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April 25 - Back to the drawing board? - Despite the spin of anti-smoking pressure groups, the smoking ban in Lexington  Kentucky is very unpopular, financially devastating and an unwarranted violation of property rights.  Responding to his constituents a council committee will be looking at the smoking ban, recommending changes and listening to the concerns of the public.

Any loosening up of the ban will be met with outrage by the out-of-state special interests that lobbied for the ban several years ago.  Already a Berkeley California anti-smoking organization, financed by the drug industry, is vowing that the only changes accepted to it would be those changes that make the ban even more prohibitive.  The citizens of Lexington have the opportunity to take their city back from radical organizations that have no real stake in the city.

April 25 - Smoking ban relaxed - The Missouri city of Lee's Summit weakened its smoking ban legislation after officials discovered that the stringent law conflicted with state law.  Restaurants do not need to erect barriers to separate smoking and nonsmoking sections.  Despite there being far more non-smoking restaurants than mixed or smoking restaurants, the anti-tobacco operatives vow to end all smoking in all establishments.

April 25 - Out-of-state agitators move in - The façade of civic-minded individuals working for change has been ripped asunder in Austin Texas where every so-called grassroots organization agitating for a smoking ban as been exposed as front groups for huge out-of-state "health" charities who make a huge amount of money imposing smoking bans.  As their cover is blown the true motivation of smoking bans is revealed.  Banning smoking has nothing to do with health and everything to do with modifying personal and legal behavior to enact an agenda of control.

April 25 - Governor ponders smoking ban - Georgia's governor is supposedly agonizing over whether to sign a fairly stringent statewide smoking ban law.  The law would impose a smoking ban throughout the state although there is plenty of wiggle room for restaurants and bars to continue to cater to their all important smoking customers.

One senator says the governor is struggling with the proposed law and how the smoking ban is about personal freedom versus public health.  Actually it is about whether a free people can survive when fraud is used to deprive owners of their property.  The governor should veto this bill.

April 19 - Hitler Youth Redux - The Huntsville City Council revisits an old idea. One that would ban smoking in all public places. But it's failed before, so they aren't holding their breaths.  Some Huntsville High School students aren't old enough to inhale, but they worry about what smoking does to others and what second-hand smoke does to them.  Thursday night, they asked City Council members for a smoke-free Huntsville.

Huntsville, AL is the home to NASA and Redstone Arsenal. This city is full of engineers and the military. So why did a group of high school kids get together to try to enact a total smoking ban in this great city? What are high school kids doing in bars in the first place? This is a prime example of the fact that the health Nazis don't care about "saving us". It's all about mind control.

April 18 - Back to the past - The fall of the Soviet Union and the release of its captive nations in Eastern Europe seemed to signal the end of an odious philosophy that plunged hundreds of millions of people into slavery.  These days the countries that formed the former Soviet Block are enthusiastic proponents of freedom while the so-called free nations of Western Europe and North America seem poised to slide down the slope into self-imposed slavery.

From New Zealand comes a scheme to nationalize the tobacco industry in order to remove the profit motive of cigarette manufacturing.  This odious proposal first originated in the anti-tobacco organizations that hope to replace smoking with pharmaceutical substitutes.  As this short article makes clear that the tobacco industry continues its self-immolation by its tepid response to this plan to run it out of business.

April 18 - New Kentucky ban - A Louisville politician is smoking something strange or drinking some happy juice that isn't Kentucky bourbon.  That can be the only explanation for her proposal to impose a stringent smoking ban that, at least in its current form, is hardly designed to appeal to anyone, especially the rabid anti-smokers.  It almost seems as though the councilmember considers smoking bans as this year's thing.

Smoking will be banned everywhere except in bars.  And in restaurant/bars that adhere to an artificial food/alcohol ratio.  And in businesses that have the clout to get an exemption.  Fortunately other council members appear ready to bury this bad idea as quickly as possible.

April 15 - Smoking ban fails in Cincinnati - By a large margin the city council rejected a California-type smoking ban.  Citing fears that smokers would desert the city for Kentucky bars and restaurants just outside the city limits, the council again confirms that smoking bans are bad for business.  The council did vote to codify various existing smoking restrictions but the end result is that Cincinnati is a beacon of civility and freedom.

April 15 - Preemption threatened in Illinois - The Democrats in the Senate presented the tobacco control industry with a nifty gift by voting to allow localities to ban smoking.  State preemption is evil when it allows all state businesses to set their own smoking policies but is very good indeed when it compels all localities to ban smoking, such as is the case in California, New York and few other authoritarian states.  The bill now goes to the House where it faces opposition from the hospitality industry and supporters of property rights.

April 13 - Smoking ban a disaster - Lincoln Nebraska passed a stringent smoking ban and the results are exactly as small business owners predicted; massive sales losses and reduction of the work force.  Of interest is how fairly the Lincoln Journal Star reports the situation.  The bulk of the story is a recitation by business owners of how the smoking ban affected their business.  It isn't pretty and the newspaper deserves credit presenting the terrible news completely. 

The anti-smokers are given a chance to comment on the business loss and the best they can do is express disbelief in what the owners have reported.  In other words they are calling the men and women who run the businesses that provide their livelihoods a bunch of liars.  An anti-smoking operative does cite researchers at the University of California in San Francisco who have assured the hardworking citizens of Lincoln Nebraska that smoking bans do not negatively affect businesses.  The operative doesn't relay the fact the these researchers are paid to manufacture research friendly to the tobacco control industry.  The people of Lincoln have been conned so that parasites, including those in San Francisco, can grow rich off their blood.

April 13 - Arkansas nixes smoking ban - Proclaiming that private businesses shouldn't be told what to do by the state the House killed a bill that would have banned smoking in most restaurants and even some bars.  The bill, written by a Democrat, was dubbed the Dr. Fay Boozman Clean Air in Restaurants for a Healthier Arkansas Act in honor of the state health director who championed its passage before his death last month at age 58.

April 12 - Smoking in Connecticut - Someone forgot to tell the citizens of this state that they are expected to bow down before anti-smoking mania.  Certainly they prove that banning smoking is not good for business since without the option to smoke the bars they patronize would go broke.  Law or not, they're smoking in Connecticut. April 11 - Multi-state level playing field - In the ever-expanding definition of level playing field that eventually leads to statewide smoking bans, anti-tobacco is proposing that the Kentucky counties next to Cincinnati join the fun by enacting their own smoking bans.  Not likely at this time since a ban in Cincinnati would be a boon to the Kentucky counties.  The same thing went on when New York City colluded with neighboring counties for simultaneous bans.  The head of the city council's health committee famously noted that if smokers would really travel three counties away to smoke, then "we can't help them."  This paternalistic comment obscured any acknowledgment of the obvious contradictions:  if bans are so good for biz, why the need for the level field?

April 11 - Opposition grows in Indianapolis - People opposed to a county smoking ban outnumbered supporters at a City-County Council committee last week.  A second hearing before the Children's Health and Environment Committee is scheduled for April 14.  Starting out strong is a good tactic.  Let's hope the freedom fighters keep it up.

April 11 - Big Sky Country to home of Chicken Little - It didn't take long for the recently empowered Montana Democrats to transform that state from rugged individualism to a land of quaking hypochondriacs.  The elections last November ushered in a Democratic governor and an apparent rubber stamp Democratic legislature.  Smoking will banned everywhere except bars -- and of course Indian enterprises.  Bars will throw out smokers in 2009.

April 11 - Dollars talk - The Canadian province of Saskatchewan banned smoking as a health matter.  The government bought the anti-smoking lies lock stock and barrel and also determined that adults are not qualified to make their own choices as to whether to patronize or work at an establishment where smoking is allowed.

As with many localities here the brave, caring politicians did not dare touch the Indian casinos.  In those establishments smoking does mean money and money of that magnitude talks.

April 8 - Positive development - In Ohio the Wauseon city council took some tentative steps to restore property rights that were rudely taken away.  A voter initiative, written by an out-of-state pharmaceutical front group, succeeded in imposing a smoking ban that the people didn't really want.  

After reality set in the city council modified the law so that restaurants and bars wouldn't be bankrupted.  The anti-smoking fanatics are predictably outraged but the mayor, who signed off in the modifications put the economic considerations of the smoking ban initiative into perspective:

"Local businesses are the backbone of our community. We must not turn our backs on them," he said. "To propose an initiative without attempting to get input from those most affected was wrong. To limit their ability to earn a living is wrong. To experiment with their livelihoods is wrong. A loss of even 10 percent revenue is potentially disastrous to any business. The ramifications of this ordinance could be even worse. We don't know."

April 7 - Voters say no to smoking ban - By a hefty margin the citizens of Point Wisconsin said no to a smoking ban.  The anti-tobacco special interests who tried and lost on this issue last year plan to try again.  The lesson here is that anti-tobacco can be stopped when restaurants and bars unite against a common enemy. April 4 - Huh? - The headline states that bar workers' health is improving after Ireland banned smoking.  The body of the story, however, says no such thing.  The Office of Tobacco Control merely finds that tobacco smoke has been removed from the air.  Since secondhand smoke has never been shown to harm anyone's health getting rid of a harmless substance cannot ever be shown to improve health.  The real purpose of the ban is revealed in the final sentence of this story:

The Office of Tobacco Control also said the smoking ban was prompting people to give up cigarettes.

Mission accomplished.  To bad the Irish government is lying to its people about why it thrust itself into private behavior, enacting legislation that is designed to push smoking cessation devices.

April 1 - Divide and conquer - A group of bar and restaurant owners is challenging the constitutionality of the state's new smoking ban, saying that a handful of exemptions in the law are unfair and causing them to lose money.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday, the business owners say that exceptions to the ban for "substantially identical establishments" to their own are arbitrary and have nothing to do with the promotion of public health.

Five businesses filed the suit, saying sales have dropped 10 percent to 35 percent since the ban took effect four weeks ago. Customers are fleeing, they say, to the private clubs, small bars and gambling parlors where smoking is still allowed.

It's an old tactic and we're sorry to report that it still works.  A state or municipality bans smoking but leaves provides a loophole for a select group of businesses.  The majority of bars and restaurants immediately start to lose money while the exempted establishments make a killing.  Rather than confront the legislators who promised banning smoking would be good for business, the owners often seek to "level the playing field" by extending the smoking ban.

In Rhode Island those challenging the ban say their sales have dropped 35%.  Unfortunately they are not challenging the smoking ban law on scientific grounds but they do accurately point out that the ban is unfair.  Unfair is the least of it.  The bans are based on lies and should be challenged on that basis alone.  Until that happens the "misery loves company" mentality will doom all businesses to lower profits.

March 29 - Smoke ban in automobiles - "How much damage is done to the health of young children sitting in cars for several hours while their parents chain smoke?" Dr Skerritt asked.

"It is like being locked up in a mobile gas chamber."

It's a safe bet that Dr. Skerritt, given the choice of traversing Australia with a car full of chain smokers or spending even a few seconds in the San Quentin gas chamber after the tablet is dropped, would  gladly opt for the motoring ashtray.  He and the goon squad at the Australian Medical Association will never led facts intrude on their endless drive for power.

March 28  - Heavy duty Pharma lobbying - Health Minister Angela Smith today took delivery of an incredible 35,000 Ulster signatures calling for a province-wide ban on smoking.  The signatures were delivered to the steps of Stormont this morning by doctors, nurses, charities and other healthcare professionals.

Amazing what can be accomplished with bureaucratic organization and tons of public and pharmaceutical dollars. Added, of course, to a general but increasingly
thwarted human impulse to hate and exclude SOMEONE in an era when it's not even possible to whisper a "discriminatory" word against the terrorists who just murdered your mother.

This anodyne news report omits any information as to how the 35,000 residents were roused up to send off their identically-worded calls for prohibition.  It goes without saying that Big Drugs, the richest corporations on earth, can easily buy the pretense of public support.  The killing they hope to make selling their overpriced and dangerous smoking cessation devices far outweighs the considerable sum they spent on this piece of agit prop in Northern Ireland.

March 28  - Responding to reality - To the howls of outrage of anti-tobacco operatives, the minister of health for New South Wales has agreed to soften very slightly the smoking ban that is scheduled to impose prohibition in 2007.  As businesses realize that driving smokers away is hardly a smart move they have lobbied hard to retain them by having the government allow so-called smoking rooms.  The smoking rooms are not needed since adequate ventilation removes smoke and secondhand smoke, in any case, poses no hazards to nonsmokers. 

March 25 - Mid-century tobacco ban - This story might be coming from the Twilight Zone but most likely is the result of a publicity hound hoping to get his name in the newspaper.  These days any quack or shyster seeking the strokes derived from transitory notoriety need only propose a nutty anti-smoking plan and the anti-tobacco press is pleased to disperse it to the masses.

A health policy professor from Australia, after consulting the local tarot card reader and checking his horoscope, has determined that smoking will end in 2050, a pretty safe prognostication since those paying attention to it will be dead or in their dotage.  He believes that 45 years is time enough for smokers to quit and cigarette manufacturers to find other work.  Those recalcitrants still smoking will be given prescriptions for tobacco which can be filled in the camps they will most likely be assigned. 

March 24 - Snuffing out prohibition - Republican senators in the Colorado Senate have stalled a bill that would ban smoking statewide.  The Democrat senator who introduced it has said that he doesn't want to make the bill a partisan issue, an odd thing to say since many Democratic senators also express grave reservations about the smoking ban legislation.

"I'm sick and tired of all these nannies running around telling people what to do," Senate Minority Leader Mark Hillman said, speaking for the Republicans who oppose the bill because it infringes on personal freedom and property rights.

Predictably the anti-tobacco operatives are busy at work digging up what they consider dirt.  To their innuendo that Hillman is paying back the tobacco industry for past contributions from tobacco interests (less than $7,000 over a period of six years), Hillman a retort that should be adopted by every politician when hectored by anti-tobacco.

"They ought to spend more time defending their stupid bill instead of impugning the motives of people who want to allow adults to make adult decisions."

March 23 - Smoking ban too intrusive - New Jersey  reaps a financial boon because of the prohibition that infects New York.  Right next door to New York City the hot spots are hotter than those in Manhattan where smokers are not welcome.  Such a good deal is irrelevant to anti-tobacco and its shills in the New Jersey state legislature so the good times may end if the state succumbs to smoking bans.  This editorial is a welcome breath of sanity from the mainstream media that too often is merely an anti-tobacco echo chamber.  Smart politicians should pay attention to the common sense in keeping the status quo.

March 22 - Skewed priorities - Seven years after California banned it, smoking in bars continues.  Despite the fines, despite the threats, bar owners continue to violate the law because they would go broke if they didn't.  In San Francisco, home to the anti-tobacco University of California - SF, the local Tobacco Control Section found that 60% of the standalone bars flout the law.

From Mendocino County comes a press release, disguised as news, issued by that county's Tobacco Control Section.  Although the noncompliant figures pale in comparison to San Francisco's, and for that reason are highly suspect, the anti-tobacco goon squad is very, very angry.  So angry that the local operative lectures law enforcement for its lax enforcement of this important law.

"I understand law enforcement is busy with other things, and this is the least of their priorities, but eventually it needs to become one, considering it's the number one killer in our country.

Smoking in bars is the number one killer in our country?  What country does she think she lives in?  Certainly she doesn't seem to live in Mendocino County, land of illegal marijuana cultivation that often results in hair raising battles between growers and poachers.  Despite its boutique coast that caters to affluent visitors from the Bay Area, the county is relatively poor.  The residents could care less about smoking but are mighty angry when their scarce public dollars are wasted on a truly victimless "crime."

March 22 - Unconstitutional power grab - Last week several states' attorneys general announced that they had browbeaten credit card companies to join with them on their war on smokers.  Visa, MasterCard and American Express will no longer process charges for cigarettes purchased from online vendors.  This "agreement" affects everyone living in the United States.

Ever since the states partnered up with the Tobacco Control Industry, along with the cooperation of Big Tobacco, to shakedown the 50 million American Smokers, the attorneys general have become a wholly owned subsidiary of anti-tobacco.  None of this is constitutional.  Al Martinovic explains why.

March 21 - Ban on hold -  The restaurant smoking ban imposed by the Corpus Christi city hall has been suspending pending a referendum.  Citizens for Choice and Common Sense and restaurant owners gathered the requisite number of signatures to trash the law that bans smoking in restaurants.March 17 - The fed's take on secondhand smoke - As anti-tobacco continues, despite increased public opposition, its drive to impose prohibition upon the country, people are asking what is the position of the federal agency that sets health standards for the workplace.  Many are surprised the Occupational Safety and Health Administration takes a hands off approach to banning smoking at the workplace.

OSHA is not a paragon of laissez faire but even this agency, when presented with every government bureaucracy's dream of regulating personal and corporate behavior, realized that justifying smoking bans based on health risks for nonsmokers is a lost cause when real science is taken into consideration.

March 16 - Smoking ban contradictions - Last summer Austin Texas enacted a draconian smoking ban that stopped just shy of total prohibition.  Less than one year later anti-tobacco is back with a voter initiative that will ban smoking completely.  On display are the contradictions that anti-tobacco can no longer hide.

When promoting smoking bans on private property such as restaurants, bars and bowling alleys the anti-tobacco operatives tell the citizens and legislators that banning smoking is good for business.  Once the smoke clears hordes of nonsmokers will more than make up any losses due to smokers hitting the road.  In any case most smokers, so anti-tobacco says, support smoking bans and are very happy to step outdoors for a smoke.

That was last year.  This year the same anti-tobacco operatives are urging a total ban in the name of fairness.  It seems that under Austin's current law some establishments are allowed to permit their customers to smoke.  Those businesses are booming while those that ban smoking are dying.  To "level the playing field" anti-tobacco decrees that no place may allow smoking claiming that the nonsmokers that didn't flock to the nonsmoking establishments will now flock to those same nonsmoking establishments if smoking isn't an option for those currently catering to the smokers.  This loopy argument appeals to the establishments that cannot currently allow smoking.  Once again they will be fooled by anti-tobacco, which is more than happy to see bars go out of business, the inevitable result when the smoking ban is total.

Although these bans are ostensibly passed to protect the health of workers and nonsmoking customers, a proposition that could only hold water if workers were slaves, unable to seek employment in nonsmoking businesses, and if customers were compelled to patronize smoking establishments, the hospitality businesses are vowing to fight the initiative on "freedom of choice" rather than on the fraudulent health issue.  Until they tackle the bogus claims that secondhand smoke is hazardous, a contention that has never, ever been proven, the business owners will loose.

Which brings us to the most glaring contradiction.  Nonsmokers do not ever have to endure tobacco smoke.  It has been banished from all truly public places.  Mr. and Mrs. Nonsmoker leave their nonsmoking home, drive to work in their nonsmoking car, or catch a nonsmoking public conveyance from a nonsmoking transit station.  Their day at work is spent in a nonsmoking office with lunch  at a nonsmoking restaurant  at noon.  A stop on the way home can include shopping at a nonsmoking mall, a movie at a nonsmoking theater or night classes at the nonsmoking community college.  Home at last in their nonsmoking house and Mr. and Mrs. Nonsmoker's day is completely smokefree.

Although paragons of virtue Mr. and Mrs. Nonsmoker may on occasion wish to take a walk on the wild side and catch some music at a local bar.  They willingly and blissfully enjoy themselves with friends, neighbors and family, some who smoke, some who don't.  As well adjusted people they hardly notice the smoke and wouldn't dream of imposing their nonsmoking lifestyle on those who enjoy smoking at  the few places left on earth where adults can enjoy the pleasures that adults have enjoyed for hundreds of years.  If there remained one dive in the middle of the Utah Salt Flats as the last place to allow smoking on earth the sick anti-smokers wouldn't rest until it was snuffed out. 

March 15 - Night and day The Canadian city of Lloydminster lies partly in Saskatchewan and partly in Alberta. So nowadays, you can smoke in Lloydminster bars on the Alberta side of town, but you can't in bars on the Saskatchewan side. The Saskatchewan bars, where smoking is banned, are going broke. 

What's the solution? This Edmonton Sun article suggests that, if Alberta does not soon ban smoking, the City of Lloydminster should do so. That way, bar owners and customers throughout the city, could be equally miserable. 

There's nothing more essential to anti-smoking philosophy than anti-logic. What's disastrous on one block will be wonderful if expanded to the next block, so as a Lloydminster official enthuses, "It's only a matter of time before smoking bans are implemented every-where." 

Smoking bans certainly are being implemented in lots of places. Bars that obey them certainly are going broke in all those places. Solitary drinking and illegal speakeasies take up the slack. At the same time, a criminal black market grows in reaction to ridiculous cigarette taxes, while decent citizens lose all respect for government and its laws. 

Tyranny brings misery and misery has a way of spreading itself around. When will the unintended consequences of asinine legislation come back to bite the asinine legislators? It's only a matter of time.

March 7 - Union finally steps up to the plate - Working men and women threw a wrench into a well-oiled plan to prohibit smoking on the job in Wayne County Michigan.  The county's anti-smoking legislation doesn't deal with restaurant, bars, casinos and bingo halls but would have prevented, or made difficult, workers from lighting up in their job locations.

Washtenaw County recently passed similar regulations, which angered citizens "who feel their otherwise legal activity is being infringed upon by politicians and their employers."

"These hard feelings have manifested themselves through workers withdrawing support for our endorsed candidates and our political fund-raising activities.  Without an exception for unionized workplaces and the use of the collective bargaining process, I cannot support this proposed regulation."

The excerpt above was part of a letter from the United Automobile Workers to the Wayne County (Detroit) commissioners and county executive that hinted at political repercussions against commissioners voting to ban workplace smoking.  Hallelujah!   A union that finally recognizes that the war on tobacco is a war on the working class.

March 4 - Good news from Minnesota!  The House Commerce Committee snuffed out a bill, ludicrously dubbed the Freedom to Breathe Act, despite massive lobbying efforts by anti-tobacco special interests.  Since it was a victory for choice and freedom this news story focuses on the proponents for prohibition.  Despite the anti-smoking slant there are some encouraging signs that in Minnesota, at least, the politicians are wearying of endless debate over what it an essentially trivial issue.

One representative voting no to the smoking ban worried that many small, family-owned restaurants would not survive a smoking ban.  The record backs him up since large chains have the resources to weather bans while the small restaurants, operating on much smaller profit margins, are dependent upon  patronage by their regulars.  Smokers simply will not dine in smokefree restaurants.

The experience of Duluth was also cited as a good reason not to impose smoking bans.  Although Duluth does have a smoking ban it isn't a total ban.  When the citizens were asked to vote on making it complete they decisively voted no.

March 4 - Inability to keep the lies straight - In a standard boiler-plate screed against tobacco, this time focusing on China, several odd "facts" emerge.

According to this article China has 350 million smokers and one million smokers die each year from "tobacco related diseases" a death rate of 0.28%.  In the United States there are conservatively 50 million smokers, 440,000 of whom die each year, a death rate of 0.88%.  The reporter from Agence France-Presse doesn't explain why the death rate for smokers in the United States is over three times as high as in China.

The reporter passes on the ominous warning that in 15 years the number of Chinese smokers slaughtered by tobacco will double to two million "half of whom will die prematurely, aged between 35 to 69."  So while the sturdier Chinese smoker is three times less likely to die from smoking related disease than his wimpy American counterpart, he will, should smoking do him in, die at a radically younger age.

So much for the journalistic standards of our age where reporters mindlessly regurgitate data that are pulled out of thin air without noticing that they conflict with data pulled out of a rabbit's hat in another country.  Anti-tobacco activists are liars.  That's who they are and that's what they do.  What's the media's excuse?

February 28 - Hot house academics - Looking at the recent controversy over outdoor smoking at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a "half full" point of view, we applaud the Residence Hall Association for rejecting a proposal to ban smoking in outdoor patios next to the dormitories.  Taking the "half empty" view, however, brings to those who hope for a better world courtesy of the next generation a measure of despair.  That such a nonsensical issue as smoking outdoors consumes even one nanosecond at a time of declining academic opportunities and standards is a sobering comment on the priorities adopted by this country.

College students are adults and adults have the right to smoke in their homes, even if those homes are student housing.  The University of Michigan is out of line for forcing rent-paying students out into the cold winter night just to have a smoke.  Treating adults like truculent children, stuffing their heads with hysterical misinformation is hardly the way to ensure the coming generation is given the tools to ensure their survival.

February 28 - Georgia ban faces tough opposition - The Speaker of the House strongly opposes imposing a New York style smoking ban on the independent-minded state.  He is, unlike anti-tobacco politicians who bottle up pro-choice legislation, willing to let the House vote on the issue.  He does put the issue into proper perspective:

Speaker Richardson told reporters at his weekly news conference that he's philosophically opposed to the government imposing smoking restrictions on private business.

"Smoking is a lawful activity and a big difference from unlawful activities," he said.

Republicans control the House and it is distressing that so many of them support an effort to harm tax-paying businesses by snuffing out property rights.  Recent elections, including the big one in 2004, demonstrate that the public is fed up with government intruding into areas that are none of its concern.

February 28 - Glaring anti-smoking contradictions - Discussions about banning smoking Wellington Kansas have prompted the hospitality industry and politicians to take a close look at how businesses have fared in nearby Lawrence, which banned smoking two years ago.  Bare in mind that anti-tobacco operatives assigned to both cities claim that banning smoking is great for business.

• Excise tax collections are down by 13.9%

• One restaurant will lost $400,000 in the year following the ban resulting in a 20 workers being laid off.

• Restaurants that voluntarily banned smoking as a marketing ploy have seen their businesses decline 40% after the government-imposed ban.

• Disgruntled smokers and their friends are fleeing Lawrence to patronize the restaurants in Topeka and Wichita, which have no smoking bans.

The Lawrence smoking ban legislation and the proposal to install prohibition in Wellington is in response to agitation by Teens Empowering Peers, a lobbying organization pushing legislation written by an out-of-state pharmaceutical front group.

February 25 - Making airports more hellish -  For well over a decade and especially after September 11, 2001 air travel has been a misery for everyone.  Banning smoking on flights reduced the air quality in the cabin while "air rage" became common.  Getting into and out of the airport is also torture with many airports eliminating any place to smoke indoors.  Now the Americans for Nonsmokers Rights is lobbying the major airports where smoking is still permitted to do away with the smoking lounges.

This sycophantic story from USA Today could be an editorial endorsing ANR's position.  Some points worth noting:

• The Americans for Nonsmokers Rights is a lobbyist for the drug industry, funded with drug money dollars.
• Airports are deluged with tons of pollutants expelled by jets and automobiles.
• Airport smoking lounges are "air tight", in that smoke from within cannot make its way into the general areas.
• Removing smoking lounges hampers security and efficiency by making smokers exit the building then undergo a redundant security check when they return.
• Other than a handful of cranks and fanatics nonsmokers support smoking areas for smokers.

As the airlines continue to slide into financial disarray and airport shops continue to bleed money, the effort by the ANR to ruin these businesses further while undermining the security of the country is criminal.

February 24 - Braxton County, West Virginia: a step "backwards" towards sanity. Board of health amends zero tolerance smoking ban – Smoking is back in bars and video lottery rooms until January 1, 2007 in Braxton County WV. This is due in large part to the excellent and relentless work of FORCES West Virginia and its president Maryetta Ables.

However the postponement is justified by the health authorities ‘to "get the public ready" for the Zero Tolerance ban’. But this buys precious time to get the public ready to reject the ban altogether, because the public will be educated on the epidemiological fraud of passive smoke. Once the fear of being hurt is removed because the passive smoke fraud is demonstrated, hysterical emotions go away and common sense comes back – and with it the recognition that personal choice and liberty are worth far more than statistical health threatened by trash data thrown into computers.

Once again, sincere congratulations to FORCES West Virginia – way to go!

February 21 - North Dakota residents still have time to voice their opinion on a smoking ban being proposed.   The House defeated the proposed ban on Friday, by a small margin. The Senate, however, has approved legislation that would bar smoking in all public places.

February 21 - Canada  Alberta, Dave Rodney is keeping his proposed smoking ban bill under wraps until his caucus colleagues have vetted it.

Premier Ralph Klein threw cold water on a total smoking ban, despite Health Minister Iris Evan proposed province wide ban.

The bill is portrayed as a compromise that would ban smoking in workplaces, but makes provisions for ventilated smoking rooms.

February 21 - Athens, Georgia -  In a letter to the editor, Craig Hertwig, owner of the NoWhere bar states that he has lost between 30 to 50% of his business in the daytime since the daytime smoking ban came into effect. If the ban wasn't lifted at 11:00 pm he would probably be out of business.

We have heard this many times from small business owners.  Smoking bans are bad for restaurants and bars. The politicians are not representing their constitutes, just special interest groups.

February 18 - Weyco, the infamous company in Michigan who fired four employees for smoking, outside of the workplace, has received a great deal of press attention. 

Views differ but what does this really mean? It is about man's free will to make decisions for himself.  Why should any company be allowed to dictate what you can and can't do when you leave work?  They pay you for 40 hours to do a particular job, a decent wage for decent work.  If we allow bullies like Weyco to make lifestyle choices for you then we are no longer "the land of the free".

Where there's smoke there is fire. clearly points out how sinister Wayco's policies are to American workers

February 17 - Scots oppose smoking ban - Scottish publicans have condemned the Scottish Executive’s proposal to ban smoking because they say only 20 per cent of the public are in favour.

Unfortunately popular opposition means very little to the multi-national pharmaceuticals who hope to make a killing off smoking bans.  Legislators who should know better all too often pay rapt attention to the slick lobbyists who schmooze smoothly and string academic acronyms after their names.  The hardworking people they are supposed to represent are treated as children who are afraid of change.

The publicans are bending over backwards to devise a plan to please everyone.  Their efforts will be in vain unless they tackle head on the fraud peddled by Big Drugs and the anti-smoking operatives in its pay.  Once it is demonstrated that smoking bans are merely a marketing tool for stateless corporations that couldn't care less about local businesses the tide will turn.

February 15 - Smoking ban a failure - Last June we reported that a bar in England was proudly turning smokefree.  New customers would flock in while the smokers would adjust by smoking outdoors.  The rabidly anti-tobacco BBC sorrowfully reports this week that the pioneering pub was slapped in the face by the reality of huge losses during its experiment in prohibition.

Anti-tobacco consistently hypes prohibition by telling the always credulous governing class that banning smoking is great for business.  Most business owners know better and in this case the one owner who believed anti-tobacco was telling the truth has been given an expensive, very painful lesson on who to distrust.

February 14 - Killing the illegal ban - Last week the Washington State Supreme Court pronounced the Pierce County smoking ban illegal.  Although no one, including anti-tobacco, was surprised by this decision, it's important to examine this latest defeat for Tobacco Control in the full context of the various schemes attempting to undermine the clear will of the citizens of Washington.  Norman Kjono shows how pharmaceutical money still flows into the coffers of the anti-smoking activists, many of them located out of state.

February 11 - Victory in Washington -  “I’m so happy!” said Janis Johnson, owner of the Pegasus Restaurant in Tacoma, where smoking is permitted. She said she ran through the restaurant telling everyone “we won!” when she heard the news.

Although it is no surprise that the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that the Pierce County smoking ban was illegal, it is always gratifying when overreaching health bureaucrats are slapped aside their heads.

February 11 - Take it from one who knows -  Minnesota is one of the states targeted for prohibition this year.  Although it has a reputation as being a liberal haven the anti-tobacco brigade has had few successes there and many failures.  The tobacco control operatives are working both the state legislature and individual cities throughout the state.  In Grand Forks the anti-smoking activists face a man who knows junk science is behind smoking bans and who also knows that the smoking ban in California is a disaster.

February 10 - No ban for LaPorte -  To the applause of the crowd gathered at city hall, the council refused to consider studying whether a smoking ban should be imposed.  The feeling in this Indiana city is that government has no business dictating smoking policies on private property such as restaurants and bars.  The legislators agreed

February 10 - No ban for Virginia -  By a huge margin the state senate killed legislation to prohibit smoking nearly everywhere.  Saying that the bill would infringe on individuals' and businesses' freedom of choice, those voting no pointed out that the market place as already decided the issue.  Those who don't want to associate with smokers are free to frequent the plethora of restaurants who, on their own, free from government coercion, voluntarily prohibit smoking.  Those who enjoy smoking are free to patronize those places that permit smoking.  Everyone is happy except for that tiny fraction of humanity that dreams of holding power over everyone else.

February 7 - Slamming the Virginia ban -  The Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act is far from passage, yet this kind of nanny-state politics can't be stopped soon enough.

Against the powerful anti-smoking lobby, there are few who have shown the nerve it requires to challenge this argument.

Like many other liberal causes, the rationale to ban smoking in restaurants and bars rests on flimsy logic: Since smoking causes disease, those who breathe smoke will get sick.

This powerful editorial against a proposal to ban smoking statewide in Virginia isn't shy in delivering a one/two punch right in the kisser of the liars and stooges who, for mercantile motives or ephemeral political advantage, are willing to spit on science, rip up property rights and negatively target a significant minority whose only crime is to legally enjoy a lawful product.

February 7 - A tyranny too far -  Claiming that it would take an "army of extraterrestrials" to enforce the upcoming smoking ban in Cuba, smokers in the Western Hemisphere's remaining totalitarian state vow to keep on puffing.  It's sobering that in a country where disrespecting Fidel Castro and his communist government can result in a jail term and torture, revolt and defiance great the "maximum leader's" anti-smoking dictates.  In this country, supposedly the land of the free and the home of the brave, the docile public bows down and submits to the orders of the Health Reich.

February 7 - Last call for anti-smoking pioneer -  Mr Halkett said he lost 85% of his regulars as soon as he brought the ban into force and claims his experience proves it will not work for small traditional pubs.

Harry Halkett ,  a good trooper for the cause of social engineering, gave it shot and reality bit back with a vengeance.  Believing that a smoking ban will engulf Scotland in 2006 he voluntarily banned smoking in his establishment early to evaluate whether modernizing the pub was financially worthwhile.  So disastrous was the flight of the smokers Mr. Halkett realized that banning smoking was the death of his pub and will be the death of the social network of small pubs that dot the countryside.  His experience is identical to the experience elsewhere were smoking bans are imposed.

February 4 - Hitting Tobacco Country -  Under a smoking ban that cleared a Virginia senate committee smoking in one's house and car will be legal but practically nowhere else.  The Washington Post calls it a "remarkable" development.  Indeed it is although it would be more accurate to call it remarkably dumb.

The Virginia economy is booming, especially when compared to the sclerotic economies of states where smoking bans are common.  With quasi-prohibitionist Maryland just across the eastern border, the burgeoning Washington DC suburbs in Virginia, where businesses are allowed to set their own smoking policies, the contrast couldn't be greater.

This article mentions that Philip Morris is a large employer in Virginia but fails to mention that the cigarette company long ago made its peace with the tobacco control industry and will no more  stand up for its customers there than it did elsewhere.  What is a likely scenario, however, is that the people will oppose state government intrusion into business affairs.  This bill probably won't go anywhere this year but will be back each year thereafter until anti-tobacco is finally and decisively destroyed.

February 2 - Divide and conquer - Anti-smoking activists have been caught circulating a letter of support for a smoking ban to businesses that would be affected.  “NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE,” reads the undated letter, which is in the form of a contract. “This information is for the Board of Health and City Council ONLY!”   The letter promises anonymity to businesses that support banning smoking.

The secretive letter comes from the Boone County (Missouri) Coalition for Tobacco Concerns and is chock filled with lies about secondhand smoke and how banning smoking will increase patronage.  There is a strange discrepancy between the secondhand death toll cited in this letter and the figure of 38,000 deaths that Centers for Disease Control throws around but what the hell since the numbers, according to a flack at the organization's Office on Smoking and Health, are not definitive.

Secretive documents spewing made-up numbers certainly are definitive to business that will be bankrupted if a smoking ban is passed.  Business owners who have received the furtive letters are not being fooled.  As always they are opposed to government taking over the running of their restaurants and bars.  The politicians had better listen to these employers and taxpayer rather than the grifters who are hoping to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

February 1 - Ban unlikely in Omaha - Saying that the smoking ban doesn't go far enough the mayor of Omaha veto legislation that would have banned smoking in restaurants but would have created many exemptions.  At this time there are not enough votes to override the mayor's veto.  Anti-tobacco is hoping for a tougher bill.

February 1 - Every square inch smokefree - I suppose we are all gonna die; I'm sorry but that is the case. I'm concerned about a lot of other things that could be dangerous. Maybe the next thing we ought to do is ban red meat.

I have a really hard time as a conservative, reaching inside a private club owned by a private person

Utah was an early player in the smoking ban sweepstakes when it banned smoking in all workplaces in 1995.  It is one of only a few "red" states that has enthusiastically embraced social engineering while trashing property rights.  The anti-smoking law, however, left private clubs free to allow smoking, a huge loophole since nearly every bar and a high percentage of upscale restaurants in the state are incorporated as private clubs.  Anyone can go to these clubs and many humble diners also are technically private.

Still, one must seek out smoking establishments so no one who objects to secondhand smoke is likely to stumble into one of them unawares.  Offices, bowling alleys and office buildings are all smokefree yet anti-tobacco will not be content until that one, final smoking venue is obliterated.  

A bill that cleared a senate committee is designed to do just that.  To their credit many senators, as noted above, have problems with messing with the private clubs, which were originally set up to co-exist with Utah's Byzantine alcohol laws.  Until anti-tobacco got greedy the private clubs and their cut to the state were sacrosanct.  That may change.

January 24 - Smokers Terminated - It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. - Herman Goerring

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. - Benito Mussolini

Four employers of Weyco Inc, based in Okemos, Michigan, were fired after they refused to take a test to determine whether they had been smoking cigarettes off the job.  An officer of the company called the terminations "a victory."  The no smoking rule went into effect January 1 ostensibly to shield the company from high health care costs.  The company offered smoking cessation aids and reports that up to 14 smokers have quit smoking.

An ugly story about an ugly company but what does it have to do with Fascism and propaganda?  Simply this.  Weyco is a health benefits administrator and as such is highly susceptible to pressure from high-powered players in the health industry, including the huge pharmaceutical companies that instigate smoking bans in order to sell cessation products.  We reported last week that the smoking ban in Italy accompanies a huge smoking cessation marketing campaign in that country.  In Italy the government is blatantly colluding with huge corporations to make huge profits.  The financial portfolios of the legislators who enacted the ban are undoubtedly stuffed with pharmaceutical stock.  Weyco Inc is a tiny entity that was leaned on by the big boys in the drug cartels to set an example of how a private business can, and should, dictate the terms of how people live their lives off the job.

Years ago people who were the wrong race or religion were not admitted into corporations and jobs lest they offend the prevailing prejudices of the era.  Such discrimination was outlawed years ago.  The collusion between big business, ideological special interest groups and government are bringing the bad old days back to life.  Logically following the path Weyco has embraced will result in chubby people with the wrong Body Mass Index and people who enjoy hoisting a few cold ones after work being fired when they don't conform to the risk-aversion vision of those who worship the false god of health.  Our freedoms are being removed, one after another, by big business and the government that serves it rather than us the people.

January 27 - Lifestyle Choices By Fiat - Perhaps we are jaded by the constant mound of negativity dumped upon the world by the therapeutic classes but the storm of controversy ignited by one company's decision to terminate employees who refused to take a tobacco-detection test caught us by surprise.

Our phone has been ringing off the hook as news outlets seek our take on Weyco Inc's rude intrusion into the private, off-duty affairs of its employees.  Many of those inquiring are surprised to find out that Weyco, far from being a pioneer in job discrimination, is merely the end result of years of effort to pit employer against employee, legislator against constituent, neighbor against neighbor.  Norman Kjono, who has followed closely anti-tobacco's purposeful agenda to whip up discord amongst people explains how and why this is done.

January 28 - San Francisco - City of Hate - The good news out of San Francisco is that the Board of Supervisors firmly endorse the proposition that banning smoking is very bad for business.  The bad news for the little people these progressive pols claim to champion is that the recently passed outdoor smoking ban accommodates the affluent elite while relegating the working class taxpayer to second class citizenship.

"Secondhand smoke outdoors is just as dangerous (as indoors)," said Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, who said she drafted the law out of concern for the environment and children. 

There are three explanations for this jaw-dropping statement.  One, Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is a bald faced liar.  Two, she is an imbecile who has been duped.  Three, she is cunningly telling the truth so that she may have her cake and eat it too, for it is indeed true that secondhand smoke is as dangerous outdoors as it is indoors, namely it isn't dangerous at all.  

Since Supervisor Alioto-Pier, throughout a decade-long career as an opportunistic political also ran, has never exhibited much brain power we prefer to believe explanation number two.  She has been duped because she hangs with the wrong crowd, the operatives working for the multi-national pharmaceutical industry.  Every smoking ban provides an opportunity for Big Drugs to market its expensive smoking cessation devices.

The outdoor smoking ban covers every city park, garden, pier, playground and public square.  It does not cover the lucrative city-owned golf course.  The caring supervisors care very much for the upper class duffers who pay high fees to the city for the privilege of puffing cigars on the golf links.  The single mothers accompanying their children to the local playground, the senior citizens sunning themselves on a park bench, the tourists who provide the life blood of the city and even the homeless have all been told to go to hell if they smoke.  Fines start out at $100 for the first offence, topping out at $500 for third and subsequent offences. Defecating in Union Square, strewing used hypodermic needles in sandboxes or dumping a garbage can full of trash in a Golden Gate flower bed are not punished so severely.

Credit must be given to only two supervisors who voted against this oppressive and unnecessary measure.  A third supervisor, a member of the Green Party, voted against the park smoking ban because he felt giving the golfers a pass was "elitist," although he has no problem bossing around the lower orders.  Two homosexual supervisors, who should recognize the danger in targeting particular groups of people for discrimination, voted for the ban, one justifying his vote because his mother died, supposedly of a smoking-related disease, while the other believes that his asthma precludes the right of the smoking taxpayer to enjoy what are truly public places.  When politicians endorse bigotry by drooling out irrelevant, personal stories it's obvious that even they are ashamed of the pleasure they enjoy in disrespecting those who put them in City Hall.

As to the ban, it will be ignored with impunity since, with a few key exceptions, it is completely unenforceable.  The police, unless they risk the wrath of the public pursuing what is truly a victimless crime, will limit their participation to incidences where a smoker lights up right in front of their faces.  Those who will be hassled are the hapless tourists relaxing in Union Square or around the attractions in Golden Gate Park, unaware that they have displeased the Health Reich that runs this once urbane city.  Reports of European tourists being ordered to extinguish their smokes in this "most European of American cities" will provide bitter amusement to a jaded populace who long ago gave up on the Board of Supervisors as an over-the-hill frat house BS debating society.

January 28 - These brutish boors are offended by smoking? - Readers may profit from exposure to an embarrassing scene enacted in the ornate chamber where the Board of Supervisors assembles.  The issue had nothing to do with smoking.  The anti-tobacco lout who takes center stage in this repulsive vignette is, according to himself and the sheep who follow him, the most "progressive" supervisor in a gaggle of "progressives."  We produce below the exchange between Chris Daly and one of the supervisors who voted against the park ban.  Neither come off well but you be the judge as to which is the most reprehensible.

Supervisor Daly launched a diatribe against Supervisor McGoldrick on the subject of aid to the tsunami victims because he felt the latter had stabbed him in the back by not voting according to plan.  An argument ensued with both men leaving the chamber, although both were audible to their peers and those citizens attending the meeting.  McGoldrick asked Daly to calm down prompting Daly to spout insults and profanities in return.  Before the president of the board, who also voted against the park ban, called a halt to the childishness the following dialogue ensued:

McGoldrick: "How come you gotta act like a baby?"
Daly: "How come you're two-faced? I'm a baby because you're two-faced!"
McGoldrick:  "You know where you can kiss, don't you, Chris?"
Daly:  Yeah, I'll kiss your ass.  Right after I kick it."

With this level of civility constantly on display, is it any wonder the Board of Supervisors regards the city as one huge playground where the bullies always prevail?

January 27 - Trashing a smoking ban - "Government should never stick their nose into private business. I was against it (smoking ban) when we passed it the first time," Klaudt said. "It's just wrong. It's bad government. Bad government is not justified by a health issue."

Right on, Rep. Ted Klaudt, R-Walker!  This South Dakota legislator is entirely correct in sentiment but make an understandable error in tying smoking bans to health.  Smoking bans have absolutely nothing to do with health.  Smoking bans are an example of government paving the way for corporations to beef up their profits.  

Every smoking ban is instigated by those who take their marching orders from the huge multi-national pharmaceutical corporations who follow a smoking ban with aggressive marketing campaigns to sell expensive smoking cessation products.

The bill that was killed would have drawn bars and casinos into the business-killing zone that encircles restaurants after the state's first smoking ban was passed a few years ago.  Anti-tobacco, of course, will bring the issue up again.  It also has a plan to increase the cigarette tax with the increased revenue going to....anti-smoking activists!  

The people of South Dakota would be well served if Rep. Klaudt, and other fair-minded legislators, gave anti-tobacco the boot.

January 25 - Igniting the opposition - On January 10 the Tobacco Control Industry bit off a bit more than it could placidly chew.  Egged on by the international pharmaceutical corporations, the Minister of Health's scheme to end smoking went into effect throwing millions of Italians out into the streets.  We present a report from FORCES-Italy.

January 25 - Effort to ban smoking in Virginia -  One of the best places to be a smoker in the United States is under a two-pronged attack.  Legislation has been written to ban smoking in public places (actually private property) and to hike the cigarette tax.  We link to FORCES-Virginia for more details.

January 24 - Smoking ban; the test of a people -  Italy's drift towards a smoke-free dolce vita may contradict the national character, a quiet mind-your-own-business lifestyle. But it fits perfectly with the other side of the coin, an ancestral contempt for property and individual rights that is apparent in Italian law. 

Alberto Mingardi, a director of a Milan-based think tank, is rightly worried that Italy becomes the first major country in the world to ban smoking.  Although the smoking ban would appear to be at odds with the Italian national character it does ominously hark back to the dark time of fascism when the non-smoking Mussolini drove the country off the cliff not all that long ago.

January 24 - Working against its members - The American Association of Retired Persons came into being to smooth the often stony path of the nation's senior citizens.  As with many organizations that started out having a valid purpose the ARRP long ago deviated from protecting the old folks into a high-pressured lobbying group whose purpose is to extract money from the workers and shuffle it into the pockets of lobbyists and special interest groups.  As a doctrinaire left-wing group it worships at the altar of behavior control, supporting sky-high tobacco taxes and smoking bans, even though costly cigarettes and throwing old people out of the restaurants and bingo halls hardly supports the desires of its supposed constituents.

As Minnesota contemplates raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes by one dollar, AARP loudly chimes in with its support.  State chapter President Skip Humphrey, a one-time attorney general whose anti-tobacco fanaticism sank his gubernatorial run, irresponsibly claims that using the additional tax to beef up medical programs for old people while prompting people to quite smoking.  Proposing program expansion based on a scheme to undermine the funding is typical of AARP and anti-tobacco leadership.  The legislature should give the boot to Humphrey as did the voters of the state years ago.

January 21 - Open-ended law could nab everyone - Uganda has been fumbling with its nearly universal smoking ban for months now. Most reports are that everybody's ignoring it just about everywhere. Police have complained that they don't know how to enforce it or even if they are really empowered to do so. The law has variously been reported to cover all indoor workplaces, or even any indoor or outdoor location, where a non-smoker complains. 

This article says, "The new law eliminates smoking in indoor places, including offices and cafes," but also reports that Steven Kamukugize, a sort of Environmental Policeman, has "advised managers of public places to create special rooms for their clients where they can smoke privately." 

What special rooms? Like a barroom? An office? The law eliminates smoking in indoor places except ... where? We don't know. They don't know. Enforcement's on the way though, and by the way, Envirocop Kamukugize warns that, "Every head of family is responsible for creating a climate for children to be free of second hand smoke." So apparently Kamukugize, who calls smokers "culprits," may show up with his gun drawn in Ugandan living rooms. This much seems clear. Don't go to Uganda, and if you're there, leave.

January 21 - No need for smoking ban - In a refreshing change from the usual oppression coming out of Canada these days, the premier of the province of Alberta casts doubt on the usefulness of smoking bans.  He ridicules the false notion that secondhand smoke poses any health hazards and suggests that those few workers who object to working in locations where smoking is present, such as restaurants, bars and casinos should seek employment elsewhere.

He does equivocate on municipalities enacting local smoking bans but strongly sides with businesses whose customers prefer to enjoy themselves with a cigarette.  The anti-tobacco daily that features this article is obliged to clutter up this story with a series of paragraphs that come nearly verbatim from the Tobacco Control Industry's manual of talking points but the doctrinaire blathering doesn't diminish the winds of freedom that blows across Alberta.

January 20 - Mission Unaccomplished - Because most people deep down do not believe that secondhand smoke is dangerous the Tobacco Control Industry has subtly shifted the justification for smoking bans from protecting nonsmokers to protecting smokers from themselves.  Each time a ban is proposed these days the anti-tobacco operatives trot out the claim that banning smoking in restaurants and bars will prod smokers to quit smoking entirely.

From Norway we have more proof that banning smoking does not cause smokers to quit.  Smoking rates essentially remain the same, although the percentage of young (16 to 24) smokers did increase slightly.  The results from Norway are similar to those in various American states, including California, which banned smoking in restaurants 10 years ago.  We now have another lie to add to the mountain of anti-tobacco fibs.  Banning smoking doesn't result in better health for nonsmokers, it doesn't cut smoking rates and it doesn't result in higher patronage rates for restaurants and bars.

January 19 - Incoherence at the top - Audrey Silk, president of NY CLASH, a smoker's advocacy group, said New York City officials first targeted companies that were selling cigarettes out of state. "When that didn't work, their tactic is to now scare individuals," she said.

"Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg claims he wants people to stop smoking for their health. Then he raises taxes on cigarettes to get income for the city. Then he claims that he is fighting for small businesses who are losing money when smokers buy cigarettes out-of-state," Silk said. "Then he says the city is not getting its fair share of taxes from smokers. Then he boasts he is raising taxes so kids can't afford to smoke. Which one is it, Mr. Mayor," she asked.

Good questions and ones that Mayor Bloomberg cannot answer.  Although an anti-smoking fanatic the mayor didn't come up with his high-tax schemes on his own.  He relied completely on high-salaried anti-tobacco lobbyists  He was promised that raising the cigarette tax would result in lots of money for the city, a sharp decline in smoking by the citizens of New York and that local convenience stores wouldn't suffer from lack of cigarette sales.  These goals contradict each other.  The mayor was sold a bill of goods and is now yapping incoherently to hide his foolishness from the voters.

January 18 - Notes from Italy - Prohibition arrived in Italy last Monday when smoking became illegal nearly everywhere.  Citizens are not amused and compliance is nearly non-existent even though the state has made enforcement of this unpopular ban a top priority.  We will report on the efforts to tank this ban as information in English becomes available.  We are happy to present a report from Carlo Stagnaro, vice-director of the libertarian review "Enclave" and a commentator published in various Italian periodicals as well as American magazines such as National Review.  Of special note in this commentary is how the Italian government is using the smoking ban as the launch to curtail an ever growing number of personal behaviors. January 18 - The wages of prohibition - It's a given that anti-tobacco activists are mentally ill.  No centered, well-rounded individual is worried about who is smoking or where.  These lunatics, however, have managed to impose their neuroses upon a good portion of society.  The consequences of their power grab are becoming obvious to all.

January 18 - Revelations of a quitter - For hundreds of years smokers, without the benefit of expensive anti-smoking propaganda, have quit smoking.  They quit for many reasons and they did so without much fuss.  More often, especially if prompted by health concerns, smokers have not quit but have cut down on intake.  In these extreme days it's an all or nothing proposition.  Either you quit completely or you will die.

David Kjono recently embarked upon a course of smoking cessation and discovered what Grandpa knew back in the bad old days when human nature, moderation and real self-control were embraced.

January 17 - Smoke and morals - What apparently cannot be rescinded is the mentality that free citizens cannot be trusted to manage their own health. When it comes to thorny social issues, those advocating the abandonment of traditional mores insist on the supremacy of individual consciences. But not when it comes to health. Our public policy will not vigorously discourage someone from bearing children out of wedlock, with all its attendant pathologies, but it will do its best to make sure those children's bathwater is the right temperature.

Writing about the province-wide smoking ban in Ontario Father Raymond J. de Souza pens a powerful message about the modern state's hypocritical policy of "do your own thing" but only within the narrow confine of a few politically correct shibboleths.  When it comes to health and safety, however, the government replaces the censorious Medieval church, stamping out sinful behavior with a self-righteous wrath.  Fr. de Souza takes a dim view of a government that denigrates its citizens as stupid and immoral for making decisions the state finds unorthodox.

January 17 - Dysfunction - Insanity is performing the same action over and over, each time expecting a different result.  Tobacco taxes and government is proof that this definition is all too true.  

In no other state is insanity more pronounced than in New York where state politicians boosted the per pack cigarette tax to three dollars.  The result has been almost universal tax avoidance by smokers who find their smokes outside the confiscatory state system.  The resulting tax losses have been far greater than "experts" predicted so now the state is indulging its insanity by cracking down.  

This articles reports how tax collectors in New York City, after having obtained lists of customers from a cheap cigarette outfit, are dunning smokers for unpaid taxes.  Some smokers are receiving tax bills for thousands of dollars, payable in 30 days.  Should payment be late the city is threatening to charge a $200 penalty fee for each carton bought.

The city reckons that its tough approach, to be highlighted in an "educational" campaign, will knock the smokers into submission.  It's fooling itself.  Each tax hike and each method to deal with tax avoidance will, as always, increase the problems the politicians are hoping to solve.  Smokers, like everyone else, will not pay an inflated price for a good that can be produced cheaply.

January 14 - Lightening up the smoking ban - Misinformed as to the scope of the law, the citizens of Wauseon Ohio narrowly voted for an initiative written by the tobacco control industry that banned smoking nearly everywhere.  After reality set in city hall was urged to modify the law and the legislators responded accordingly.  It's not often that a bad mistake is corrected so quickly and effectively.  Kudos to the citizens of Wauseon and the representatives that responded.

January 14 - Righting a wrong - Although anti-tobacco spends plenty of money trying to convince the public that smokers die at a very early age, the reality is quite different.  Most smokers live to a ripe old age, puffing away until the end.  This fact  intruded upon Idaho's recently enacted smoking ban and one state senator wants to do something about it.

The state runs several old age rest homes for veterans.  After the ban went into effect these old men, who laid their lives on the line protecting this country, were ordered outside to indulge their pleasure.  Not a compassionate or respectful way to show gratitude to old warriors whose little fingers are worth more than every anti-tobacco activist rolled into one.  Let these old Americans smoke in peace.  Inside their homes.

January 13 - Ban Folly - "My decision [opposing a smoking ban] comes from the fact that you have private ownership in business, and they should have the right to target whatever customers they feel the marketplace will give them," she explains. "If, indeed, nobody frequented a smoking establishment, I say, 'Right on, the marketplace has spoken."'

Sadly, this progressive view may not be shared by the majority of the Denver city council as it ponders eliminating choice from the restaurants and bars.  Health and comfort are no longer the issues since no one these days is exposed to tobacco smoke unless they they so choose.

January 12 - Not passing the grade - One of the tropes most overused by the tobacco control industry is to grade the states on how well they are adhering to the shakedown artists' agenda.  Several times a year, especially during legislative sessions, the operatives issue a report card.  The grades are always low but could be improved with more money spent on anti-tobacco education.  After years of listening to pleas alternating with threats the populace is wising up to the con.  From Minnesota one man nails the operatives.

January 12 - Evaporating rights -