand smoke is a joke, and bar patrons want to smoke. But Anti is single-minded: never mind what the affected parties want, never mind rules of procedure: just follow the majority of Health Board members, and refuse even to respond to citizens, or explain the Board's wrongheaded majority decision. Why bother with the pointless delay of democratic discussion? This month or next month Abington will have its ban. You want fairness? Well, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is expected to pass an unjust barroom smoking ban, next year. Then everybody in the state gets oppressed. There's fairness for you.

September 2 - Seeking Relief.  Good Luck - New York State's draconian smoking ban took effect in July. Bars are already closing. Owners like Greg MacBlane have a choice of breaking the law or applying for a waiver from the County Health Department but "it doesn't look like the health department will approve any waivers anytime soon. MacBlane says if people are allowed to light up again in his bar, it will be like winning the lottery." Once we decided how to conduct our lives and our businesses. Now we live or die at the whim of Anti.

August 29 - Unintended Consequences - Across southern Monroe County last week, tavern, restaurant, and bar owners prepared for what they believe will be a migration of new customers to their respective establishments, all courtesy of a new ban on smoking in most public places in Toledo that went into effect Sunday.

"We’ve had a lot of people come in and check us out, saying that they need to find a new bar to hang out at," explained Mrs. Bork, whose M.T. Loonies bar and grill opened for business along Lewis Avenue just four months ago. "We’ve had a [billiards] league from a bar in Toledo come and ask us to sponsor them already, and I expect a lot more smokers are going to be heading our way."

August 29 - As Summer Ends, The Worries Really Begin - On sunny days, things are not horrible for bars that have patios or decks. Fewer smokers are coming in since the statewide ban on smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces went into effect July 24, but at least smoking customers can sit outside and light up. On wet days, bar owners get a likely preview of how business will be as summer fades into winter, and they are worried.

The Capital Region members of the Albany-based Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association are reporting an average drop in business of about 20 percent, said Scott Wexler, the association's executive director.  If the economy were booming, the bars might not even notice the drop, but many people are already spending less on entertainment and other discretionary purchases, he said. 

"It's the straw that breaks the camel's back," Wexler said.

Scott Wexler is correct that the smoking ban has reduced business by 20 percent.  That's the average some establishments are losing much more and will be bankrupt before the year is out.  He is incorrect if he thinks that drops in income are not noticed during economic boom times.  The smoking ban in California went into effect during a period of economic growth.  During the late 1990's the state was having an economic boom yet the overall hospitality industry experienced growth that was one half the growth experienced by the rest of the country.  Smoking bans costs Californians plenty during the good times.  The bans are taking a much harsher toll now that the economy has tanked.  The situation in New York state is even more dismal and, as this story notes, when the chill winds of winter drive the smokers from the patios they will skip the indoor restaurants and just stay home.

August 28 - Hypocrisy In High Places - Do what we say, not as we do. The Alberta government is being accused of taking a double standard on smoking in the province.  The province has it's own tobacco reduction policy and it publishes reams of materials calling for bans on smoking in all public places.  There are very few buildings left in Alberta where smoking is allowed, but one which still does is the very building where tobacco reduction laws are being drawn up.  At the provincial Legislature some employees can even still light up at their own desks.

August 28 - Who Would You Rather Share A Beer With?  - Saunders, owner of the Grandma's Kitchen truck stop restaurant outside Tampa, doesn't like the government telling her what to do. So, she decided to ignore the smoking ban, reasoning it would hurt business.  Now she's a folk hero.

August 28 - Standing Up For Themselves And For Us All - The Genesee County Health Department and the Center Street Smoke House are awaiting results of a hearing held Monday regarding alleged violations of NY's indoor smoking ban by the Batavia bar and restaurant.  On two separate nights, July 24 -- the day the statewide ban went into effect -- and again on August 5, the owners of the Center Street Smoke House passed out cigarettes to its patrons, encouraging them to light up in protest of the ban.  Rather than pay fines up to $1,000 for each violation of the Clean Indoor Air act, the restaurant's owners decided to take it to a hearing.

August 28 - Smoking Ban Causes Chaos - Springfield, Missouri is suffering under a smoking ban that, as always, was imposed on private property owners by activists who couldn't operate an efficiently run lemonade stand.  It's riddled with the jaw-dropping irrationality that defines anti-tobacco.  Smoking is allowed in restaurants that derive 50 percent of its revenue from alcohol or sell over $200,000 a year in alcoholic drinks.  Provisions are written in to exempt restaurants not meeting the cocktail quotient but that loose money because of the smoking ban.  In short, it's the kind of ban that would be embraced wholeheartedly by the businesses of New York City that are losing money hand over fist because of that city's total smoking ban.

The people of Missouri, of course, value liberty far more than too many people on the "progressive" coasts so the opposition here to a somewhat soft smoking ban doesn't bode well for the tobacco control industry.  If this ban is allowed to stand, however, before too long the rats and parasites who live off smoking bans will be agitating for more controls, invoking, as always, that mythical beast known as "leveling the playing field."

Keep fighting, Springfield and send anti-tobacco packing.  The government has no right to ban smoking in private property.  Keep it simple and keep the pressure on city hall.

August 25 - Smoke Free, Intelligence Free - A club for recovering alcoholics has won temporary relief from a smoking ban, a day after Premier Ralph Klein urged the city to exempt it.  The reprieve is in effect while city officials ponder the issue. The club, which is dry, becomes the lone exception to a bylaw that allows smoking only in licensed establishments.

They won't force the alcoholics' lounge to start selling booze in order to qualify as a smokers' bar, not right away, today. They're going to ban smoking in bars soon, too, oh yes, they are. But just for now, they'll let a few poor souls coping with delirium tremens, smoke in peace in just one place: strictly temporarily, subject to change, maybe tomorrow. It's a truly magnanimous and exceptionally exceptional exception you understand. Don't think for a moment anybody else anyplace else will ever be allowed to smoke a cigarette in a dignified setting ever again ever. Don't you dare think that.

Swamped by international ridicule, the Antis of Edmonton, are coerced into considering a small step toward sanity. This brings their neurosis into still starker relief. They just can't bear it. Meanwhile, as Montreal faces the loss of Formula One racing, a one-year reprieve from tobacco advertising prohibition, is considered. Rethinking prohibitionist ideology is not considered. How did such clowns come to positions of authority? It's past time to toss them out.

August 25 - Florida Disrespects World War II Vets - They were huffing and puffing in a smoke-filled room at Port Charlotte VFW Post 5690 Thursday night.  For almost an hour 50, mostly senior citizens of World War II vintage, sat with cigarettes in hand trying to figure out how to survive the new statewide Indoor Workplace Smoking Ban threatening the survival of military, Masonic and fraternal organizations throughout Florida.

August 22 - Educating The Politicians - The Delaware smoking ban, like similar bans across the country, is based on a lie. More than 60 years ago, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels used the technique. You repeat the lie incessantly and make it clear that it was supported by government agencies and political leaders. The Big Lie has been used to demonize smokers and indict secondhand smoke as a disease-causing health threat.

Anti-smoking zealots had been ranting about smoking for years. Their efforts led to warnings on cigarette packs, pronouncements by the surgeon general, negative advertisements and numerous lawsuits against the tobacco industry.  When these efforts failed to achieve the desired reduction in the number of smokers, anti-smoking forces sought another approach.

That approach, of course, was to misuse epidemiology and statistics to manufacture "the mountain of evidence" that we now all know is a pile of BS.  Still, the bans keep coming as an out-of-touch elite declares war on the working class.  Not content with mismanaging the public trust while running up huge deficits, the governing class appears determined to drive a stake through the heart of small business.

August 21 - The Nicotine Constituency - This opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal does a fine job of detailing the outrageous effort by governments of “chasing smokers down to shake every last penny out of their social pariah habit”. We can only hope that the political awakening it refers to ripens as quickly as possible. And we are most pleased to learn that New Yorkers during the recent black-out, instead of looting and frightening each other, were illegally enjoying lots of cigarettes in various bars, peacefully basking in candlelight.

We note one small error in this piece by Collin Levey. Boston does in fact have an absolutist bar and restaurant smoking ban quite similar to that imposed on New York. It started May 5th. Conventional wisdom is that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which now considers smokers' purses particularly common wealth, will follow with a statewide ban like Boston's, within months. We say this is a small error, because frightening abridgements of personal freedom of choice are multiplying so fast, it's tough to keep up with them.

Smoking bans are small in another sense. They are mean, which is to say unjustified and hate-based, and petty, which means persons of good nature are learning, more and more, to ignore them. The Journal points this out too, then calls on smokers to keep resisting, putting an end to the delusory oppressionism of institutionalized Public Health. 

Yes it's easy to miss one major city's fall from freedom in this ghastly era. The important thing is noting that the public is smartening up. Conventional people, smartened up, can rise up. When they do, conventional wisdom deserving of the name, shall be reestablished. The backlash is growing. Duly noted, Ms. Levey, and thanks for imparting some truth, in what is reportedly your final editorial for the Journal. We give it an A+. 

En passant, the article refers to another phenomenon, the rise of the decorated cigarette pack. In addition to the stickers mentioned, we should also note that some companies, such as ArtPacks in Europe, have started making pack covers that are veritable works of art. The age of the elegant cigarette case may be over, but today’s hounded smoker is starting to make his own graphic statement – bold, beautiful, and politically incorrect to the highest degree!

August 22 - Educating The Politicians - The Delaware smoking ban, like similar bans across the country, is based on a lie. More than 60 years ago, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels used the technique. You repeat the lie incessantly and make it clear that it was supported by government agencies and political leaders. The Big Lie has been used to demonize smokers and indict secondhand smoke as a disease-causing health threat.

Anti-smoking zealots had been ranting about smoking for years. Their efforts led to warnings on cigarette packs, pronouncements by the surgeon general, negative advertisements and numerous lawsuits against the tobacco industry.  When these efforts failed to achieve the desired reduction in the number of smokers, anti-smoking forces sought another approach.

That approach, of course, was to misuse epidemiology and statistics to manufacture "the mountain of evidence" that we now all know is a pile of BS.  Still, the bans keep coming as an out-of-touch elite declares war on the working class.  Not content with mismanaging the public trust while running up huge deficits, the governing class appears determined to drive a stake through the heart of small business.

August 20 - Where Are The Customers? - Waitress Nicole Clemente gazed over empty tables at Jack's Restaurant Tuesday.  Normally she'd be busy hustling food to early evening customers of the popular 24-hour Skokie eatery, she said. Instead she was perched at the front counter with nothing to do, and $30 in tips after three hours work.

Business suffers as bar and restaurant smoking bans come to Skokie, Illinois. Most of the unfairly stigmatized smokers go someplace else. Nonsmokers are indifferent to the vilification of smokers and the financial hardship of businesses — "I used to be a smoker," Skokie resident Harriet Rumpal said, "but it's nice to come in to a smoke free environment" — while a few smokers complain of the unfairness but keep coming to places that no longer accommodate them. Why?

Sugarless sweeteners and brewed decaffeinated coffee appeared in restaurants, as necktie requirements disappeared, because of free market forces. It took the Big Lie of ETS hazard, and coercive laws, to bring on smoking bans. If business owners and patrons wanted smoking bans these would have appeared on their own. Despite the scare tactics of a vastly financed (with smokers' money) anti-smoking propaganda barrage, bar and restaurant smoking bans, were rare. 

Fanatical stigmatization of various groups, in Germany of the 'thirties, required no more than rampant indifference or complacency, early on, to grow exponentially. Worldwide anti-smoking is progressing apace under the same conditions of apathy. Anti-smoking is about more than cigarettes, it is about hatred, and a profoundly disturbing erosion of personal freedom of choice. Haven't you taken a firm stand against it? Why not?

August 14 - Forward To The Past - Gov. Gray Davis, hoping to head off higher vehicle license fees that will be collected just days before the recall election, said Tuesday he supports a plan to reverse the increase and make up the revenue with other taxes.  The plan, floated by Assembly Democratic leaders, would eliminate the car- tax hike while raising taxes on high wage earners, cigarettes and possibly alcoholic drinks.

"I think that is a good idea," Davis said at an event in Los Angeles. "I'm saying if we can find a legal way to reduce the car tax while raising the taxes that I proposed in my budget in January, I would support it, because I never intended for this burden to fall solely on the motorists of California."

But he does intend that that burden should fall solely on smokers.  Davis, of course, wanted to raise cigarette taxes and also raise the car tax.  He wasn't able to raise cigarette taxes because that would have taken a 2/3 majority vote in both legislative houses.  When the Republicans held firm in their demand that there be no tax increases, Davis found a loophole of dubious legality that he said allowed the car tax to be raised without the 2/3 majority.  Now he and his minions in the legislature are saying that exchanging the car tax for the other new taxes, including those on cigarettes, don't need the 2/3 majority because they would replace a tax that is already in place.  Such cynicism is one of the reason the governor faces a serious recall and also why the legislature is held in abject contempt by the citizens of California.

August 14 - No Tobacco Tax Candidate Joins The Fray - Just as Governor Gray Davis renewed his call to stick it again to the smokers, the Secretary of State announced the grand total of those Californians who will appear on the ballot of the special election held in October to determine whether Davis should be recalled.  On the ballot will be 135 individuals who are now officially running to become the governor should the majority of voters vote to throw Davis out of office.

One is of interest for smokers since he pledges to work on reducing tobacco taxes and to roll back the worst aspects of the smoking ban.  John Roscoe makes his living selling cigarettes in large outlets that have benefited from the astronomical tobacco taxes operating in California.  Because his is such a large operation he is able to offer cigarettes at a cheaper rate than most retailers in the state.  High cigarette taxes are good for John Roscoe but he has always been in the forefront of those who oppose the ridiculous taxes and silly smoking bans.  With 135 replacement governors in the waiting, smokers have one more reason to pay close attention to this important recall election.