December 10, 1998 - The Deal of Shame has been signed. Never before in history there has been such a colossal reward to false science, false statistics, false associations with disease, false costs to society, false theories of addiction, and so on.

At the risk of being accused of making a rhetorical overstatement, I would call the Deal of Shame the triumph of the darkest side of humanity in the second half of the 20th century.

And now? Are the anti-tobacco cartel's operatives happy? Of course not.

After so much effort in creating and spreading information that in an honest society would earn them many decades of jail time, they failed. They failed to ensure that at least the REAL money from the settlement goes to research or treat tobacco-related disease, either the small amount that is real or the huge amount that has been fabricated. In fact, only 2.4 billion dollars in over 20 years will go towards addressing disease. They even failed to get for themselves the huge amount of money that they hoped to loot as a result of their criminal activities. That, perhaps, is the only good side of this deal.

Are the smokers happy? Of course not.

Because of their inertia, and because they have been listening to the false propaganda from state and anti-tobacco cartel, they have been stripped of their right to smoke. They have not fought. They have not deprived the Koops, the Kesslers, the American Cancer Society operatives and the corrupted media of their power. They have not put them in jail where they belong. There are over 60 million smokers in the USA. If only 10% would have taken to the streets, the Agreement of Shame would now be only in the dreams of the anti-smoking felons. And to add insult to injury, the poorer smoking minority now pays and supports the huge non-smoking majority with taxation, getting in return even more contempt and marginalization.

But the smokers have not fought.

Are the mass media happy? Of course not.

They have kissed the ass of the anti-tobacco cartel, stimulated hatred, and divulged one-sided or false information in the hope of being rewarded with huge anti-tobacco propaganda ads paid with the revenue from the super-settlement that was killed last summer. But that has not materialized. Now they are committed to the campaign of propaganda and lies, and they cannot retreat, for that would spell political and financial trouble.

Are the tobacco companies happy? Of course not.

Though the price of the settlement is going to be largely paid by the customers they have betrayed, their future is foggy to say the least. Smaller, diversified, new companies that are not affected by the deal will emerge and produce cigarettes, and they'll manage to be competitive beyond belief.

Have the youth been convinced to quit, or to not take up smoking? Of course not -- quite the opposite, in fact.

The propaganda of the anti-tobacco cartel and the absurd claims of anti-tobacco "science" have interested the young, excited their imaginations, and made them lose faith in science (see the nonsense about smoking reducing penis size, for example). We have never had as many very young teen-age smokers as we have now. In the '30s, in Indiana, anti-smokers were tried and convicted for state treason because of their anti-tobacco activities during the Teens. I sincerely hope that history will repeat itself -- and it usually does -- for never before have I seen as many children smoking as I see now.

Has the number of smokers really decreased since 1990? Of course not.

The official statistics, if not false, are at least inaccurate, and theoretical. Based either on self-reporting or on the legal sales of tobacco, they don't keep into account the smuggling of cigarettes, which has immensely increased because of the continuous price hikes of the legal ones. No one knows the impact of smuggling, but it is certainly huge. The statistics don't keep into account closet smokers, either. Smoking is being driven underground, where it is really uncontrollable.

Is the hospitality industry happy? Of course not.

The totally false claims about the dangers of secondhand smoke have led to smoking bans: smokers stay home, and foreign smokers don't come. Smoking bans have been an economic disaster everywhere, though the criminal governments that support smoking bans conveniently choose to ignore this reality, and officially believe in the crooked "studies" that "demonstrate" that the hospitality industry is unaffected, like the one of anti-smoking "guru" Stanton Glantz, liar extraordinaire.

Then, who is happy?

You guessed it: lawyers and the state. From the Deal of Shame, lawyers got between eight and ten billion dollars in fees. General Revenue will gobble up the remainder, well in excess of 190 billion dollars.

To sum it all up: after damaging the fabric of society beyond repair, pitting friend against friend, wife against husband, boss against employer, father against son, after bankrupting businesses large and small, what's the gain?

The anti-tobacco criminals who have mastered this lurid show, the fools who have believed them, the smokers who are hoping to quit and live in guilt, the tobacco companies hoping for "redemption", the media barking lies -- they all have been taken by the Big Smarter Brothers: government and lawyers.

They put one over on them all.

I'll light my pipe to that.