Glaxo Wellcome
And SmithKline
Drug Marketing

By Norman E. Kjono

New York NY - The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 1998, an article by Suein L. Hwang, headlined "Drug Makers See a Risky New Role for Nicotine:"

"The drug makers' new strategy [long term use of smoking cessation products] has some obvious advantages. `There will be less environmental smoke,' says Neal Benowitz, a nicotine expert at the University of California at San Francisco who was one of the scientific editors of the landmark surgeon general's report of 1988 that concluded that nicotine is addictive. `I'd much rather see people dependent on nicotine than on tobacco," he adds.

An interesting shift in the anti-tobacco story. Drug companies are exploring FDA approval for long term use of "Smoke Free" nicotine delivery products. I set that on the back burner, to see how it developed. It didn't take long for the unseen hand to start writing on the wall.

Today, I believe this is one of the most important pieces to the anti-tobacco puzzle.

Less than two weeks later, I was following a story about a public hearing in Madison, Wisconsin. The hearing was as usual for smoking bans, with well organized antis out in force, to express their spontaneous outrage at smoking and tobacco companies. A few voices of protest spoke through anti-tobacco's drumbeat. The usual orchestrated hearing to pass another smoking ban.

Then a stray fact came across my desk. Dr. Michael Fiore from the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention testified at the Madison hearing, in support of the smoking ban. There was an interesting twist, however: a professorship in Nicotine Dependency at the University of Wisconsin was funded by a grant from the drug company Glaxo Wellcome, according to a March 5, 1998 article in the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times. The headline for the article by staff writer Gwen Carelton is "Grants to UW Would Fund Asthma, Smoking, Leukemia Research." Is Dr. Fiore's paycheck dependent on a drug company?

There sits Dr. Fiore, extolling the virtues of a "Tobacco Free" and "Smoke Free," but not a "Nicotine Free," work environment in Wisconsin.

Glaxo Wellcome gives grants to UW. A UW professor then provides testimony to influence public policy. His testimony directly supports use of drug company "Smoke Free" nicotine products. That testimony will result in public policy diminishing the opportunity to consume competitive tobacco nicotine products.

And, of course, one wonders what to do with "the habit" while working in a "Smoke Free" environment. Well, there's always Zyban, the patch, or gum that you can munch on.

Quite a marketing coup!

Luekemia and asthma research grants are a good thing. But drug companies funding tobacco "intervention" is a little rich. That is pure competition, using the medical profession and public health policy to develop and exploit a market for "Smoke Free" nicotine products. Is public policy just another tool for drug companies?

What about "addicting," lethal, nicotine? Is "Nicotine Free" the last thing that drug companies want? In keeping with current drug company marketing themes, nicotine is now "benign." The new spin on nicotine, reported by Ms. Hwang in The Wall Street Journal, is:

"While some researchers still believe nicotine may not be good for the heart, most scientists now think the critical addictive agent in cigarettes is relatively benign in low doses compared with cigarette tar, which has dozens of carcinogens, and cancer causing agents." (emphasis added.)

I note that the spin on "benign" nicotine also contains the principal motivation to use drug company products: drug company products do not contain cigarette tar, with its multitude of alleged carcinogens and cancer causing agents.

So there we have it: use drug company nicotine products and the nicotine that you consume is benign, but use tobacco companies' lethal nicotine products and you bear the stigma of being a social pariah by spewing secondhand smoke.

And what of the civil rights and liberties of people who choose to smoke - citizens who lawfully consume legal tobacco products? It seems that civil rights are a disposable encumbrance to Dr. Fiore and the University of Wisconsin pursuing a grant buck, or Glaxo Wellcome's efforts to promote its "Smoke Free" nicotine products.

What about small business owners, forced to bear the economic burdens of intrusive regulatory demands for smoking bans, as supported by drug companies? Should restaurants and bars consider their revenue lost to smoking bans to be a charitable donation to drug companies?

There's bucks to be had from captive "addicts." After several years of promoting the idea that smelly smokers kill their friends and coworkers with secondhand smoke, the market for "Smoke Free" nicotine dependency maintenance products is to be fully exploited. It's now just a matter of divvying up the market for the billions of dollars in nicotine products that the "addicts" consume each year.

No, this is not cynicism in the extreme, nor is the current drug company spin merely a serendipity opportunity that presented itself in 1998. Drug company support of anti-tobacco and anti-smoking activists goes back years: back to when the patches and gums appeared on the market more than a decade ago. It's just that such drug company support of anti-tobacco and anti-smoking activists has become so brazen today that it is no longer quietly hidden or overlooked.

Is smoking now regarded by drug companies as a gateway habit, leading to the really good stuff? And the good stuff is FDA approved, with studies from the National Institutes of Health supporting the "safety" of its use.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, drug companies have quietly funded research into health benefits of reducing the number of cigarettes smoked, rather than quitting smoking. In addition, Ms. Hwang reports that SmithKline Beecham began exploring with the FDA in 1996 extending the recommended period for use of its Nicorette gum and NicoDerm CQ patches. And Glaxo Wellcome is studying prolonged use of its smoking cessation drug, Zyban.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and drug manufacturer Hoechst Marion Russel have researched using a nicotine patch while continuing to smoke. So the National Institutes of Health, the same folks who have blasted tobacco company manufacturers of nicotine products for years, now provide support and research that says it is "safe" to use drug company nicotine products.

The FDA approved it, NIH says its safe, and you're socially unacceptable if you use competitive tobacco products. By smoking, one becomes a social pariah for reasons unique to competitive tobacco products: lethal secondhand tobacco smoke kills friends and coworkers.

Hmm. OK, I got it: use tobacco company products to smoke at home, and maybe in your car, but munch on drug company gum, or use the patch, while at work or socializing. I'd better stop by the drug store on the way to work.

This is just too much of a pat hand for drug companies, to be coincidence. Major marketing efforts are conducted over extended periods, they are not a one time event. Public opinion takes years to permanently influence.

And we certainly can say that public opinion has been influenced about smoking, as well as people who smoke. But by whom, and to what end? Anti-tobacco may not have motivations that are all that altruistic, after all. In fact, it appears that anti-tobacco activists conduct their efforts for the most base and mercenary reasons of all.

Those who presently find themselves to be conveniently intolerant of their friends and neighbors who choose to smoke might want to pause and consider a simple probability: what if your chosen intolerance is the product of a ten year plus social engineering effort, a project financed and aggressively promoted by multi-billion dollar international drug companies to maximize their "fair share" of the market for nicotine products. How do you feel about that?

Folks out there who are actively involved in alternative medicine or naturopathic health movements should pay particular attention to the current nationwide anti-tobacco frenzy. It's a pretty good indicator of what the druggist-FDA-NIH-allopathic doctors-university research cartel can, and will, do to promote its interests.

A Remarkable Coincidence?

Boy, now there's a deal! Drug companies have solved the problem of intolerance for smokers and smoking, and opened up probably one-half of the well-established nicotine market to drug company "Smoke Free" products. After all, good clean competition is the American way!

What a remarkable coincidence: right at the time when public intolerance of smoking (therefore of persons who smoke) has reached its crescendo, drug manufacturers appear with a "Tobacco Free" nicotine alternative! And that "Smoke Free" alternative, which comfortably maintains one's dependency on nicotine while working in a "Smoke Free" environment, is readily available from a friendly drug company.

Is this reality a serendipity coincidence? Have we experienced a nationwide cosmic synchronisity? Hardly.

Of course "Smoke Free" nicotine products like the patch and gum are available from drug companies today; drug companies have socially engineered the public market for years, to make their products the nicotine delivery method of choice. It's just that it is now time to step into public markets in a big way, to scoop up the profits to be realized from their intensive market engineering.

And scoop up the profits they will. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 1997 SmithKline Beecham revenue from sales of NicoDerm CQ patches and Nicorette gum grew 30%, approaching $450 million per year. If two SmithKline Beecham "Smoke Free" products generate nearly a half-billion in annual revenues, what are the financial incentives for drug companies in a $25 billion per year cigarette market?

Let's think about that a minute. The cigarette market is $25 billion per year, and total sales of over-the-counter smoking cessation (read as: "Smoke Free" Nicotine Dependency Maintenance) aids were about $700 million in 1997.

Now include in this thought a hypothetical marketing decision by drug companies, one that is quite plausible: why not create a new market by using existing regulatory and professional relationships to capture, say, one-half of current nicotine sales for drug companies?

Question: What is the potential drug company market for "Smoke Free" nicotine products? Answer: About $12.5 billion per year, minimum.

Question: What is the potential growth in annual revenue to drug companies, if that "Smoke Free" nicotine market is fully exploited? Answer: Starting from $700 million, about $11.8 billion in new revenue per year, forever. That works out to a potential increase of nearly one-thousand seven hundred percent (1,700%).

Question: How can the drug company market for "Smoke Free" nicotine products be developed? Answer: By making smoking, but not nicotine use, socially unacceptable; by creating an environment of extreme peer pressure from society that negatively labels those who smoke; by systematically reducing the places where people can smoke cigarettes; and by making tobacco company's competitive products more expensive, through punitive taxes. In short, precisely what anti-tobacco programs have been doing for years.

Question: How much would developing the "Smoke Free" nicotine market cost drug companies? Answer: Buying that $10 billion per year plus market would be dirt cheap. A couple of hundred million to university anti-tobacco research grants and professorships, some years of lobbying government to set up a nationwide anti-tobacco campaign,
a few tens of million in political donations, and an odd lot million or three sprinkled around to support anti-tobacco activists, would do the job well. It has.

The fundamental answer as to how drug companies would socially engineer the market for nicotine is to make using tobacco competitors' products socially unacceptable and prohibitively expensive, compared to using drug company "Smoke Free" products. This has been accomplished very well by anti-tobacco activists.

Add to this the entrenched relationship between drug companies and regulators. Drug company nicotine products will sell because using a competitors' cigarettes would be generally banned. "Use Nicorette! After all, it's the law!" could become the common nicotine refrain.

Perhaps the FDA is, indeed, the lap dog of international drug companies, as many allege. Maybe the drug company lap dog is a trained pit bull, as well; a dog that routinely attacks citizens who do not fit the social stereotype required to maximize drug company markets. Is the FDA merely a servant of drug companies, one used to shape public health policy so that it accommodates drug company marketing strategies?

This possibility exists for anti-fat, as well as anti-tobacco. Anti-fat Shape Up America is another social engineering program, one that is based on the anti-tobacco American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (Project ASSIST) model. Doctors, university medical research, the FDA, and drug companies are among those involved in Shape Up America. Those parties are a common link between anti-fat and anti-tobacco. They are also a driving force behind the coercive healthism we are experiencing today.

Is the anti-fat social engineering program Shape Up America part of the explanation as to why the diet drug Phen-Pfen made it to the markets with express-line FDA approval, despite objection from many medical professionals?

Perhaps we now know why anti-tobacco is anti-smoking, not anti-nicotine. If the drug related to smoking, nicotine, were socially unacceptable it would kill the $12.5 billion market drug companies have been developing for their "Smoke Free" products.

Drug Companies And Anti-Tobacco Slogans

I personally believe that drug company nicotine marketing efforts may explain several "party line" mantras of anti-tobacco:

1. Secondhand smoke kills - is the most common refrain, despite a March 8, 1998 story in the London Daily Telegraph, headlined "Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official". The current story says that the World Health Organization (WHO) is suppressing a study of its own that shows secondhand smoke does not present the hazards aggressively touted by anti-tobacco.

We also hear about the threat of secondhand smoke while reading smoking bans that include written provisions declaring any other indoor air quality regulation to be "not appropriate," as occurred in Washington State in 1994. Smoking bans do not equal clean indoor air.

I address in greater detail the issues of indoor air quality and smoking bans, including a history of air quality regulation in our state, in "Time To Come Up For Air," at www.forces-cdn.com. That is a very important subject.

If the risks, hazards, and health treats to nonsmokers of secondhand smoke, as touted by anti-tobacco activists, are shown to be false, the greatest incentive for people to use "Smoke Free" nicotine alternatives would evaporate.

2. Smokers standing in front of buildings indulging their habit are unsightly, dangerous, and annoying - in disregard of the fact that the activists touting that line caused smokers to be in front of the building, in the first place.

If smokers weren't driven into the streets to indulge, there would be little or no incentive to munch away on Nicorette gum in the office.

So do we replace groups of smokers at the front door of buildings with Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham representatives handing out free samples of Zyban and Nicorette, just to get folks through the day at work?

3. Smokers stink - a common refrain, one that became rather boisterous in early 1997. Smokers make other people stink, as well.

Just ask radio talk show host Dori Monson of Seattle's KIRO AM 710, he'll tell you how bad smokers stink, on the air. "Vastly reduce the economic burden of dry-cleaning bills: mandate that everyone chew Nicorette gum!" could be the antis next refrain. And, magically, an unseen hand presents that bill in Congress (promoted by drug company lobbyists, complete with a media campaign that includes new "scientific" studies.)

So use drug company gum or patches when you are out socializing, those products do not have the "stinky" disadvantages that competitors' cigarettes do. As Mr. Benowitz of SmithKline Beecham points out, their product even reduces environmental smoke.

4. Anti-tobacco "Saves the Kids" - for drug companies? Conveniently overlooked in this stock refrain of anti-tobacco is that adult quit rates have decreased, and kids' smoking rates have increased, since anti-tobacco programs began operating.

But drug companies support Project ASSIST and other anti-tobacco programs, to save the kids. Start checking the membership of anti-tobacco coalitions, you'll find that drug companies are active and participating members.

Anti-tobacco coalition programs have reversed adult quit rate trends and contributed to more kids' smoking, as confirmed by University of San Francisco anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz, in e-mail statements to the "Stan Glantz Announcement List," December 26, 1997:

"For a summary of why the failure to reduce adult smoking was totally predictable, see my editorial, `The youth access trap' (Am J. Pub. Health, 1996;86:158-158).", and;

". . . when the [anti-smoking] campaign was focused on kids, youth smoking went up 30% and progress in adults stopped."

How many drug company research dollars has the University of San Francisco received?

Look for dollars into anti-tobacco, and you'll find drug company money. You will find that drug companies support "Smoke Free" environments and anti-smoking campaigns in a variety of ways, including testimony at public hearings and contributing to anti-tobacco group.

That may sell nicotine patches and gum, but it does not save the kids.

Drug Companies And Anti-Tobacco Programs

It's rather strange; neither drug companies nor anti-tobacco promote the idea of anti-nicotine, or "Nicotine Free" environments.

Not only are drug companies in the enviable position of developing their "fair share" of an established nicotine market, but they also enjoy the benefits of programs they support (such as Project ASSIST) "stabilizing" the nicotine market by decreasing the rate at which smokers quit. And the number of kids starting to smoke has increased due to activists' focus on kids.

I discuss the correlation of anti-tobacco programs with a decrease in adult quit rates, and an increase in kid smoking rates, in more detail in "Bickering Pickpockets" at www.forces-cdn.com. It may be of interest to some readers to access and review that commentary. "Hands Off Our Kids" may also be of interest to many.

Drug companies are therefore introducing their "Smoke Free" nicotine alternatives into a stabilized nicotine dependency market, and will enjoy the benefits of that market forever because new nicotine consumers (kids) are coming into that market at an increasing rate today.

Why not let kids get hooked on smokes, then show them how to use the patch or gum to accommodate their nicotine dependency when smoking is inconvenient or where it is banned? Drug companies can engage in the ultimate rationalization here, "After all, some kids are going to smoke anyway, why not get our fair share of the kids' nicotine revenue? We're really helping kids by saving them from the carcinogens alleged to be in cigarette tar. Really."

Best of all, the drug companies get to place the blame for their new revenue stream on the "Evil Empire" tobacco industry. Now that's "innovative" marketing!

Drug companies also get a subsidy, and marketing support, from tobacco companies to develop their "Smoke Free" market. This is due to the fact that, under the proposed tobacco settlement terms, tobacco companies will pay billions in penalties if the kids' smoking rate does not decline by specified percentages. The penalty money will finance anti-tobacco campaigns.

The kid's smoking rate will not decrease, it will continue to increase if the tobacco settlement is approved. More kids will smoke under that settlement because the annual budget for Project ASSIST is increased under its terms.

Originally, Project ASSIST was a seven year $135 million federal grant program, or $15 million per year. 1998 is its last year. The tobacco settlement, however, earmarks $225 million in new funding for ASSIST in perpetuity, and another $80 million for smoking cessation
programs administered by the anti-tobacco faithful.

But the demonstrated reality of Project ASSIST is that adult quit rates have declined, and kid smoking rates have increased, since the program was announced in 1991.

Drug Companies, Anti-tobacco, And Cancer

September 10-12, 1990 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored an international symposium of cancer specialists to examine the relationship between vitamin C and cancer. The three day NCI symposium was titled "Ascorbic Acid: Biological Functions and Relationship to Cancer."

The NCI symposium was attended by NCI director Dr. Samuel Broder and two-time Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling. It was also attended by 130 scientists and doctors who presented about 40 papers on the subject. Of 47 scientific studies examined, 34 provided findings that vitamin C has a protective and preventive effect for several cancers, including those of the lung, esophagus, and mouth. Symposium papers specifically examined the effects of vitamin C on cancer-causing chemical reactions, including cigarette smoke.

Among the findings or conclusions from that symposium, as reported in Appendix VI of "Cancer and Vitamin C," by Linus Pauling and Ewan Cameron (Camino Books), was:

"After much debate over various vitamin C studies and patient case histories, Dr. Broder acknowledged that vitamin C may well be of value in preventing cancer and as an adjunct in cancer treatment."

The above conclusions certainly seem to have credibility with Project ASSIST's nationwide program manager, the American Cancer Society (ACS). ACS is, after all, providing commercial endorsements of Florida citrus products (a significant source of vitamin C) as part of a healthy diet that could be helpful in preventing cancer. Many probably recall the television commercials that include the ACS endorsement.

Yet, not a word about smokers using vitamin C as an aid in preventing or protecting against cancer is mentioned in anti-tobacco "Action Plans" prepared under the supervision of NCI, and implemented through Project ASSIST management by ACS.

This omission of vitamin C and cancer prevention information in anti-tobacco's "Action Plans" is not mere oversight. Project ASSIST was announced October 1991. At the time the NCI symposium on vitamin C was held in 1990, the final proposals between NCI and prospective Project ASSIST states were being finalized. In fact the "Best and Final Proposal" to NCI for Washington State's participation in Project ASSIST is dated in the autumn of 1990.

In 1990 NCI and ACS had credible medical information that directly addressed the subject of prevention and protection for smoking related cancers. And it is equally clear that in 1990 NCI and ACS had the money ($135 million), the infrastructure (Project ASSIST), and the labor (anti-tobacco activists and staff) to communicate that information to a well-known high risk group: persons who smoke.

Why was the money, infrastructure and staff of Project ASSIST not used, at least in part, in an aggressive public education campaign to inform the public of credible medical information about how to reduce the risks of cancer, should one choose to smoke?

I leave answering that question to individual readers, folks need to address that issue in their own minds and to their own satisfaction. One's medical care is, after all, personal.

I address the subject of NCI, ACS, cancer, and vitamin C more thoroughly in "The Light Begins To Break Through", starting on page two with a research challenge to the press, at www.forces-cdn.com. To me, this is an extremely important subject. It may be of interest to some readers to access and read that commentary.

If smoking and cancer are so directly related, and smokers are an extremely high risk group for cancer, then why didn't NCI aggressively promote through Project ASSIST use of a natural substance like vitamin C that director Broder of NCI agreed had a protective and preventive relationship to cancer?

If reducing the alleged costs of treating smoking related illness, which includes smoking related cancer according to anti-tobacco, is a true objective of Project ASSIST, why does it not promote use of a natural substance like vitamin C that can protect against, and possibly prevent, one of the most expensive smoking-related illnesses: lung cancer?

Where do the benefits accrue from this omission of important natural medicine information in Project ASSIST public health materials? You guessed it, into the pockets of doctors and drug companies; medical interests who sell professional services such as cancer surgery and products like chemo therapy.

Certainly tobacco companies do not benefit from smoking related cancer, if such cancer is directly related to smoking. Sometimes we need to listen as intently for what is not said as we do to what is alleged.

There is an important, if somewhat lengthy question to consider about anti-tobacco and vitamin C. The question is: how many people have been treated for cancer that they may not have had, if Project ASSIST had worked as diligently at communicating the credible evidence of vitamin C's protective and preventive effects in relationship to cancer as it has worked at promoting the questionable theory that secondhand smoke kills nonsmokers?

For nonsmokers, which would you rather government health programs spend your tax dollars to promote: the alleged risks of secondhand smoke, or information about natural products that have been credibly shown to prevent, or protect against, cancer?

A Troubling Probability

Public health policy, as currently promoted by anti-tobacco activists and drug companies, has broad and far reaching implications for all of us. Anti-tobacco directly influences our work and cultural environments, including nearly every subject or activity we encounter in our day-to-day activities.

As seen with Dr. Fiore testifying in Madison, Wisconsin, many who directly influence public health policy regarding "Smoke Free" and "Tobacco Free" enviroments are, quite literally, on the payroll of those who stand to benefit handsomely by creating a negative stigma for smoking and people who smoke: drug companies, multinational cartels aggressively peddling their gums, patches, and nicotine substitute chemicals created in their laboratories.

We, as a people, are not merely choosing to support a few new "anti-whatever-this-time" regulations in the great smoking debate. We are making choices about how we govern ourselves as a people. Those choices about our governing process are being imposed upon us by multinational enterprises who conspicuously thrust their economic means and political clout directly into our town hall hearings about the personal behavior of our neighbors and our fellow citizens.

Most would say anyone who believes that a substantial portion of the nationwide campaign against smoking was a marketing ploy by drug companies has to be an extraordinarily cynical paranoid schizophrenic. After all, the drug companies are our friends.

And it is particularly offensive (or just plain dumb), some would say, to suggest that drug companies would target the kids' market for their products. Drug companies are kid friendly, just ask any pediatrician.

Then I ask myself, "How many kids are on prescription mood-altering drugs like Prozac or Ritalin? And how many prescriptions for Amoxicillin or similar antibiotics, to treat ear or sinus infections, are filled each day?"

Pediatricians have buckets full of prescription pads that tell us precisely how kid-focused drug companies are. They even have dinosaur and cartoon character patches for the kids, provided as promotional items by drug companies.

I know, I've been there with my son, and a family member worked in sales for a drug company. I also know that my son probably had more antibiotics prescribed for him in his first two years than I had in my life before I joined the Navy.

Despite these daily realities in clinics and doctors' offices, people tend to deny or overlook the fact that drug companies are, after all, in the business of selling drugs. As the antis point out, nicotine is just another drug of choice.

But to what length will drug companies go to peddle their wares? I wonder how far drug companies will go in light of routine and aggressive FDA tactics used to interfere with naturopathic medicine, herbal remedies, and food supplement products.

There is one agency close to the hearts of doctors and anti-tobacco: the FDA. There is one industry with a close, some say incestuous, relationship with the FDA: drug companies. The FDA is also aggressively involved in promoting anti-tobacco. Is drug company "Smoke Free" nicotine product marketing assistance from the FDA a reality? I believe so.

But let's not get paranoid. Everybody knows the FDA exercises its
regulatory power in the interests of the public. By doing so, they assure safe, reliable, and necessary medication; drugs our society apparently cannot function without.

And yet, I can't shake the thought of Dr. Fiore testifying in Madison, Wisconsin before a health commission hearing in support of a smoking ban. I find it difficult to overlook that his livelihood appears to be dependent upon the good graces of a wealthy and powerful drug companya company aggressively developing its share of a $10 billion plus market expansion for "Smoke Free" nicotine delivery products.

Anti-tobacco May Be a "Noble Enterprise"

But at What Cost to Society?

I think about Dr. Fiore testifying at a public hearing on an anti-tobacco smoking ban, in context of the statement by nicotine expert Neal Benowitz from the University of California at San Francisco, as reported by Ms. Hwang on February 27, 1998 in The Wall Street Journal:"

"I'd much rather see people dependent on nicotine than tobacco."

Of course Mr. Benowitz has a preference for nicotine dependency. His preference helps drug company sponsors of medical research at UCSF develop a new $12.5 billion dollar market for their "Smoke Free" nicotine products.

The problem is that Mr. Benowitz' mercenary preference translates into other citizens' legal mandates. There is the intervening matter of the "Bill of Rights." There are also some truths that we hold to be self evident, and there are citizens' rights declared to be inalienable.

I presume that Dr. Fiore would share his professional colleague's opinion. After all, it seems that his livelihood is dependent on that view. Which is why I have great concerns that the hearing Chairman, Mr. James Barry of the State of Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services, could consider the testimony of Dr. Fiore as a medically objective, unbiased, or even remotely credible basis for public policy.

Public health policy must be something more than a useful tool employed by influential drug companies to develop market share for their products, chemicals from which they profit.

As I consider this subject I think about our day-today lives as citizens who go about our lives coping with an increasingly more difficult and regulated work environment. I also consider that we live in a hostile cultural environment that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago - a hostile environment created, in large part, by systematic promotion of intolerance for citizen "target groups" defined by professional "anti" activists. And I think about small business owners who have their establishments disrupted by intrusion of anti-tobacco's political agenda.

Then I think about my son, in sixth grade. It occurs to me that drug companies, Mr. Barry and Mr. Fiore are determining policy that effects him and his future cultural environment.

Enough. It's time to start aggressively addressing the drug companies' latest market expansion ploy, using anti-tobacco as a front for "Smoke Free" nicotine dependency.

I am not employed by any tobacco interest, nor is my work supported by tobacco companies. Needless to say, I also am not an employee of any drug company, nor am I supported by any anti-tobacco federal grant or revenue. Those who have an interest in my personal background, and my four years of effort opposing anti-tobacco, should access and review "Let's Really Save The Kids", at www.forces.org.

Redmond Washington March 16, 1998