November 26 - Connecticut Smoking Ban Gets Bad Reviews - Some Connecticut bar owners are hoping a new poll will persuade state legislators to scrap a planned ban on smoking in bars and taverns.  While most residents support the current ban on smoking in restaurants, 62 percent oppose such a ban when it comes to bars, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Friday.  Gov. John G. Rowland recently suggested the law be changed to ban smoking near food. He said he might also support allowing separate smoking rooms in restaurants.

Leaving aside the eternally mystifying connection between secondhand smoke and food, Rowland is only responding to the wishes of his constituents.  The public is united in issuing the thumbs down to prohibition in bars.  Since this survey was not commissioned by anti-smoking special interests, expect a poll soon reporting that the public, by 70 plus percent, supports the prohibition that was steamrolled over the protests of small business owners.  When anti-tobacco hits town a biased survey is soon to follow.  Gabrielle LaVecque, President of FORCES-Delaware explains polling dynamics:

It's apparent this poll was not conducted by any anti-smoking organization for 2 reasons.

1. It doesn't say what antis want it to say.
2. It doesn't say what antis want it to say and was publicized.

Polling data in other states only shows support growing for bans when the polls are conducted by the ban supporters.

Bans conducted in locations being hurt by the bans or of places hurt by the bans show a very different story.

A poll allegedly conducted last spring in Delaware was just recently released. The poll was conducted by anti-smoking advocates and showed what they wanted it to show. I say allegedly conducted because of the timing of the release of it, close to the 1 year anniversary of the Delaware smoking ban. Another reason I say allegedly conducted is because in a state as small as Delaware I know of no one, nor does anyone I know know of anyone who was ever polled or surveyed on the issue of the smoking ban.

Smoke Natzies: small minds buzzing in you business - SWAT'EM

November 25 - Baby Step Towards Sanity - Smokers may be able to light up again in the city's bars and restaurants if a new bill is approved by the state Legislature.  The bill, sponsored by Republican Assemblyman Howard Mills, would allow establishments to buy "smoking licenses" for $100 per year, provided they already hold a liquor license.

Should New York bar and restaurant owners have to pay tribute to state government, merely to permit a legal and ubiquitous social activity, on their private property? No, but in the fascistic Anti era, where basic liberty and self-determination have been banned absolutely, this form of graft would obviously be an improvement. So we wish New York Republican Assemblyman Howard Mills good luck with his "smoking license" plan for Empire State eateries. He will face a lot of opposition. The New York State Legislature is riddled with thoroughly propagandized and mind-numbed anti-smoking zealots. Michael Bloomberg won't be able to sleep if the state modifies his New York City prohibition. The bug-eyed Mayor will be up all night jabbering to his constant companion, Harvey the Invisible Rabbit, till the pair come up with a new way to circumvent sanity. In fact crazed anti-smokers will tolerate almost any scheme to bilk the citizenry, but not one that restores the citizens with a shred of their former dignity, at any price. Normal people are getting wise to this though. Howard Mills's plan is a welcome step back toward normality, that may work, and we hope it does.

November 21 - Exemption Lottery - Onondaga County Health Department, in New York, has granted just one exemption to the state's smoking ban. Karen Gass, facing the extinction of her bar business, hopes to be the next "lucky one" to get a waiver. Financial survival and freedom to light a cigarette are a matter of luck in parts of the United States today. Not anyone's choice, nor any semblance of reason, but just the whims of such as the Onondaga Health Department, determine our most personal activities, and our fates. This is not a fit way to live. It is a colossal disgrace.

November 21 - Hissy Fit Erupts After Smoking Ban Voted Down - The Indianapolis City-County Council committee meeting on Nov. 11 was, by the end of the evening, more schoolyard brawl than a gathering of professional adults.  All the fuss came after the committee of Rules and Public Policy voted down a controversial anti-smoking ordinance proposed by Republican Councilwoman Beulah Coughenour.

After Proposal 122 fell by a 5-2 vote, Coughenour made her feelings clear, telling the other members of the committee, “I think that’s a very cowardly thing to do.” The majority of the 150-person crowd gathered for the meeting agreed, booing the outcome of the vote.  Council chairman Robert Massie defended himself. “It’s not some cowardly or dastardly act to not pass this proposal,” he said, going on to call the crowd hostile. This was met with even more boos and jeers.

So the politicians who voted to uphold property rights were jeered while the two advocating state control were cheered.  The founding fathers are turning over in their graves.  As bad as was the smoking ban proposal, far worse was the exploitation of the children, herded into this meeting by the anti-tobacco goon squad.  As people entered the hearing room they had to pass through a crowd of children who had been coached to great the public with sunny smiles.  As the people passed the children asked, "Do you smoke?  Do you support us?"  If the passerby answered yes to whether he smoked the children, ranging in age from 6 to 8, wiped the smiles from their faces and hung their heads.

Using kids as trained animals to form a gauntlet through which taxpaying citizens must penetrate has to be one of the most depraved stunts anti-tobacco has hoisted on the public.  Instead of screeching at her colleagues, Councilwoman Beulah Coughenour should have been denouncing the child abuse that was occurring before her eyes.  

Of further note is a double lie that one of the anti-tobacco operatives told to the reporter:

Karla Sneegas of the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Agency pointed to a ban currently in effect in Helena, Mont., one of several throughout the country, as evidence of the health benefits of such an ordinance. Since the public places smoking ban took effect in Helena, Sneegas said, reported heart attacks dropped 60 percent.

Currently the city of Helena does not suffer under a smoking ban and the drop in heart attacks reported during the six months it was in effect comes from a "study", concocted by two country doctors, that is now acknowledged as one of the trashiest of anti-smoking junk studies.  Karla Sneegas, a public employee, should be fired.

November 20 - Reductio Ad Absurdum - Now the nannies are coming to Washington, D.C. And it's likely that they'll get their way. Backed by a quarter-million dollar grant from the New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (solidifying its reputation as chief financier of restricting personal choice), sentiment around town is that most of the D.C. city council is set to support the ban. Business owners in the very heart of the free world may soon be told that they aren't permitted to allow their own customers to make their own decisions about whether or not to light up a cigarette. Because the Washington, D.C. city council is set to declare that city council officials are better suited to decide what health risk Washington D.C. residents ought to take than Washington, D.C. residents themselves.

Satire is an anachronism. You can't top anti-smoking, once it's gone over the top, of Mount Crazy. That happened years ago. You might think it would be fun to ridicule secondhand smoke propaganda by declaring the smell of after-shave lotion a deadly threat to public health. Nope. After-shave lotion is being officially proclaimed a deadly threat to public health. Well then, could it be funny to suggest police officers might be authorized to use deadly force against someone smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, in self-defense, against puffs of smoke from a gram of burning leaves? Mayor Bloomberg would authorize that this afternoon if he could get away with it. He has already said the smoker on a Gotham street is a greater threat than airliners aimed at Manhattan's skyscrapers. Lots of government officials across the country and the world, elected or unelected, think like Mayor Mike does today. What would a fellow like Bloomy do about after-shave, coffee, beer, hamburgers, in a second term? A second Bloomberg term? Let us pray, brethren, at least that idea remains universally recognized, as plainly ridiculous.

November 20 - Things Looking Good In The United Kingdom - The industry has received boost in its fight against a smoking ban as Secretary of State for Health John Reid has revealed he supports initiatives such as the industry’s Charter.  In a dramatic turnaround for the government Mr Reid has reportedly told officials that he thinks voluntary agreements are more flexible and quicker to put in place.

Authorities in the United Kingdom recently announced they did not care to impose a New York-style smoking ban on their citizens. The Republic of Ireland may have to back down on such fascistic plans. Secretary of State for Health John Reid is now expressing appreciation for pub owners' resistance to a ban. We have yet to hear a response to Mr. Reid's sanity from Ireland's frothing Health Minister Michael Martin however. Should anti-smoking zealots of Mr. Martin's ilk prevail in imposing a draconian ban the battle will only shift into high gear. A majority of pub owners, in a virtual declaration of civil war, have publicly vowed to defy a smoking ban. War's popping up, in Ireland, and all over. This, over smoking cigarettes, in bars, where owners and customers agree they want to smoke. One fine day, when fanatics are shown out the doors of power, we may live amidst peace and sanity again. The day may come. Irishmen are fighting for it. So must we all.

November 17 - The United Kingdom Flushes Smoking Ban Down The Toilet - Plans for a legally enforceable smoking ban in public places are to be effectively abandoned by the Government.  Health Secretary John Reid, who gave up smoking at the beginning of the year, has told colleagues that he favours voluntary codes by employers, pub owners and restaurants rather than resorting to legal bans on where people can smoke.  He is thought to have been backed by Tony Blair, who is also against a legal ban on smoking in public places.

"We are very disappointed that the Secretary of State has abandoned attempts to restrict smoking in public places," says Ian Willmore, British representative of Action on Smoking and Health. Compare the 1998 ASH response to warnings from a smokers' rights group. Britain's Fair Cigarette Tax Campaign told an incredulous press, just five years ago, that anti-smoking's anti-freedom agenda was a conscious and calculated movement toward draconian smoking bans, including restaurants, and bars. ASH assured the BBC that the smokers' group was "scaremongering," saying, "No-one is seriously talking about a complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants." The lying fanatics were serious about it then, and they will keep pushing, too. The good news is, in Britain, for now, a man can still light up a cigar if he damned well pleases. If by fond miracle Churchill showed up at the Savoy bar they wouldn't boot him out into the street. Not today. We'll keep our eyes on groups like ASH.

November 17 - Smoking Ban Has A Strong Air Of Intolerance (registration required) - But getting their way 85 percent of the time was not enough for the proponents of total bans. They bring to mind Henry Ford's Model T, which you could get in any color, as long as it was black.

The advocates insist their policy is essential for public health. They argue that secondhand smoke from cigarettes endangers the health of patrons as well as employees, and that a smoking ban is the only adequate protection.

The Environmental Protection Agency says these fumes are hazardous, but not all experts agree. John Bailar III, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago and former editor-in-chief of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is among those with doubts. "We still do not know, with accuracy, how much or even whether exposure to environmental tobacco smoke increases the risk of coronary heart disease," he wrote in 1999 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Anti-smoking cultism is pervasive throughout Public Health agencies. Occasionally scientists or media reporters of decent nature try to explain the flawed thinking of the cultists in diplomatic language. They forget the futility, of arguing with an idiot, or a fanatic. Concern about secondhand tobacco smoke, tiny wafts of white smoke from burning leaves, is ridiculous. Windows are made for opening. Business owners have always been free to set smoking, or no-smoking policies, in their establishments. Now freedom is endangered because of rampant cultist propaganda. Government-mandated smoking bans are hysterically-based. They stigmatize a good quarter of the population unconscionably. They are chillingly fascistic. This Chicago Tribune article flickers with the ideal of tolerance in these gloomy days of hateful madness.

November 12 - What Are They Smoking In Connecticut? - Something very odd is going on with the political class ensconced in Hartford.  We have a governor who cheerfully signed a California-style smoking ban not long ago now making noises about softening the ban although he says he doesn't really care one way or the other.  We have an attorney general, elected to enforce the law, who is hallucinating that he is a legislator elected to craft legislation.  We have the state's top Democratic leader babbling that allowing businesses to set their own smoking policies would "deal a financial death blow to the restaurant industry in Connecticut" when it is the hospitality industry itself that is pleading for an end to total prohibition.

So confused are these "leaders" that it is obvious they are incapable of running a lemonade stand, let alone an entire state.  Try a little freedom, boys, you might find that you like it.  Your constituents surely will.

November 12 - Victory In Ohio - Joan Laidlaw, director of Tobacco Free Fulton County, said she hopes the ban passes.  "All we've heard is support," she said. "We haven't heard any opposition. Either they're not talking much or there isn't any."  [No opposition, she says then addresses the arguments of that "non-existent" opposition by telling two more lies.]

She dismissed the arguments of opponents who feel the ban would hurt business.  "If they would just relax, they'll find out they [customers who smoke] won't go anywhere. People go out for fellowship more than to smoke," she said.

If the ban passes by a wide margin, she expects council will not alter it much. "If this passes as big as I think it will, council will have to listen to what the people want," she said.

John Weber, owner of John Weber's Good Food in Wauseon, said he's worried about the erosion of the rights of business owners and said just because a majority supports a ban, that doesn't make it right.

"The majority of people didn't want blacks in their restaurants 40 years ago and that didn't make it right," he said. "This is a freedom issue. I should be able to decide what I want in my business."

We're happy to report that the people of Wauseon, Ohio agreed with their neighbor John Weber rather than allowing themselves to be bamboozled by the lying anti-tobacco operative.  Although the vote was close -- so close that anti-tobacco vows to conduct a manual vote count -- the people are on record as supporting freedom.  Expect anti-tobacco to try, try again then blackmail the city council if necessary.

November 11 - Do The Right Thing - During the same period over 60 small Ottawa bar owners, who had no friends in city hall to bend the rules for them, were forced into closure. Thunder Bay is heading down the same path, with its politicians singing the same old tune from the song-book used by Ottawa councillors almost three years ago. Thunder Bay’s bars, legions and pubs do not deserve to suffer the same fate as their Ottawa counterparts. There are more compassionate and sensible solutions available than 100 per cent smoking bans. The electorate should send a clear message to council and vote “No” to both questions in next week’s plebiscite.

Someday the health nannies will get it. People have been smoking for ages. They don't all want to stop. They don't buy into nutty secondhand smoke propaganda. Smoking bans are unfair, and unworkable, in anything but a police state. People in places like the USA and Canada are very fed up with invasive and coercive government. Over time the health nannies will learn this. If they keep at fascist tactics they will learn the hard way. 

November 7 - Smoking Ban Rejected - Council Member Wally Milbrandt summarized the council’s objection: “When we post these signs (on city property), we’ve overstepped our bounds as government.”

Council Member John Rheinberger opposes any city policy or ordinance that bans a legal activity.

“There has been a human association (with smoking) in one way or the another for over a half-million years,” he said. The proposed ordinance was “silly” and “unenforceable,” he said. “(The group) should get a mature sense of reality and accept smoking.”

Minnesota is not fertile ground for planting prohibition.  The city of Stillwater has not banned smoking indoors but an overeager group of anti-tobacco operatives did recruit several city council members in an effort to ban smoking in city parks.  The rationale had absolutely nothing to do with secondhand smoke but instead focused on that last refuge for the dishonest; the children.  Children should not be exposed to the spectacle of an adult taxpayer lighting up a Camel.

The majority of the city council, although sadly misinformed about secondhand smoke, opted to keep the parks open for everyone.  Excluding smokers, they said, was wrong and added too much government onto an issue that isn't very important.  Good for Stillwater.

November 5 - Smoking Ban Stalled - Despite operating with a stacked deck, anti-tobacco was dealt a blow in West Fargo, North Dakota.  Armed with bogus studies, gangs of whining adolescents and mountains of junk science studies, anti-tobacco took its case to city hall and lost.  Freedom didn't win either because a ban may be in the works if the nearby cities of Fargo and Moorhead enact a smoking ban.  A task force has been formed in Fargo to "study the issue."

What's interesting about this story is that the anti-tobacco operatives, singing the praises of a smoking ban in Minot, couldn't summon a restaurant owner from that city to testify how beneficial the smoking ban was for business.  Several Minot business people did testify but their statements countered anti-tobacco's promise that nonsmokers would flock to smoke-free establishments.

Schatz Crossroads Truck Stop and Cafe lost $15,000 in less than six months after the ordinance took effect, said owner Diane Schatz. Smoking customers instead went to a truck stop three miles outside of Minot that allowed smoking, she said.

“It was like turning the lights off,” Schatz said of the ban’s effect on business.

One owner in West Fargo noted that business outside of Minot soared after that city banned smoking.  He finished his testimony by joking that he hoped Fargo and Moorhead would ban smoking so that his restaurant in West Fargo could cater to all the disgruntled smokers in those towns.

Only a fool could believe that telling one third of potential customers to go to hell is a good business practice.

November 3 - Smoking Resumes In Austin - An outright ban would have been worse, but the new rules for bars in Austin, Texas, are not fair. You can still smoke in them, but only if you pay a bribe, to city government. That's what the new law amounts to. Bar owners must pay $300 a year in order to continue permitting the legal and ubiquitous social activity of smoking. The $300 becomes another item of overhead to be reflected in the price of drinks. Austin restaurants can also permit smoking, provided they build gas chambers to contain the despised smokers, protecting better citizens from the phantom perils of secondhand smoke. Construction costs, on top of smoking license fees, will jack up the price of your dinner. A ban was avoided. In its place we get graft and gas chambers. This is what passes for fairness in the age of Anti. It is a partial win. The fight is not over.

November 3 - Anti-tobacco Gets A Lemon And Makes Lemonade - Although Oct. 30, 2003, will be a dark day in the annals of the anti-smoking movement, city officials hope it will give birth to a healthy Austin tradition. As part of a last-minute round of horse trading before voting, council members instituted First Monday, a day during which they want all live music venues to offer an entire night of nonsmoking fun.

The pilot program will start in February -- two months before the revised smoking ordinance kicks in -- and last for six months. Officials hope it will catch on and spread to busier and more profitable nights of the week.

It's satisfying to reflect that anti-tobacco, although bravely smiling through its tears, was decisively rebuffed by the Austin city council.  As proof of its resiliency against the vicissitudes of fortune the smoke-free maniacs did persuade the city council to write into the relaxed smoking law a voluntary program of encouraging no smoking on the first Monday of a month at city clubs offering musical entertainment.  When the fanatics suggested the first Friday of a month, they "drew a round of guffaws from bar owners in attendance."

On the excellent principle of kicking a zealot when he is down, Austin club goers should loudly complain to management should any club be so foolish as to actually try to implement anti-tobacco's Sunday school suggestion of forbidding smoking on any day of the week.

November 3 - Smoking Ban Closes Venerable Wall Street Restaurant - Harry's Hanover Square, a venerable Financial District restaurant that feted the market's winners and solaced its losers for more than three decades, closed its doors abruptly last night with no plans to reopen anytime soon.

"It's over," said Harry Poulakakos, 65, the restaurant's founder and owner, with mingled sadness and relief. "It was the toughest decision of my life," he said, "but I just don't have the heart for it anymore."

To Harry's, the change in Wall Street culture was not nearly as devastating as the recent ban on smoking. "Overnight, we lost 60 percent of our evening bar trade," Mr. Poulakakos said, shaking his head. "For the bar, it was the difference in profit and loss. Sales of expensive cigars had been almost as important as the sales of Scotch," he said. 

Chalk up another victim of zealotry.  Anti-tobacco promised that business would be booming once that nasty smoke and those evil smokers had been cleared from New York City's restaurants and bars.  Instead of becoming a smoke-free utopia, the city has become a joke and an embarrassment for residents who took pride in the importance their city once had on the worldwide scene.  Each day prohibition continues the city loses a bit of its richness.  Before long there will, like Oakland, be no there, there.

October 30 - Restaurants Growing Broke Because Of Smoke Ban - Owners of independent Germantown restaurants said their customers are crossing the border into municipalities such as Gaithersburg and Rockville, where the ban does not apply.  Urbany said business has plummeted at least 50 percent since the ban went into effect. A competing restaurant, the Flaming Pit, welcomes smoking just down the road within Gaithersburg's city limits.

It's a familiar story.  Restaurants and bars in areas where smoking is banned are losing business while those in cities with no smoking bans are packing the customers in.  The suffering business owners complain, lay off staff and reduce the hours of operation yet continue to comply with a law that is bankrupting them.  They gripe that they are suffering while their peers in more enlightened communities are doing just fine.  Before long they will be demanding that the county or the state enact a comprehensive ban so that the playing field may be leveled.

In suburban Maryland the level playing field may be as unobtainable as the holy grail.  Just across the border is the nation's capital which, as of yet, has not shown much interest in imposing the anti morality while also nearby is the state of Virginia which will never enact a smoking ban.  Given the choice of patronizing a local restaurant ordered to ban smokers and driving a mile or so to Washington, DC or Virginia where smokers are welcome, what are the odds a smoker will spend his money locally?

This story again demonstrates that banning smoking is bad for business.  No amount of jerry rigged surveys and studies conducted by anti-tobacco operatives can obliterate the fact that, given the choice, most restaurant owners would prefer to set their own smoking policies.  Who, after all, is more believable?  The people whose lives depend upon satisfying the customers or the anti-smoking activists who collect their fat paychecks no matter how many restaurants go broke?

October 30 - Smoking Ban May Be Reversed - A near-reversal of the controversial smoking ban passed by the Austin City Council in June will be considered at Thursday's council meeting.  The drastically altered ordinance would allow smoking in public places as long as the owner obtains a $100 annual permit.

The ban was supposed to take effect Sept. 1. However, newly seated Mayor Will Wynn -- who opposes the ban -- managed to persuade a majority of the council at his first meeting as mayor in July to put off the measure for further study. A newly elected council member, Brewster McCracken, supported Wynn's suggestion and shifted the council vote in favor of the delay.

The proposed smoking ban in Austin, Texas, may not come to pass. These crazy laws have to be challenged everywhere they appear. Public Health has become a public menace by trumpeting non-existent hazards based on idiotic statistical interpretations. Secondhand smoke is a joke. Let the health cult keep having its way and we'll all spend our futures dressed in Mao suits and surgical masks. This is war.

October 30 - Defiance Erupts In Ireland - Members of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland (VFI) today said that they could not implement the smoking ban in their premises because it is "unenforceable and unworkable".  

"We have said time and time again, this ban is unnecessary, unworkable and unjustified. Our members are not prepared to put their lives, their wives and daughters and female staff at risk. They are publicans not smoke police."

Sometimes unwanted smoking bans do come to pass. So they must be defied. Health Minister and frothing zealot Michael Martin of the Republic of Ireland refuses to consider sanity, or any proposed compromise, on the issue. He is holding firm to a January deadline, to throw his countrymen out of their beloved pubs, into the freezing streets. The hospitality industry has said before that its members will not enforce such travesty. They mean it. Now they are making every strategic move necessary, to tell their government, what it must hear. Enough!

October 30 - Bingo On The Way Out - Local bingo halls said the New York State smoking ban that began in July has cost them tens of thousands of dollars that previously went to local schools and charities.  Workers say profits are down 50 percent this month. On a Tuesday night in September 2002 about 143 people played at Bingo World in Greece. Only 79 showed up on the same night this year.

Bingo is bombing in Rochester, New York, since the smoking ban came in. Charities suffer. Community residents suffer. They want this sickening ban to go away. If it doesn't, says gambler Wyona Valcom, "I won't be here. I will go up to the casinos where the Indians let you smoke. I will go to Canada where they let you smoke. I will go to a country that doesn't infringe on my rights." There should always be a few of those. Too bad the United States of America left the ranks.

October 28 - Lacking of Support  For Bar Ban - The Charter Group’s campaign to improve air quality in pubs and bars has received massive backing from the general public.  A survey published last week by market research company BMRB showed only 17 per cent of customers believed there should be a total ban on smoking in pubs, bars and clubs.

The chairman of the Charter Group Nick Bish said: “This is a complete vindication of our efforts; we can deliver what our consumers want without the need for further regulation.”

The Irish sure don't want a bar and restaurant smoking ban. The Health Nazis plan to give it to them though. Like those old-time Nazis, these people keep encroaching till you make war on them, and in Ireland war is just what they're going to get. Beneath this article about Ireland is a note about how the United Kingdom will ignore World Health Organization demands for a European Union smoking ban. Perhaps there always will be an England. Churchill would be pleased. 

October 27 - Anti-tobacco Creates Crime - BRISBANE man has been jailed for 18 months after being caught with almost 200kg of illegal tobacco.  
The Australian Taxation Office said Fuad Meco (Fuad Meco), 51, of the outer Brisbane suburb of Marsden, pleaded guilty in the Brisbane District Court to three counts of manufacturing and possessing illegal tobacco.

The amount of excise that would have been evaded if the tobacco had been sold to consumers was more than $12,000.

Unfairly tax a product, and you create a criminal class, replacing a productive class, of honest traders. You create a black market. Maybe you took Economics 101 but you needn't have. Anybody can understand this concept. Except for tax-happy and gleefully smoker-abusing legislators. Australia's government, like many others these days, will have to learn their lesson the hard way.

October 27 - While In The U.K. Anti-tobacco's Crime Wave Gets Serious - A gang which ran a huge tobacco smuggling operation which cheated the taxman out of almost £20 million were today sentenced to long jail terms

Although only small amounts – usually just 50kg – of cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco were brought in on each occasion, Customs and Excise estimated that tax revenue lost through the conspiracy amounted to millions of pounds.

October 17 - Word Getting Out To Ireland - According to new research one in 10 jobs in the New York pub and bar sector have been lost since the city introduced its ban on smoking in the workplace in March.  This news follows rising fears of a similar ban in the UK after comments made by European health commissioner David Byrne, who last month reiterated that he was looking to enforce a ban on smoking in public places across Europe.

Nick Bish, chairman of the Charter Group, said: “I think the research results demonstrate the real need for licensees in Ireland, or anywhere that is engaged in the smoking debate, to be really fearful of a ban.”

The Emerald Isle turns chilly in January. That's the time chosen by Irish Health Minister Michael Martin to start throwing smokers out of all Irish restaurants and pubs. European Union Health Commissioner David Byrne, frothing with secondhand smoke panic, thinks every smoker on the continent should get the same bum's rush. In polite response, the hospitality industry has suggested "get the hell out of here" may not be the message most conducive, to maintaining their heavily smoking clientele. Health officials explained that they knew better. In fact smoking bans would be great for business. Smokers, and even more of their non-smoking friends, would greatly admire healthful advisement to "go freeze your butt on the sidewalk," and would flock in record numbers to hear this, over and over again.

Irish pub owners shook their heads in wonderment at that bizarre prediction, then their Charter Group tried again, to make the businessmen's concerns clearer. To this end they commissioned a study. The study shows that New York smokers, booted out of Big Apple eateries in the spring, kept walking. Normal people don't believe secondhand smoke propaganda. Non-smokers had not shunned bars in fear of their lives, before the New York ban, so no new influx of smoke-dreading customers appeared, to replace the vanished smokers. Will this logic impress the health tyrants? We suspect not, but again applaud recent votes by Irish publican associations, to defy a smoking ban as a matter of industry policy. Fanatics do not listen, or reason, or compromise. So let them have war.

October 17 - Anger Erupts Over Smoking Bans - French high school students are up in arms over a drive by teachers to ban some of their most cherished items, ranging from cigarettes to G-strings.  France's center-right government has declared war on the quintessentially French habit of smoking, angering many teenagers who fear a slip into a "no fun"-state as the popular thong has also become a thorn in the eye of authorities.

Lest the American prudes sniff that high school students of course must be forbidden from smoking, it's important to remember that only in the United States and other hysterical countries must one be 18 before it is legal to buy tobacco.  The French students have every right to smoke and, as their families are taxpayers, should jolly well be irked that their government is joining the herd of sheep following the orders of the international pharmaceutical corporations.

October 16 - Activists Keep The Heat On Prohibition Proponents - Anti-tobacco picked the wrong "tobacco state" to usher in universal smoking bans.  From the moment the weasels on the Lexington city council affixed their scrawls on a city smoking ban pro-liberty types sprang into action.  Now the ban is on hold and could be overturned completely. We link to FORCES Kentucky for the local angle.

October 16 - Upping The Ante On So. Cal. Beach Smoking Ban - Not to be outdone by a little town in San Diego County, Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss introduced a motion Tuesday that would ban smoking on all Los Angeles beaches.

Norman Kjono, the media coordinator for the Web site Forces, which generally opposes bans on smoking, questioned the proposed law.

"The people who would be banned from consuming lawful tobacco products on the beaches also support those beaches with their taxes," he said. "By what right does the City Council exclude them from using what they are paying for?"

Bingo.  The impetus for banning smoking on the beaches comes solely from anti-tobacco special interests that are financed by the pharmaceutical industry.  For the drug companies smoking bans equal higher profits derived from the sale of smoking cessation devices.  Councilman Weiss, perhaps unwittingly, is doing the marketing leg work for Big Drugs.  Whatever his motives, and he admits public health isn't one of them, he is doing the bidding of organizations that pay no taxes and cannot vote.  Currying favor from special interest activists he apparently has forgotten that smokers pay his salary and, through their taxes, keep up the beaches for everyone.

October 16 - Lexington Ban Put On Hold - The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that Lexington's smoking ban can't take effect before a Fayette County judge rules on the lawsuit brought by business owners fighting the prohibition.

The three-judge panel decided 2-1 that a circuit judge erred by refusing to grant an injunction and said the business owners' lawsuit raised important legal questions about a ban on smoking in Fayette County's indoor public businesses.

"My concern in this is how far do we go in regulating legal businesses before everything is fair game," Judge Combs told [the Lexington city attorney], noting a provision in the ordinance that would require businesses to "remove or disable ashtrays" and to "remove smoking paraphernalia" from their businesses. "How long of a stretch is it from breaking ashtrays to burning books?"

Give that judge a cigar!  That is exactly the issue in all smoking bans.  One small group of true-believers imposes its religion upon all the people, demanding that all dissent be extinguished going so far as destroying inanimate articles that offend the fanatics.

October 14 - You Cannot Fool All Of The People All Of The Time - So much for the profuse propaganda that anti-smoking organizations put out, claiming thousands of people died from diseases caused by second-hand smoke. Now the American Legacy Foundation is looking for any hospitality employee who contracted cancer as a result of employment in a second-hand smoke environment to feature in a TV anti-smoking campaign. 

Does that tell you something?

New Yorkers, smokers and non-smokers alike, recognize the increasingly fanatical anti-smoking campaign for what it is, a profoundly dishonest propaganda blitz. They are speaking out. Not so long ago, individual citizens made individual decisions about their personal habits, people respected each other, and got along very well. One day they will again, but not until crazy Anti gets locked back in the attic, where she belongs.

October 10 - West Virginia Smoking Bans End Up In Court - The battle goes on against the insane proliferation of smoking bans. Courts sometimes provide justice, at other times, travesty. We wish the American hospitality industry, and others fighting smoking bans in the courts, good luck. We also applaud the more direct approach, such as that taken by hundreds of Irish tavern owners, who have banded together in a promise flatly to defy tyrannical bans, as a matter of industry policy. Anti-smoking went nuts quite a few years ago. It has become a hateful worldwide hysteria, a rot, at the core of civil society. Resistance must explore every avenue. Likewise it must not ignore the true and ugly nature of what anti-smoking has become. Anti is a liar who never declares herself plainly. That's okay, we know, this is war.

October 6 - Irish Bar Owners Nix Prohibition - A group of publicans in Co Kerry has reportedly threatened to ignore the Government’s proposed all-out ban on smoking in the workplace, which is due to come into force in January.  According to reports this morning, around 200 publicans voted overwhelmingly against implementing the ban during a meeting in Co Kerry last night.  The publicans are reportedly planning to allow smoking to continue on their premises in designated areas. A similar vote is expected to be taken at a meeting of publicans in Cork next week.

County Kerry pub owners have got their Irish up. Ireland's Health Minister insists there will be no compromise. Smoking in bars is to be banned absolutely. So hundreds of Kerry pub owners met, passed a resolution by overwhelming majority, and have given notice to government and the public alike. Their establishments will continue to welcome smokers, for they shall ignore the smoking ban, as a matter of policy. County Cork publicans plan a similar assembly and vote in days to come. Intransigence brings indignation. Tyranny brings rebellion. Ireland has seen the like of this before, so the Irish, know something of fighting.

October 6 - Europe’s Prohibition Carnival - As Portugal awakens to pleasures of cigar smoking the smoking wars heat up across Europe, with scornful Spaniards lighting up and smokers rushing to cover up new health warnings on the packs and thus claim their personal aesthetic and lifestyle space. In the meantime, business owners howl in Ireland as a zealous prohibitionist health minister, born again in his faith after a cushy stroking and re-education session in the Big Apple (where anti-smoking politicians need all the allies they can get), seeks to enact draconian smoking bans in the land of “bitters and fags ”.

It’s all getting to be rather fun, in a sort of sordid way. Sort of reminds us of the Great Failed Prohibition Experiment. The outrage. The resentment. The moralising. The bootleg-‘n-party-hard atmosphere. Could it be that ordinary smokers end up being the ones who push the whole, never-say-die prohibition experiment over the edge and finally end the war against themselves? The bigger they come, the harder they fall. And history suggests that puritanical prohibitionists are invariably too big for their britches.

October 6 - Prohibitionists AND Philip Morris On The Same Page - In an ominous sign for tobacco farmers hoping for a buyout this year, talks in the Senate have stalled over legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products.

The buyout is not likely to pass unless it includes regulation of tobacco by the FDA, so a deadlock on that point could doom any aid to growers.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy agrees with the most fanatical anti-smoking advocates. They want prohibition, and soon, and they will accept nothing short of that. If any traces of sanity remain in the United States Congress, Anti will never get, what she wants. The breakdown of recent Congressional discussions, regarding Food and Drug Administration tobacco regulation, is good news indeed.

Additional FDA Regulation Information

October 3 - Old Boozers Celebrate Smoking Ban - Anti-smokers are gleefully celebrating health advancement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, toasting each other with alcoholic beverages. "Eat, drink, and be merry," say these candidates for cirrhosis and obesity. But don't smoke, anywhere, not even places they've never been, or never will go to. Smoking, you see, is a vice they do not share.

Second hand smoke is a joke. If people wanted smoke-free bars such establishments would have appeared naturally. Even in the face of a massively financed propaganda campaign bars did not go smoke-free. Many Cambridge bars advertised, since Boston's barroom smoking ban began in May, that they were a smoker's refuge, right across the Harvard Bridge from downtown Boston. Cambridge bar business surged. Now it will sink.

Protests to a smoking ban were fierce and they continue. Yet business owners were coerced by Anti's cajoled and frightened City Councilors. Now the Cambridge fascists have had their big night out. Perhaps they ran over a few kids on the streets while driving home. If history is any guide, the people will again one day, put down smug enemies of liberty. Till then being merry will be on hold.

October 2 - Opposition Growing To Ireland Smoking Ban - Two junior ministers have reportedly joined growing opposition within Fianna Fáil to Health Minister Micheál Martin’s plans to introduce an all-out ban on smoking in workplaces from next January.

Some Irish legislators are listening to their constituents. They want to backpedal the bar and restaurant smoking ban planned for January. Of course Anti, in the person of Health Minister Michael Martin, "flatly rejected a compromise and vowed to press ahead with his all-out ban." Never mind that second hand smoke studies have suggested for years, to anyone but a fanatic, that no public health danger exists in restaurants and bars. Anti flatly rejects sanity wherever she appears.

October 1 - Smoking Ban Will Do Wonders For Ireland - Ireland's health minister has bullied his government into banning smoking in the Emerald Isle.  Prohibition will begin new year's day.  Outrage has been so intense to the upcoming ban that Health Minister Micheál Martin was obliged to cross the Atlantic and get the facts straight from the horse's mouth.  That horse would be New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the man who has single-handedly transformed the city that doesn't sleep into the city that arrests smokers for having a good time.  

Health Minister Martin's whirlwind tour was heavy on congratulatory self-stroking on Bloomberg's part and light on meetings with the hospitality business that is reeling from the smoking ban.  Notably absent from the Minister's tour were any of the Irish bar and restaurant owners.  Resistance to New York's ban is intense with this group.

“I think that it’s a great disappointment that [Martin] would come over here and not give equal time to his own people and not meet with his own people,” Queens resident Patrick Hurley, a native of Co. Cork and one of the founders of the Irish Immigration Reform Movement, told Home&Away. Hurley is active in the community and a Republican/Conservative candidate for City Council in the 26th CD.

“The bar business is very important to the Irish community here and their experience of the smoking ban has been very adverse. I think he should have listened to their opinions as well. He might have gone to a few bars and restaurants as a cosmetic exercise, but it seems that his main priority was just to reinforce his decision by meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, a 100-percent proponent of the smoking ban.