From “Tests Suggest Some Predisposed To Smoke,”  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tuesday February 17, 2004:

“If you're easy to anger, you might have a brain especially susceptible to nicotine. Scientists using powerful scanners have documented nicotine triggering dramatic bursts of activity in certain brain areas - but only in people prone to anger and aggression, not more cheerful, relaxed types. Researchers made the discovery when studying people wearing nicotine patches. Intriguingly, the nicotine jazzed up the brains of not just smokers who are aggressive, but of nonsmokers, too - and at very low doses. It's the first biological evidence that people with certain personality traits are more likely to get hooked on smoking if they ever experiment with cigarettes. And it may help explain why it's so much easier for some people to kick the addiction than others, says psychiatrist Steven Potkin of the University of California, Irvine, who led the study. It's almost, he says, as if some people are born to smoke.”

As I read The PI’s crude attempt to once again negatively label persons who smoke -- now as people prone to anger and aggression – it occurred to me that the entire article is a stunning example of twisted thinking that apparently dominates tobacco control and its mainstream media support. The study reported obviously describes discernable side effects of “Smoke Free” nicotine patches, yet the negative behaviors observed are attributed to people who smoke cigarettes. The study should have been reported as documented evidence of normal people’s adverse reactions to substituting fake products for the real thing. It insults the intelligence of readers for the PI to permit it news and editorial bias in favor of smoking bans to so distort its reports that an Associated Press article it publishes attributes negative behaviors exhibited by those who use pharmaceutical nicotine products to persons who smoke cigarettes. Back-shooting citizens with false elitist’ negative labels that are the opposite of what the article text actually says is cowardly. Journalists who so that do not even have the courage to face their victims with the truth of what their own articles actually say.

This is a serious subject that needs to be carefully explored. To begin an analysis of the PI’s news report we accept as true, factual, and accurate what The PI reports. We should do so within the context of the last two sentences in the above quote. Those sentences bear repeating:

“It's the first biological evidence that people with certain personality traits are more likely to get hooked on smoking if they ever experiment with cigarettes. And it may help explain why it's so much easier for some people to kick the addiction than others, says psychiatrist Steven Potkin of the University of California, Irvine, who led the study. It's almost, he says, as if some people are born to smoke.” (Underline added.)

To which I add the following quote from later text in the PI’s article:

“But Potkin's study took the crucial step of adding nonsmokers to the mix. And he asked 86 people to do various tests - such as computer games that showed who were the sore losers - while a PET scanner monitored their brain activity before and after receiving low- or high-dose nicotine patches or a sham patch. ‘No one has looked at nicotine in this way,’ says Kenneth Perkins, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh who also is studying predictive traits of smoking. The PET scans showed no brain effects of nicotine on people whose personalities were more relaxed and cheerful.”

First, those two sentences put to the lie a cornerstone of the tobacco control agenda, as articulated by Dr. C. Everett Koop in 1998 and stridently proclaimed by anti-tobacco activists for the past 15 years: NICOTNE IS UNQUESTIONABLY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, AND WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY AS ADDICTIVE AS HEROIN OR COCAINE. It appears that Dr. Potkin’s study would say otherwise. In fact, reports about Dr. Potkin’s data strongly suggest precisely the opposite: it is so much easier for some to quit smoking than others. It is impossible for a substance to be equally addictive with equal certainty and in all cases involving every person if it is much easier for some to quit smoking than others. Dr. Koop’s 1988 pronouncement is now proven to be as implausible as it has been intuitively untrue for years.

Second, if PET scans show that nicotine has no effect on the brain of some people then not only is it impossible for that substance to be equally addictive with equal certainty in all cases, but there appears to be a genetic or other factor that accounts for an apparent predisposition to smoke. Indeed, that is precisely what Dr. Potkin claims he is looking for, a predictor for who is most “at risk” of getting hooked after their first few cigarettes. Naturally, according to the PI’s article that profile stereotyping is to be focused on our children. If parents permit that type of eugenicist “Potkin Testing” on their children in our public schools they are not only abjectly irresponsible at looking out for their children’s well-being but they richly deserve the dysfunctional public education system they are rapidly inheriting through special-interest programs in schools. I can see it coming now: in order for our children to receive the public school education that the state is required by law to provide and that citizens finance with their taxes our young ones must first pass the “Potkin Test.” Failure to pass the Potkin Predictor could mandate, of course, that a very large percentage of our children will spend their school years carrying the negative label of an “at risk” child and bear the stigma that such labels are intended to create. How many opportunities to participate in special programs or to excel in areas of personal interest will those children be tacitly deprived of – without their parent’s knowledge -- by blue-nosed educators who quietly whisper with arched eye-brow, “Well, Johnny appears to be qualified for that program but, you know, he failed the Potkin Test”? We have now progressed from the implausible to abusive.

Third, if there is a genetic or other predisposition that can be quantified as to how one’s brain reacts to nicotine then we have reached the point where self-serving profiles that will be applied by elitists can be constructed based on genetic and/or behavioral testing. There are also studies that show persons are predisposed to be gay, overweight, or alcoholic, in addition to now how they may respond to smoking. This can become a fundamentalist’s Homeland Security dream. The scene is an airport flight gate, where passengers are organized in two lines. One line is boarding the airplane, passengers stand still in the other. An airport security guard, wearing a name tag that says “Doogoodie” approaches the standing line, and the story goes something like this:

 “Mr. Smith you do have paid ticket.”

“Uh-huh”

“But please make other transportation arrangements.”

“Why?” asks Smith, who is ignored as the guard moves to a lady standing next in line.

“Is there something wrong with my reservation?” she asks.

“No, Ms. Jones, there isn’t anything wrong with your reservation,” the security guard replies, as he turns to address them both.

“Neither of you can board any airplane for any flight originating in the USA. Genetic samples we took while frisking you show that both of you failed the Potkin Test. You are therefore high risk passengers. Your risk profiles are now permanently stored in National Security Agency computer files. Studies show there is a 0.00001789923 percent probability that you may light a cigarette in the bathroom and our epidemiological estimates project that if that were to happen you might kill an average of 17.75689 passengers with secondhand smoke in the first 7.62569 minutes after you light up. That’s just took big a risk to fit into our “Zero Tolerance” profile. And, studies show that people like you are present a 3.78453 times higher probability of being angry passengers than those who pass the Potkin Test.”

Doogoodie cheerily says “Thank you for choosing Hot And High Air” as Jones and Smith confer, to figure out how to get to their business meeting on time.

Doogoodie progresses to Mrs. Adams. He doesn’t bother with pleasantries.

“Mrs. Adams, you cannot board this flight. Your bulbous buns simply do not fit in seats that must be small enough to optimize our passenger revenue-mile load factor. Besides, your Potkin Test shows a 98.6234567 percent probability that you will salivate all over normal passengers, just by thinking about a donut, which, by the way, we don’t serve in the interests of public health. Studies funded by the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation show that you are also a cost liability to society because you refuse to take care of your health. Just looking at yourself, I’m certain that you can understand how true the studies are and how reasonable our boarding policy really is,” he adds.

Doogoodie turns to address two gay men standing in the reject line, holding a jar of KY that has been removed from a carry on bag. The jar has been confiscated on personal Executive Memorandum orders of the U.S. Attorney General, with approval by a senior member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. He never gets to say a word. The two just shake their heads and walk away.

As Jones and Smith leave the gate they hear a commotion and turn around. They see Mrs. Adams astride a supine Doogoodie, loudly threatening to choke the living crap out of him if he doesn’t apologize immediately and put her on that flight.

30 days later the National Security Incident Report (NSIR) reaches a Guantanamo Prisoner Review Panel in the U.S. Attorney General’s office, copy to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s Potkin Profile Perfection and Alternative Incarceration Subcommittee.

“We have a serious one here, Mr. Attorney General,” a staffer says.

“What’s the problem?” the AG asks.

“Well, it seems that two nicotine addicts, a fat broad, and a couple of fags caused a problem in the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. They were all engaged in a cunning conspiracy to interfere with security personnel and flight crews by attempting to unlawfully board Hot And High Air’s flight 666.”

“Any unusual facts, other than the disturbance?”

“Just one. The fat broad quit smoking ten years ago and was wearing three nicotine patches.”

“Well, we know how they are,” the AG says. “Leave the smokers and fairies in Cuba for 60 days, then bring ‘em home. Keep the fat one there on indeterminate hold orders. Potkin studies show that those who wear nicotine patches are more prone to anger and aggression, not more cheerful, relaxed types. Considering her obesity as well, that one is dangerous to society. Besides, our background checks reveal that her grandfather smoked and her mother was a Vietnam War protestor while in college. We simply do not know how those issues may factor into to her overall risk profile. She’ll probably never change.”

Mrs. Adams went to the airport expecting a pleasant trip to visit her new granddaughter. The family now wonders where she is, with no response to inquiries from the airline. All they can determine from the airline’s customer service office is that Grandma was apparently involved in a terrorist plot. Little do they know Grandma is a long way from home and a longer way from coming home. What is her crime? Well, you debate that. Whatever you decide, two stunningly transparent facts remain: her “crime” would never have been committed in a society where politicians and government servants have genuine and honest regard for the dignity and worth of each constituent, nor would the events that triggered her “criminal” behavior have occurred absent an elitist and self-serving profile process.

            We have just progressed from implausible through abusive, into the filthy sublime. For those who shake their heads and loudly proclaim the foregoing short story is ridiculously untrue, I merely point out one undeniable fact: people craft ways to seize control of others’ behavior in order to exercise and exploit it. Were that not true people would not bother to spend time and money creating control mechanisms in the first place. What you have in front of you in the PI’s article is an outright filthy process wherein a fifteen-year lie by Dr. Koop about nicotine addiction is exposed by anti-tobacco’s own studies, while the “study” ground work for an elitist profiling system that is based on that lie is laid. That profile-and-segregate strategy can and will be applied to negatively label and unfavorably stereotype any “Target Group” of U.S. citizens who lawfully consume fast food hamburgers, soft drinks, cigarettes or alcohol. If such profile-based labels and stereotypes can be applied to persons who smoke to enforce a political agenda then it is certain that the same process can and will be applied to overweight persons, gays, non-Christian religious groups, or any other definable population group that the political elite find it expedient to exploit. Those who take that approach to their fellow citizens necessarily have a demeaning and mean-spirited view of others, regardless of whether they act out their agenda with a sticky-sweet smile or abusive language. The filthy personal values that those who embrace such approaches have toward their fellow man is inherent in their behavior toward others, regardless of the words they speak.

If the above short story bothers you, don’t holler at me. A vastly more productive exercise would be to examine your own personal beliefs and values about your fellow citizens, regardless of the lawful products they choose to consume, their physical appearance, their sexual preference, their religious affiliation, or any other personal characteristic. Then once you decide where you stand on that take action on your beliefs, however they may present themselves for you. Far more dangerous to us all than one bigot who proudly delivers a hate speech in front of a brightly burning cross are the hundreds of his fellow citizens who expediently stand silent in the shadows cast by flames of orchestrated intolerance. Predictably, such noncommittal people slink off into the night once the inflammatory entertainment for the evening has burned through its course. We as a people deserve far better than that. But it also follows that we as individuals must bring that better way to fruition for ourselves and future generations by having the will and courage to do what is right by speaking out against this filthy “scientific study” eugenicist’ approach to ourselves and its elitist view of how we are to govern our nation. It is your right to do nothing about that, but know that your timid and expedient silence is all the road that is necessary for the myriad-profile elitist convoy to run on.

Next, we explore the cultural and social behavior aspects of The PI’s report. The not-so-subtle transforming of nicotine patch negative side effects into smokers’ angry behavior as stated in PI’s article is indirectly related to another news report in The Seattle Times today, “Research Links Antibiotics, Breast Cancer,” which I briefly discuss later Both articles amply illustrate how “known facts” about smoking that are stridently proclaimed by anti-tobacco activists and their supporters turn out to be the virtual opposite of what is communicated to the public by the mainstream press.

We knew it all along! According to The PI’s article, there really is something weird about folks who buy into the victimhood that tobacco control promotes to peddle its “Smoke Free” nicotine. Poor “addicts” just can’t get no satisfaction from fake pharmaceutical nicotine substitutes. Well, what’s new about that? The stuff is a lack-luster seller at best, even with hundreds of millions in public health money dedicated to virtually mandating its use statewide. What could those public health dollars be more productively dedicated to, other than peddling pharmaceutical nicotine? Normal people accept the fact that folks either smoke or they don’t, and then leave it at that. Those who mess round with politically correct and “appropriate” fake substitutes quite naturally get into an emotional bind because they are unable to accept themselves as OK the way they are. It’s amazing what a few hundred million in pharmaceutical nicotine grants can do, when applied to spreading guilt and hate about “Target Group” consumers. In a matter of a few short years many otherwise normal people who enjoyed lawfully consuming legal tobacco products have managed to transform themselves. Some now even go so far as to become guilt-ridden “addicts” who compound their problems through using ineffective “Tobacco Free” nicotine products to become politically correct, and therefore accepted by intellectually delinquent and intolerant peers (such peers being defined as those who believe that the entire universe of public discourse evolves around the end of their pointy, “Smoke Free” noses.)

At last, we have a plausible explanation -- thanks to more anti-tobacco junk science that earns virtually unlimited column inches in the mainstream press – for the increasingly vicious and mean-spirited behavior of public health employees and the mainstream press on tobacco issues: they’re hanging around their “Smoke Free” offices sitting on nicotine patches, frustrated that they can’t use the real thing! Perhaps we also have an explanation for why one of the The PI’s featured columnists, Susan Paynter, apparently has a felt need to negatively label her fellow citizens who smoke as those who deprive others of a basic right to life, to stereotype smokers as those living on the margins of society, and to stigmatize smokers with the infamous Nazi color of yellow when referring to smokers’ stained hands. See “Susan Paynter: Ridiculing Her Neighbors”  and “Susan Paynter: Highly Selective Outrage.”

Hostile work environments create odd and dangerous side effects. One side effect could be that trendy, fashionable and “Smoke Free” columnists develop personality disorders through constantly dealing with coworkers who sit on nicotine patches at work and, according to Dr. Potkin, are prone to anger and aggression. Accepting the literal wording of The PI’s “news” at face value, those sitting on nicotine patches at the PI cannot be more cheerful and relaxed types who accept that they occasionally indulge in the real thing. A natural response to the intellectual constipation such an environment creates is to lash out at those who are honest enough to enjoy a good smoke, notably with negative labels, unfavorable stereotypes, and filthy stigmatizations about yellow-stained hands.

It is also surprising to see a study that documents the adverse behavioral side effects of nicotine patches being published as news about smokers by the PI’s News desk. When writing about Ms. Paynter’s column “Like the Phoenix, Smoking Issues Rise Again” I copied Rita Hibbard at the PI’s news desk ritahibbard@seattlepi.com and spoke with her on the phone. Apparently The PI’s news desk still doesn’t get it that dumping on persons who smoke, through ostensibly reporting newsworthy study results, is out of line. Readers may want to send a message to Ms. Hibbard.

This story as reported in the PI adds a bizarre twist, however: weird behavior displayed by those who use nicotine patches is attributed to normal people who choose to smoke. See . . . those “Smoke Free” work environments really do create a distorted reality. Come legislative session mating season between our elected representatives and the antis pushing a statewide smoking ban, studies that document irrational behavior by those on the patch becomes news about what is wrong with smokers. Common sense should tell our legislators that, if true, Dr. Potkin’s study at UC California Irvine confirms beyond reasonable doubt that pharmaceutical nicotine delivery device products should immediately be taxed into oblivion. We have sufficient problems in our society today, we need not add to them with emotionally destabilizing cigarette substitutes.

When I first read The PI’s article about angry nicotine patch users I also thought about a June 2003 research paper published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Tobacco Control journal, "Estimating The Health Consequences Of Replacing Cigarettes With Nicotine Inhalers," by Walton Sumner II, MD at Washington University in Saint Louis. I wrote about that research paper in "XXX Products,"  which includes several quotes. Dr. Sumner’s solution to smoking is to replace cigarettes with deeply inhaled, fast acting and highly addictive nicotine inhalers! Dr. Sumner apparently has no idea of what he could unleash on society. If a low nicotine dose patch creates “people prone to anger and aggression, not more cheerful, relaxed types” can you imagine what more folks tokin’ hits off Nicotrol inhalers will do? Now there’s a sensible alternative that our legislators should seriously listen to: turn laid back smokers into nicotine inhaler-toking and angry addict fiends! That should do wonders in solving road rage problems . . . particularly when the antis get around to their next special-interest push to ban smoking in cars during people’s commute to “Smoke Free” work places.

We have already been treated to a sublime vision of the quintessentially-perfect pharmaceutical nicotine consumer by The New York Times, in its recent article Getting Even With Nicorettes by David Colman. The Times reported:

“And so, five years ago, when Mr. Burroughs met Nicorette, he started chewing and never stopped. It is now his favorite thing on earth. ‘You're supposed to start with a certain number of pieces a day and taper down,’ he said. ‘I did the opposite.’ Now he goes through three 168-piece boxes (at $53 each) a week, or 72 pieces a day. If that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that by age 33, when he quit, he had been smoking for 20 years and was up to three packs a day.”

Now there’s an intelligent consumer! I was in New York last week for a trial appearance before the New York Stock Exchange as a securities fraud expert witness, where I bought smokes for $6.86 per pack at a convenience store (however there’s virtually no place left in the city where one can smoke them.) Three packs a day at today’s prices of $6.86 per pack equals $20.58 per day or $144.06 per week. Three boxes of Nicorette per week, at $53.00 per box, equals $159.00. Two interesting facts arise from that math: first, I cannot imagine smoking two packs of smokes per day, let alone three, so Mr. Burroughs’ smoking level is incredibly high; second, even at that incredibly high rate of smoking and stratospheric New York cigarette costs it still is more expensive to chew Nicorette than to smoke! Bear in mind that average consumption of cigarettes in anti-tobacco studies is reported at about 24 cigarettes per day for “heavy smokers.” This fellow is GlaxoSmithKline’s fondest dream addict, he spends $159 per week, about $683 per month, or $8,268 per year on Nicorette! All that to become a role model for what The PI’s article describes as a person “prone to anger and aggression.” Looking at the picture of Mr. Burroughs in The Times’ article I wonder if, judging by what The PI reports about nicotine patch users, three boxes of Nicorette per week equals one very uptight, highly strung, and mightily PO’d dude. You be the judge. GlaxoSmithKline’s dream-addict customer is quite a role model for kids, to be sure. Mr. Burroughs is a clear example of the truth about pharmaceutical nicotine products, as reported for more than 21,000 California smokers in a smoking cessation study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. That study concluded that since becoming available over-the-counter Nicotine Replacement Therapy is no longer effective in increasing long-term smoking cessation in California smokers, but that and other studies raise serious risks of addiction to “Smoke Free” nicotine. Mr. Burroughs may have quit smoking but his reported behavior can only be described as that of a committed “Smoke Free” nicotine addict.

In contrast with Mr. Burroughs, a person who smokes a carton of cigarettes a week at Washington’s price of about $43.00 per carton will spend about $185 per month, or $2,236 per year. If one rolls their own it costs at most $16 to $20 per carton, depending on the tobacco used. Rolling your own works out to a high end cost of $20 per week, $86 per month or $1,040 per year. From that data one reasonably concludes that GlaxoSmithKline’s Nicotine Replacement Therapy customers are clear examples of consumer economic stupidity, in addition to being those who are “prone to anger and aggression.” If the alleged purpose of smoking is simply to ingest nicotine, why would a rational person pay $8,268 per year for nicotine they can have for between $1,040 and $2,236? Being politically correct and a pharmaceutical role model can be very expensive, indeed. It appears that some will pay at least a $6,032 premium – more than $500 per month – for the privilege of being the Big Apple’s “Smoke Free” nicotine poster child.

Readers may want to study Mr. Colman’s article a little closer. He reports that merely buying “Smoke Free” nicotine is not the end. One also needs accommodate other expensive products and services to quit smoking:

“Thinking about quitting? It's not easy, in case you haven't heard. The latest news is that nothing less than a trinity of aid — an antidepressant, nicotine replacement and some form of counseling — gives the best odds of helping a smoker quit. Still, the North American common smoker is a suspicious creature, notoriously difficult to domesticate and wary of cures devised by humans. Take the patch. It may steamroll one's nicotine levels into a nice even line, but it does not address what happens when a smoker wants a cigarette anyway. Now. After all, addiction is an antidote to monotony, not vice versa.”

So there you have it, the holy trinity of pharmaceutical nicotine peddlers! Not to mention that, as I reported in “The Duke of Nicotine”,  folks from the University of Minnesota and Duke University co-authored a report that recommended smoking Philip Morris’ Next “Nicotine Free” cigarettes, while using pharmaceutical Nicotine Replacement Therapy products, may be a “fruitful” approach to smoking cessation. The report was published by the Society for Research on Nicotine and tobacco’s journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Geez, folks apparently take seriously what such publications print, too. While you are shelling out about eight grand a year for Glaxo SmithKline’s Nicorette, you also need to supplement that with Glaxo’s Zyban anti-depressant. Then you must also pay to sit in a room and listen to an anti mew at you about how the tip of his pointy “Smoke Free” nose is offended by the alleged smell on your clothes, even though you haven’t lit up within a hundred yards of that whiner’s pristine bod. Pretty soon you’re up to a thousand bucks a month or more to sustain your addiction to self-abuse in pursuit of being socially accepted by twits who mandate politically correct behavior to line their own pockets with your money. Now relax and light up a Philip Morris “Nicotine Free” Next cigarette to come down off that bucket of worms!

Don’t like that? Well, those who do smoke could just quit smoking, of course. Included in the freedom of choice about smoking is the choice to not smoke, too. For those who make that choice remember that during the 1970s and early 1980s – before Dr. C. Everett Koop convinced you with his 1988 report that you no longer had a habit that you can quit, you now have an addiction that must be maintained – sharp declines in both youth and adult smokers occurred, despite that fact that tobacco companies reduced cigarette prices. Few things could more stunningly prove that what we believe to be true tends to become our living reality than Dr. Koop’s crafting and promotion of the new consumer beliefs about nicotine addiction. If you believe that you are hopelessly addicted to nicotine then you are – so join Mr. Burroughs in the line outside GlaxoSmithKline. On the other hand, when you stop to think about who filches your dollar by exploiting that new consumer belief you may realize they you are only so addicted to nicotine as you believe yourself to be.  If you choose to not smoke you can do so with committed effort, regardless of what GlaxoSmithKline and tobacco control advocates would lead you to believe to the contrary to puff their own bottom lines. I wish you well and all the best on that personal journey to quit smoking. If that’s your choice, then genuinely commit to it because you honestly believe that is best thing for you to do. And guess what? Yes, you will succeed in quitting smoking once you embrace a personal belief that you genuinely desire to do so. The Forces be with you!

I also share a few thoughts with those folks who choose to smoke. First, do not let anti-tobacco’s diatribe damage your own self-worth. It should strikingly evident at this point that all the hype and snottiness about smoking is crafted to put you on the defensive about your choice to lawfully consume a legal product. If smoking were truly the cause of all the horrors promoted by anti-tobacco the only responsible action by legislators would be to prohibit its manufacture and sale in the United States. Since anti-tobacco and Master Settlement Agreement settling states are not about to cut off their own gravy train by eliminating tobacco they can live with the results of taking a free-ride on smokers’ nickel. At the least they could show deference to the consumer source of their own paychecks by quietly pick-pocketing small change from their consumer targets without spewing loads of toilet tongue at them. Second, ignore the self-serving mantras of anti-smokers, at this point they are nothing more or less than the braying of personal preference delinquents who choose to dump on their neighbors for bucks and clout. Third, accept your choice to smoke as an adult and stop taking a load of guff about it. And fourth, get involved in public discourse and voting. Anti-tobacco’s line is now so far removed from reality that it cannot be sustained with even the most catatonic grant-grubbing legislator. Write, E-Mail, or phone your legislators and let them know how you feel. If that is too much bother for you, then consider that for every one of you who chooses to not get involved in tobacco control and smoking ban issues there is at least one person in the state capitol or our public health system who is living off a pharmaceutical or tobacco settlement grant to be involved in those issues. You can bet those folks will testify, vote, and lobby for their own pay check rather than your rights. Stay quiet if you wish, but at least acknowledge that you create your own consequences by doing so.

Finally, before progressing to The Seattle Times’ article about breast cancer, I recommend how smokers could deal with the inevitable control freak who goes “Eew, tobacco smoke” (with the now-obligatory waving of a hand in front of their face, accompanied by a most conspicuous forced cough) when they observe someone smoking at the opposite end of a parking lot, etc. I recommend that you ask them if they rely on studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association to justify their rude behavior. Mention in particular the Ostuka study published in JAMA about the alleged effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers’ cardiovascular systems. Then offer them a cigarette and recommend that they light up to protect themselves from secondhand smoke. After you closely observe their apoplectic reaction ask them to leave, preferably to study and become reasonably informed about anti-tobacco junk science.

Peer reviews for the Otsuka study point out there was a lack of effect of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers and raised the question if that meant passive smoking is not harmful to smokers. Since there is no apparent effect of secondhand smoke on persons who smoke by backwards anti-tobacco logic, derived from their own studies, why can’t we can save a whole lot of time and expense over smoking bans by mandating that everyone over 18 smoke? The antis and states would love it,  they could at least quadruple their tobacco revenue haul with the stroke of a pen! Astrid Berg at the Washington American Lung Association and our Washington Secretary of Health, Mary C. Selecky, would no doubt appreciate their additional tobacco-consumer-funded pay raises. Perhaps that is a little far fetched, but what is not far fetched at all is that Dr. Sumner points out that nonsmokers could become users of pharmaceutical nicotine inhalers and that Mr. Burroughs reportedly hands out free samples of Nicorette to nonsmokers. GlaxoSmithKline and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation certainly don’t want anyone to smoke, but they apparently believe everyone – smokers and nonsmokers alike – is fair game as a prospective customer for their “Smoke Free” nicotine products. Peer reviews for the Ostuka study also commented that the level of exposure to secondhand smoke was not even recorded for the 30 man sample of that study, nor was the ventilation system described or the potential effects of ventilation examined. So with Otsuka we wind up with a short term study of 15 smokers and 15 nonsmokers in Japan where secondhand smoke exposure was not measured or ventilation systems considered, that produced results that said one-half of the study population was not effected by secondhand smoke. That is not an encouraging or even remotely valid basis for public policy that effects more than a million people in the State of Washington alone.

Along the lines of questionable science, an article published by The Seattle Times today, February 17, 2004, “Research Links Antibiotics, Breast Cancer,” by Warren King  bears mention. Mr. King’s article reports:

“Women who take even moderate amounts of antibiotics appear to have an increased risk of breast cancer, Seattle researchers have found. The risk of the disease as much as doubles in those who take the most antibiotics, compared with women who don't take the medications, the scientists concluded in a large study of Group Health Cooperative members. ‘A study trend indicated that the more antibiotics taken, the higher the risk for the cancer,’ said Christine Velicer, an epidemiologist at Group Health's Center for Health Studies and lead author of the research report appearing in tomorrow's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

Later in the article Mr. King reports:

“The scientists don't know why antibiotics might increase the risk of the disease. They emphasized that more research is needed to verify their findings. Factors other than the antibiotics could be involved, they said.”

That simply cannot be true! Why, according to the sage pronouncements of anti-tobacco and mainstream media that diligently reports its junk science as legitimate news smoking causes breast cancer! Well, . . . er . . . uh-huh . . . maybe: so allegedly does obesity and abortions according to the mainstream media science and health hacks. It seems that everything and anything that is politically incorrect will, with absolute certainty, cause breast cancer – with an exception of course for pharmaceutical products, which require more studies to confirm a 2X risk factor. Would that anti-tobacco activists and their political supporters be so earnestly circumspect about confounding factors and more studies being required to confirm that tobacco causes breast cancer. Such medical reporting is a disservice to women and a transparent illustration of tobacco control’s willful mendacity and degree of scientific corruption: it turns out that there is a 2X confounding risk factor probability that breast cancer diagnosed in women who smoke could have been caused by anti-tobacco’s own special-interest pharmaceutical sponsors’ antibiotic products. Yet many of those unfortunate women will still go through anti-tobacco’s demeaning and humiliating “you’re one of them, you must change who you are to be accepted” smoking cessation mandates as part of their treatment for breast cancer.

What is particularly troubling about that article in The Times is that Group Health cooperative is a long standing and well-favored recipient of grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. See, for example, an $8,803,416 RWJ foundation grant to Group Health for Improving Chronic Illness Care. With that kind of money floating around Group Health from pharmaceutical special-interests one can safely bet the farm that any statistical cancer risk factor associated with tobacco will become an absolute certainty, regardless of how small or manipulated it may be, while a 2X risk factor for breast cancer caused by antibiotics will require more studies to confirm, forever.

Public health research and policy are important. We the people need to be able to rely on the integrity or our public health and governing institutions. Absent that reliance we increasingly find ourselves at risk of hitting the rocky shoals of special-interest mercantile advocacy, while enduring the lowest common denominator of profit-mongering “studies,” in the name of public health. Is that phenomenon attributable to the fact that much of our state health policy research and development may in fact be coordinated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation? Perhaps our addiction to special-interest studies to promote public health agendas is at least part of the reason why we Americans today experience the most expensive medical system in the world, while simultaneously finding ourselves to have some of the highest cancer rates, highest mortality from use of prescription drugs as directed, and increasing death through infections in hospitals. Having spent hundreds of billions each year build a towering crystal cathedral ostensibly dedicated to our health and well-being we find ourselves consumed by cancers, infections and orchestrated intolerance while we watch the temple of medicine self-implode to its coarse foundation of junk science sand.

We the people cannot earnestly complain about that, to a great extent we have done it to ourselves. Every time we accept and parrot as “fact” a junk science sound bite mantra that suits our personal preference about what others should do we weaken the foundation of scientific integrity on which our mutual self-interest rests. Each mandate that we stridently attempt to impose on our fellow citizens to reduce their waist line, eliminate the beer they have with a pizza, or stop them from lawfully consuming any legal product of which we personally disapprove confirms our predisposition to blame others for our own dysfunctional behavior and self-serving condition. Perhaps it is time that we grow up and begin to act like responsible adults when it comes to honestly assessing our own behavior and the quality our current health care delivery systems.

It may be that a good place to begin unwinding the medical services mess we presently endure is to seriously consider becoming “Pharmaceutical Free.” We can begin that process by regarding any institution that uses Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or drug company money to support its studies as being scientifically suspect and integrity-challenged. We then simply follow the special-interest grant money trails to find the crooks. The first thing we do is eliminate those miscreants from honest public health.

Norman E. Kjono