Even a staunch advocate of personal liberty would be hard pressed not to feel pity for anti-smoker maven Stanton Glantz as he inflicts his lugubrious anti-settlement road show act on an American public whose indifference to his message of disaster is total. On the day the settlement was announced, television screens framed the disheveled University of California professor as he moaned and groaned his poignant threnody of the betrayal of his lifetime goal of eliminating smoking. Pasty faced, his pudgy visage lined with sorrow, he appeared on the verge of weeping with chagrin over a deal in which he played no part. Even his brown teeth looked ready to drop with fatigue.

Poor Stanton Glantz is so out of the current loop, comprised of grifters, con-men and emasculated CEOs, that he recently was so careless as to explicitly advocate in public the implicit socialism that forms the basis of the anti-smoker agenda. In a rambling editorial printed by the Los Angeles Times on June 23, 1997, the addled professor actually called for the nationalization of the tobacco industry.

"What should we accept in such a settlement? We should take the tobacco business, all of it, including foreign subsidiaries, as part of an agreement to let these companies keep their cookies, cheese, and beer. We should let the government make plain cigarettes available (no fancy brands, no advertising, no nicotine boosting additives, no campaign contributions) for smokers who can't quit. We should take the money from the sales of these cigarettes and use it to help tobacco workers and farmers retool and to run a big aggressive anti-smoking campaign (modeled on California's successful campaign) to reduce smoking as quickly as possible. Since we will own the overseas business, we can simply close it so that America can no longer be accused of exporting death"

(Excerpt from "What Deal? We Got Suckered"
Stanton Glantz
Los Angeles Times, 6/23/97 

So angry is Glantz, that he let the cat out of the bag. Should the settlement go through, an American industry will indeed be nationalized, although the attorneys general and the health-care special interests who negotiated the settlement take special care not to admit to such an anti-American program. Those who still value the principles upon which America was founded should thank the discarded Glantz for his candor.

At the risk of seeming to be churlish, it must be pointed out, however, that pity for Glantz does not preclude the necessity of setting the record straight. Stanton Glantz has lived very well, exploiting the taxpayers of California and the United States. His place in the anti-smoker gravy train hall of fame is assured even as his "studies" now bite the dust in the face of an onslaught of criticism.

Last month anti-smoking legislation in San Antonio, Texas was compromised when embarrassed city council members removed references to a study he has tirelessly peddled throughout the United States which claims that banning smoking in restaurants does not result in lower patronage. Faced with a harsh evaluation of his study by a nationally known economist, as well as the documented decline in sit-down restaurant revenue when smoking is prohibited, Glantz had to admit he made mistakes.

His claim that secondhand smoke kills more that 50,000 Americans per year has been rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency and his studies slamming California politicians for accepting tobacco money have been ignored by an electorate fed up with the McCarthy tactics that Glantz espouses. The California anti-smoking campaigns he touts, and of which he has been an architect, have cost the state in excess of $800-million and have produced an increase in smoking rates for the past three years.

Clearly Glantz is irrelevant and out of his league with the barracudas and sharks which have taken over the anti-smoking racket. Let's shed a tear for the anti-smoking gadfly who has been transformed into the anti-smoking buffoon.

Enoch A. Ludlow