Hands Off Our Kids

By Norman E. Kjono

Washington D. C. - October 4, 1991, Dr. Louis P. Sullivan, Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services, at a press conference announcing the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (Project ASSIST):

"About 3,000 teenagers in America begin smoking each day."

Project ASSIST is a National Cancer Institute program managed by the American Cancer Society. Its original funding was $135 million over seven years. That figure does not include separate funding for other anti-tobacco programs.

Seventeen states contracted with NCI for Project ASSIST in 1991. Under the original terms, the program expires September 30, 1998.

We set out to spend $135 million to save ourselves and the kids from smoking. The fat lady's about to sing for Project ASSIST, so let's see what we've accomplished.

June 26, 1997, The Seattle Times, Steve W. Berman, Esq. special assistant state attorney general, supporting the tobacco settlement:

"Every day we delay, another 3,000 children begin smoking."

We've spent six years and hundreds of millions of dollars to save the kids from smoking. According to the latest "statistics", just as many kids succumb to the "pediatric disease" of lighting up today as in 1991. Many activists claim more kids are starting to smoke. Good, this is not.

But how have we done with adults? Let's look at Project ASSIST's "Action Plan" for that.

September 30, 1994, from the Tobacco Free Washington Coalition (Project ASSIST) FY 94 to FY 95 Action Plan:

"The ultimate goal of Project ASSIST is to reduce tobacco use to 17% of the adult population by 1998, from the current 23%."

Well, here we are in 1998. We should compare the above Project ASSIST goal with some recent "statistics" about current smoking rates.

Excerpted from a recent letter to me by Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn:

" About 26 percent of adults in the United States smoke." The adult figure is reported in various press articles as high as 28 to 29 percent.

More adults and more children are lighting up today than in 1991 or 1994. What did we taxpayers get for our money? We got more smoking, and a bill for an additional $368 billion.

Not only have we pumped out hundreds of millions over the past six years to fund Project ASSIST, and its companion Centers for Disease Control anti-tobacco IMPACT program, but we've also levied billions per year in new state taxes on tobacco products along the way.

Yet more kids and more adults are smoking. What is this anti-tobacco scheme about? It certainly cannot be about an effective program to reduce smoking rates, especially among kids. The facts say that if we are serious about kids not smoking, then the first thing that we should do is shut down ASSIST and IMPACT, and fire the activists who were part of those disasters. We don't need to assist ourselves anymore with programs that have a negative impact on smoking rates.

Judging by the FY 94-95 Project ASSIST goal, they never even set out to eliminate smoking in the first place, they only intended to reduce it by 26%. So I guess that means 2,220 kids will still start lighting up each day, even if Project ASSIST accomplishes every goal that it set out to do.

I thought that we wanted to save every one of the 3,000 kids who start smoking each day. Do some kids matter and others don't?

I'm told that we're going to get serious about eliminating the evil weed. This time we'll throw another $368 billion plus at the problem.

According to a Washington Post analysis of the tobacco settlement in The Seattle Times on June 21, 1997, they now say that if we commit $368 billion more to the war on tobacco, in fifty years the smoking rates will be reduced by half.

Which calculates out to fifty years from now only 1,500 kids will start lighting up each day. Presumably, those 1,500 kids who light up will succumb to the "pediatric disease", that we hear so much about from the activist "antis".

Apparently it's acceptable to the attorneys general of several states that fifty years from now only 1,500 kids per day will start smoking. It must be acceptable to the attorneys general, because they say that the tobacco settlement is a solution to the tobacco and kids smoking crises.

And, if we are to believe the EPA's 1992 secondhand smoke report, it's perfectly OK with the attorneys general that only 1,500 folks per year will die from lung cancer caused by our grand kids smoking around civilized people.

But who will decide which 1,500 kids are assigned the duty of dying at an early age? Who are the parents and siblings now ordained by the attorneys general to die from secondhand smoke, as the EPA has touted for years?

It seems to me that we have defined an "acceptable kill ratio". $368 billion plus in new tax revenue seems to be the swing vote between 3,000 and 1,500 kids per day starting to smoke. $368 billion plus says that its OK for 1,500 folks per year to die from secondhand smoke.

Nothing is more self-serving than a bureaucrat intoning the mantra, "if it saves only one kid, it's worth it", while they promote a scheme that guarantees 1,500 kids per day will still be allowed to use an allegedly hazardous product fifty years from now. What happened to all the kids?

Some politicians are a hazard to public health. Those who support the tobacco settlement fit into that category.

Promoting false public health scare science to "justify" vast new taxes and increases in regulatory power is deceitful. Grabbing the bucks and clout, while leaving the alleged problem in place, is outright crooked. If the problem is real, then solve it. If the problem is manufactured to support activists' agendas, then we need to deal very firmly with the agenda and its promoters.

We can't have it both ways. Either the activists and the EPA are wrong or they are right. If they are right, and tobacco is, indeed, the lethal killer they claim it is, then the only acceptable course of action is to prohibit the manufacture and sale of tobacco products in the USA.

If the EPA is wrong (as rational science says), and the teen smoking "statistics" are the data dump of the week, then why the tobacco settlement and its related $368 billion plus cost to taxpayers? And why doesn't the tobacco settlement solve the problem for all of our kids now?

If a product is half as dangerous as the anti-tobacco activists claim, then it should be illegal to carry around in your shirt pocket. On the other hand, if a product's legal, then leave it, and the citizenry, alone. Chill out with the toilet tongue about smokers.

More importantly, why do we consider a deal supported by Project ASSIST and IMPACT activists who have failed to get the job done in the first place? What possesses us to reward those who managed to take six years, and hundreds of millions, to increase the teen smoking rate?

Sooner or later we have to distinguish between noble goals and actual results. It's important that we don't let a few activists get so carried away with "mandating a difference" that they screw things up for the rest of us. When it's about our kids and their future, we can't afford the luxury of failed social engineering experiments.

Maybe we have come to expect that programs that don't work, cost hundreds of millions, and produce negative results, will be renewed with funding increases. When our kids are on the line, however, can we afford such apathy?

So how did we get into this mess in the first place? Who came up with the idea that throwing $368 billion more into a program that doesn't work, let alone the fact that it was never intended to stop all 3,000 kids from smoking in the first place, was good public policy?

We do know why this happened from the Tobacco Free Washington FY 94-95 Action Plan":

"Goal #6: Enhance the power of the Tobacco Free Washington Coalition by increasing membership and funding."

Anti-tobacco is not, and never has been, primarily about our kids or our public health. Anti-tobacco is about bucks and clout.

Using kids to gratify an urge for bucks and clout is the lowest form of economic pedophilia that there is. Put the junk science bums in jail.

My son is too important to let him be used by politicians. And he certainly is not the plaything of a pack of trial lawyers looking to justify $9 billion plus in sweetheart deal legal fees.

Anti-tobacco activists presume the "moral high ground" regarding kids. Problem is, their programs do not work. What can be more unethical, if not outright immoral, than to insist that we continue imposing programs on kids that we know do not work, just to assure that adults get their economic and political gratification?

Those who use kids to promote their own interests have no moral ground at all, they are the dregs of society who wallow in the pits of personal gratification at the expense of others.

Anti-tobacco activists are going to have to find another way to get their bucks and clout. Using our kids is not an acceptable way to do it.

If we want to save the children, we can start with a message: HANDS OFF OUR KIDS.

January 6, 1998 Redmond WA