Murdering America
By Felt Edward Lair
Over a decade of evidence countering the rabid claims of fanatics that secondhand smoke is deadly and exposes the politically correct lie that smoking bans are a matter of Public Health.
Paperback: 215 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 8.50 x 0.49 x 5.50
Publisher: PublishAmerica; (January 19, 2004)
THE TOBACCO DANCE
By Felt Lair
1998. All rights reserved.
===========================================================DISCLAIMER
Other than buying and using their products
I have no connection to nor support from the tobacco industry.We are engaged in another Civil War. Not as open, not as bloody, not as lethal as the first one, but a civil war nevertheless. Or perhaps it would be better to call it an un-civil war since feelings run high between the factions and rhetoric on both sides can get nasty at times.
The country is polarized between two camps: the anti-tobacco camp in favor of controls and restrictions on the tobacco industry as well as on smokers themselves, and those in favor of civil liberties and freedom of choice and action, including the freedom to smoke if you so choose.
To a great extent the Tobacco War is taking place underground in the sense that those not directly involved are more or less unaware of the skirmishes and battles taking place. The only news they receive from the front is that provided by the mass media which, as should become amply evident in the following pages, has been shanghaied into the service of one side of the conflict and consequently is not providing balanced, unbiased reporting.
The anti-smoking crusade gets a great deal of press these days. The other side hardly any. One of the reasons for this is the media fixation on negative stories. They love to scare us with warnings about the dangers of this or that. Just listen to the nightly news. If it isn't the cars we drive it's what we eat and drink or the germs in the bathroom or on the kitchen counter. Anything that might spook us.
So the health hazards associated with smoking are prime fodder and the efforts to stamp it out and reach a "smoke free America by 2000" news worthy. After all, the media loves a war... both sides of which usually get covered, but not in this case.
Another reason the anti-smoking crusade gets the lion's share of coverage is the effect political correctness is having on politics and the media. In today's climate only the anti-tobacco stance is "politically correct." Both politicians and media people seem to be afraid of offending the PCers, thus incurring their wrath by giving any credence to the other side of the story. Even Letters-to-the-Editor from the politically incorrect view rarely if ever get published.
Nobody stops to ask, why be politically correct when you could be right.
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The documents gathered here, primarily from the internet, present various facets of the tobacco war and indicate that numerous problems of a serious nature indeed do exist and are not simply a matter of paranoia on the part of one or two individuals.
Readers can judge for themselves if objections to the anti-smoking crusade are something only a disgruntled smoker could or would feel and, on the other hand, if the devious tactics outlined here are something that will be limited to only the campaign against tobacco or if the threat of their spreading to other areas of social life is a real danger to our personal freedoms.
AN OPEN CONSPIRACY?
"In the war on smoking, truth has been the first casualty. Junk science has replace honest science, and propaganda parades as fact. By vastly overstating the dangers of tobacco, and by neglecting those of alcohol and drugs, the Anti-Smoking Partisans (ASP's) have gravely distorted the proper priorities for our resources. The 'facts' now quoted as gospel by the ASP's are false."
Rosiland B. Marimont in "Casualties of the War on Smoking: Truth, Freedom, Fairness and Children"
"The two industries (alcohol and tobacco) have not been taken on at once since the public might get just an inkling of what is coming."
Elliot Liff, M.D. in a letter to the editor, San Francisco Chronicle
One hesitates, in the context of the Tobacco War, to use the term, "conspiracy." Conspiracy theories get thrown around so much these days that we get tired of hearing about them. There are so many that it is sometimes referred to as "the conspiracy industry." Nevertheless, the term may be appropriate here.
The dictionary defines conspiracy as: 1.) the act of conspiring together, 2.) an agreement among conspirators.
It defines conspire as: 1.)to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end, 2.)to act in harmony toward a common end.
So, as the following pages should indicate, the anti-tobacco crusade qualifies as a conspiracy on all counts, including secrecy.
While the tobacco industry has been accused of "conspiracy to kill people," those opposed to its use have certainly banded together, both openly as well as underground, to use every means at their disposal to totally destroy the industry, "the last of the evil empire" according to William D. Novelli, spokesman for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids.
According to an article in the September, 1978 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), "Smokers shouldn't be helped, they should be eliminated." Such rhetoric is perilously close to suggestions of an ideological cleansing, even genocide. In any case, it set the tone for the subsequent battle.
There are countless so-called private coalitions working toward the goal of eradicating tobacco from society and numerous governmental agencies which not only have a direct role in controlling tobacco and its use but some of which covertly fund some of the private groups, which makes them in effect sub-agencies and arms of government policy.
With this kind of manpower and financial resources it is reasonable to speak of a conspiracy aimed at the tobacco industry and its clientele.
The great rallying cry is Public Health. A noble sounding purpose, but in practice it entails many ignoble actions such as shoddy research studies, unsubstantiated claims, outright lies, unwarranted expenditure of tax money and, as we shall see, even censorship of its undertakings to keep intelligence from enemy eyes. "Top Secret" rubber stamping in action again.
There is a difference between private health and public health -- a difference anti-smoking advocates refuse to recognize. Their assertion that ETS is a serious and thoroughly documented danger has been debunked many times, yet they cling to it as a way of justifying governmental meddling in private lives, something that is legitimate only in the case of Public Health.
Traditionally Public Health has been concerned with such things as sanitation, control of communicable diseases, personal hygiene education and the organization of early diagnosis and prevention of diseases that require coordinated community control.
The fact that the anti-smoking drive for Public Health involves the trampling of the civil rights of private citizens is ignored. Smokers have become the one minority which can be "legally" discriminated against with impunity. If they tried to single out black smokers or women smokers they would be jumped on immediately, but all smokers -- go get em!
So ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your country can do to you.
ET, WHERE ARE YOU?
When I first saw the initials ETS (standing for "Environmental Tobacco Smoke") I thought maybe they stood for "Extra-Terrestrial Smoke." Turned out that wasn't the case, but maybe the anti-tobacco fanatics should start preparing a program in the event that the search for intelligent life on other planets actually turns up something.
It needn't be a technical or highly complicated policy. All they need in order to "protect the children" in case such contact is made are two simple principles:
1. Determine if smoking is permitted on the foreign planet.
2. If it is "just say no" to any communication with them.
This should reassure even the most extreme elements among the tobacco control advocates that our planet is safe from the alleged dangers of second hand smoke.
The term "alleged" is appropriate since the supposed threat has been not only pretty repeatedly discounted but the "scientific" studies supporting it criticised or condemned.
Numerous eminent scientists have expressed skepticism about the 1993 EPA classification of ETS as a human carcinogen -- men such as Epidemiologist Dimitrios Trichopoulus of Harvard's School of Public Health, Alvan Feinstein of Yale Medical School and Dr. Philippe Shubik, editor in chief of "Teratogenesis Carcinogenesis and Metagenesis."
Where will it all end? If the intolerant, narrow minded gang get their way, in a totalitarian state similar to Nazi Germany... which, as few people seem to know, had what was perhaps the earliest and certainly the most repressive anti-tobacco programs in history back in the 1930's. (More on this later.) Is THAT the direction we want to go?
Still the anti-tobacco zealots are so desperate to find data to justify their totalitarian goals that they have made efforts to connect smoking with almost any malady imaginable from cervical cancer and breast cancer to birth defects, sudden infant death syndrome, ulcers, Alzheimer's disease, chromosome anomalies, osteoporosis, thromboembolism, multiple myeloma, even deafness!! And the witch hunt goes on.
SECOND HAND SMOKE AND MIRRORS
From the start those in the anti-smoking crusade have been guilty of poor science, deception, distortion and outright lying on behalf of their cause. A prime instance of this is the Second Hand Smoke scam which received such publicity and created such hysteria. Just about everyone heard about the EPA report released in January, 1993. It received major coverage in the media and triggered the hysteria over smoking in general that has been raging ever since.
Titled "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking" -- this report could be called "The Blank Shot Heard Around the World." In so far as it received such headlines and media coverage it could be considered the beginning of what has become known as The Tobacco War in its present manic form.
Of course, in the media's haste to frighten us and/or be politically correct, some facts fell through the cracks. Did you know, for instance, that:
In November, 1997, the Congressional Research Service (CRS -- An independent 741 member think tank that works exclusively for Congress.) rebutted this highly touted EPA report on the dangers of second hand smoke?
That even The World Health Organization (long time anti-smoking advocates) also debunked the study?
That the Wall Street Journal, hardly a radical rag, reported on the EPA study under the headline, "Smoking Out Bad Science"?
That Investor's Business Daily did the same in an April 8, 1998 article, "The Data That Went Up In Smoke" in which it characterized the EPA study as "Junk Science"?
Or were you aware of these positive findings regarding smoking?
That contrary to the findings of reports blared by the anti-smokers, a review of medical studies by P.N. Lee ("Smoking and Alzheimer's Disease: A Review of the Epidemiological Evidence, published in Neuroepidemiology, 1994) found that 15 out of 18 studies showed that smoking significantly reduced the risk of Alzheimer's disease while a review by Dr. John A. Baron not only concurred with Lee's findings but and added, "...smoking may actually be a protective exposure." ("Cigarette smoking and Parkinson's disease," published in Neurology 1986)
Similar studies have concluded that smoking also decreases the likelihood of falling prey to Parkinson's disease and that there are indications of similar effects on ulcerative colitis.
This sort of news is largely ignored or downplayed by the media in the one-sided coverage resulting from their race to get on board the politically correct bandwagon. Hardly objective reporting.
In the meantime it is worth pointing out the faulty methodology and PR used by the anti-smoking zealots. They have been, and are, prone to using biased science, withholding information, lying and even censorship (see later section for their Cancer research plans known as the "Censored" papers). In their ardor to outlaw smoking some of them are even willing to contribute to the disintegration of American liberties by proposing changes to the Constitution and pertinent amendments thereof.
Some have no compunction against emotionally loaded if inaccurate rhetoric, such as calling ETS "toxic waste."
This, it is claimed, is all information the public needs to be aware of in defending everyone's freedoms of choice and action, even if they are non-smokers. The threat is real and it is virulent.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ETS
Originally and sometimes still referred to as "Second Hand Smoke" (SHS), it later became known also as "Environmental Tobacco Smoke" (ETS). It is the cumulative smoke in the air when a person is smoking, either that exhaled by a smoker or coming directly from a lit cigarette. Its potential danger to non-smokers has been hotly debated for years.
Circa 1992 - Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, filed a report with EPA claiming 53-56,000 deaths per year are attributable to ETS.
January, 1993 - EPA releases its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking" based on a meta analysis of 11 separate studies (Glantz not included -- they never endorsed his work). It uses a figure of 3,000 deaths per year attributable to ETS.
November 14, 1995 - CRS files Library of Congress report 95-1115 SPR in which it rejects EPA and 3 other studies as not statistically significant and tainted by poor research and analysis. For instance, EPA found 119 lung cancers among non-smoking spouses where 100 would have been expected. This equals a risk ratio of 1.19. Anything below 2.0 is generally considered statistically insignificant.
The CRS report was produced in response to an OSHA ruling that would ban smoking in Federal workplaces. It found no basis for such a ban.
1996 - November 11, Glantz capitulates, accepting the 3,000 figure.
The American Heart Association wants to attribute 50,000 fatal heart attacks per year to ETS.
It would not be until mid-1998 that a Federal judge handed down an opinion siding with the tobacco industry on the issue and the tide shifted a bit on the ETS issue. (See the BACKLASH section.)
A GLANCE AT GLANTZ
Anyone familiarizing themselves with the tobacco debate, whether smoker or anti-smoker, soon comes to recognize the name of Stanton A. Glantz, the man who alleged that 53,000 deaths resulting from second-hand smoke occurred annually a figure totally discredited and later even recanted by Glantz himself, but one which helped instigated the hysteria over second-hand smoke.
He is also the man who has stated openly that his intention is to destroy the tobacco industry and has compared the tobacco industry to Timothy McVeigh who bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people; typical of the wild rhetoric employed by Mr. Glantz.
So just who is Stanton A. Glantz?
In 1961 he graduated from the University of Cincinnati's Aerospace Engineering school. In 1973 he received a PhD in Applied Mechanics and Economics from Stanford. In 1977 he completed a postdoctoral Fellowship in Cardiology at University of California, San Francisco. He is presently a professor of medicine at the same institution.
He is also a loose cannon in the tobacco debate.
As a posting on FORCES pro-smoking website put it: "Nowadays, in order to become a national hero and a media pet you just have to hold some degree, wave the fascist flag, and speak against tobacco. We can only conclude that living in the political sewers for twenty years has finally paid off for the perpetrators, now that the sewers have ruptured into the political streets of United States, and Canada."
But his ETS claim is not the only time Glantz has stubbed his toe. He has been involved in many gaffes and reports attacked by cooler minds. For instance:
Dr. Michael K. Evans, one of the nation's most respected economists, accused Glantz of misrepresenting data and reaching an unwarranted conclusion on the proposition that 100% Smoke-Free restaurants ordinances had no negative economic impact on the restaurant economy. He concluded that the study was flawed to the point of being unusable and appeared to have been designed to mislead elected officials.
A Sacramento court issued a restraining order against Glantz for destroying documents in the above case and required him to show why he should not be held in contempt of court. It also charged him with unauthorized use of University of California resources for political lobbying, electioneering and private political activities, and of using his time on the University payroll to do so.
Glantz was "Principal Investigator" on a project of The National Cancer Institute which has characteristics strange enough to arouse suspicions in this age of government distrust. Namely, CENSORSHIP. (He is also listed as a participant in at least 4 other research grants.)
This bizarre document doesn't seem to even have a proper title and is sometimes identified simply as "The CENSORED study."
According to the document itself:
The investigators propose to collect a combination of qualitative and quantitative information documenting the activities of the tobacco industry as well as those of tobacco control advocates and public officials. A significant proportion of the proposed work will be completed in California. However, substantial data collection efforts are also being proposed for Massachusetts and less extensive efforts in four other states -- Colorado, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
The proposed project is a series of five related, but relatively discrete, efforts:
* 1. Continue to collect and analyze data on tobacco industry electoral and lobbying activity in California and extend this effort to five other states.
* 2. Collect and analyze all tobacco control legislation introduced in the California Assembly and Senate since 1975, develop a legislative history for each bill, evaluate the impact of such legislation on tobacco control advocates and the part the tobacco industry played in the development of the legislation.
* 3. Prepare detailed case histories of the passage and implementation of California's Proposition 99 and Massachusetts' Question 1.
* 4. Prepare three in-depth case studies (one per year) of tobacco industry and health community activities relating to local tobacco control (most likely to be sites in California)
* 5. Document the role of the tobacco industry in the creation and further development of the Smokers' Rights movement and examine its social and ideological message and political consequences for tobacco control.
The first two of these specific aims are relatively unchanged from the original submission. The third effort has been narrowed to focus only on California and Massachusetts (as opposed to all states), and the final two specific aims are new to this revised application, replacing two aims that were contained in the original submission.
The research will be conducted out of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Here is a prime example of the conspiratorial tone of the document:
"RESUME: This revision of an application from the University of California, San Francisco, is - CENSORED - responsive to the prior review. This project targets the - CENSORED - activities of the tobacco industry and suggests both short-and long-term applications for tobacco policy and use/control. The proposed research addresses a - CENSORED - public health problem though an - CENSORED - - CENSORED - methodology. The experience of the research team, its preliminary work, and the meshing of quantitative and qualitative data are - CENSORED - of this - CENSORED - application. A discussion of representativeness of women and minorities is not in this application, and reviewers believe the issue is... NEXT 1 1/2 LINES CENSORED"
All in all the document contains not only many CENSORED items but page after page CENSORED in their entirety. So just what is "Principle Investigator" Stanton Glantz up to?
After all, the study was made possible by a grant issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Yet efforts to find out about this through the Freedom of Information Act were fruitless. In rejecting the request the National Cancer Institute said of the original grant applicants that, "They usually do not want material that applicants believe would harm them if released."
No wonder citizens no longer trust their government.
A BIT MORE ABOUT GLANTZ & COMPANY
At the Seventh World Conference on Tobacco and Health held in Perth, Australia in 1990, Stanton Glantz gave the keynote address in which he said, among other things:
"The main thing the science has done on the issue of ETS, in addition to help people like me pay mortgages, is it has legitimized the concerns that people have that they don't like cigarette smoke. And that is a strong emotional force that needs to be harnessed and used. We're on a roll, and the bastards are on the run. And I urge you to keep chasing them." (Emphasis added)
For one paragraph at least Mr. Glantz told the truth: He's in the thing to pay his mortgage and, all the bad science and propaganda claims aside, the basic fact behind the tobacco war is that some people simply don't like cigarette smoke.
LETTER TO SCIENCE MAGAZINE
Criticizing their "scientific" reporting of the smoking issue.
June 19, 1996
Mr. Steve Lapham
Letters to Editor
Science Magazine
1333 H St. NW
Washington, DC 20005Dear Mr. Lapham,
Part of the American scientific community is excommunicating a group of its members - ostensibly those who accept research money from tobacco companies (Report, "Tobacco Money Lights up a Debate", Jon Cohen, Science, 26 April, 1996). The anti-smoking crusaders (ASC), led by Stanton Glantz, have won again. In a long and brilliantly effective campaign, the ASC have transformed the discussion of a public health issue into a holy war against smoking. To do this they have established 3 major dicta.
(1) Smoking kills 440,000 Americans annually.
(2) Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) kills 50,000 Americans annually.
(3) Anyone who questions the validity of (1) or (2) is a tool of the tobacco industry.
(3) is necessary because serious scientists recognize that (1) is questionable and
(2) preposterous.
Good scientists encourage criticism of their results. By honest give and take they refine their theories and advance knowledge. The ASCs, unable to defend their often shoddy science, have changed the subject to attacking the tobacco industry and impugning the motives of scientists who accept its funding. THE REAL OR ALLEGED EVILDOING OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY IS IRRELEVANT TO THE PUBLIC POLICY DISCUSSION OF THE DANGERS OF SMOKING. No money will corrupt an honest scientist, and Federal money (Stanton Glantz' specialty) will corrupt a dishonest scientist as thoroughly as tobacco money.
The war on smoking has obviously become part of political correctness, or the American form of Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism, the subjugation of science to ideology, is named for Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's favorite scientist, who suppressed all genetic research in the Soviet Union and damaged Soviet science and agriculture for decades. It is easy to see why genetic research should be anathema to Stalinists, but can anyone enlighten me as to why smoking is the abomination of the politically correct?
Russell Baker, in his Observer column on the anti-smoking crusade (NY Times, May 31, 1994) noted that "crusades typically start by being admirable, proceed by being foolish, and end by being dangerous." In my opinion, the stages of the anti-tobacco crusade were:
(1) Admirable - demonstrating the relationship of primary smoking to lung cancer.
(2) Foolish - claiming that ETS is a serious health hazard.
(3) Dangerous - stifling dissent by defaming the opposition.
Defaming one's critics is a durable technique of crusaders, from Lysenko in the USSR to our own Salem witch hunters, Senator Joe McCarthy, and now Stanton Glantz and his fellow ASCs.
If Glantz' lucrative and effective propaganda has been able to harm the career of so distinguished an epidemiologist as Theodore Sterling, I can see why young scientists are afraid to protest. But where are the leaders of the AAAS, or other retirees, like me, who are free speak out? For 37 years I was proud to be a Federal government scientist, first at NBS (now NIST) and then NIH. The 1993 EPA report was merely embarrassing, but the current surrender to Lysenkoism is shameful and frightening.
Signed,
Rosalind B. Marimont
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Reprinted with permission from author.
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Rosalind B. Marimont is a retired mathematician and scientist, having done research and development for NIST (or the Bureau of Standards (NBS), as it was then) for 18 years, until 1960, and NIH for another 19, until her retirement in 1979. She started in electronics defense work during World War II at NBS, then went on to the logical design of the early digital computers during the fifties. In 1960, she moved to NIH, and there studied and published papers on human vision, speech, and other biomathematical subjects. Since her retirement she has been active in health policy issues - first, the treatment of chronic pain by integrated mind/body methods, and second, the dishonest war on smoking which has corrupted scientific research and gravely distorted the nation's health priorities. For more than fifty years she has written, read and evaluated many kinds of scientific studies, and has sometimes served as a reviewer for scientific journals.
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The "official" stance on secondhand smoke has been refuted time after time, by reputable study after reputable study and yet, as late as July 16, 1998 the City of Los Angeles brought a $2.5 billion against 15 tobacco companies for breaking a state environmental law by failing to warn the public about the dangers of secondhand smoke.
What do they want -- besides $2.5 billion -- another label on cigarette packages in addition to the Surgeon General's warning parroting their erroneous view of ETS?
Federal, state, county and city litigations one following another. How about allowing every individual constituent to bring consecutive suits? That way they could stretch out the proceedings ad infinitum and let everybody get a cut.
INTERLUDE: THE AVENGERS
Who are these people anyway, that they should presume to tell anyone how to live their lives? Three types can be identified: Bluenoses, cranks and con men. Each have their own addictions.
The first come at you with moral superiority, the second with legal schemes and the third with tax plans.
Bluenoses want you to live a clean life, free of vices, self determination and tobacco, because it's "the thing to do." Their addictions are propriety, seemliness and health.
Let he who is free of sin cast the first stone, you say? Stand back and be amazed at how many sinless there are among us.
The cranks are schemers, often legal eagles who busy themselves contriving ways to help/force you follow the edicts of the bluenoses. But for their addiction to rhetoric and legislation some of them might be bluenoses themselves.
CONTINUE
The con men do not necessarily have any allegiance to bluenose principles but find them good indicators of where to strike with the least chance of offense and greatest chance of acceptance. Their addiction is taxation.A fourth and most venal class of avengers, the worst of the worst, also exist. They are called politicians. In their purest (i.e. vilest) form they are bluenose legislators with a fiscal fixation.
All four types are control addicts who can't abide any mores other than their own and see freedom as their God given right to impinge on the freedom of others.
Altogether they are known as Anti-Tobacco Crusaders, although the title may change as their targets change. Some are non-smokers whose lips have never been defiled by the devil's weed, some are ex-smokers who, having seen the light, want to blind everybody else with it, and some are even closet smokers themselves who just like to ride bandwagons and crack whips between cigars.
All are deaf and all have delusions of grandeur. More than anything, they all need a taste of persecution themselves.
Or maybe just a good cigar.
In 1778 Benjamin Franklin designed the first coin minted in the United States. It carried the phrase "Mind your own business." The days when that sentiment had any official endorsement are long gone.
In a forthcoming book, "A Nation of Meddlers," authors Charles Edgley (a professor of sociology at Oklahoma State) and Dennis Brissett (a professor of behavioral science at the University at Minnesota Medical school) discuss euphemisms currently used for meddling, then go on to indict certain euphemistic practices prevalent in a number of professions.
Workers and bureaucrats in the helping professions, they say, are among the more visible representatives at meddling by euphemism. Social workers, for instance, never meddle, butt in or tamper with other people's lives. Instead they engage in "professional intervention strategies," do "crisis intervention," "empower" or "treat," all part of what "therapy" is all about. If the client happens to believe that the intervener is actually meddling, and has the temerity to say so, the client, of course, is charged with being in "denial."
The authors define meddlers as "true believers who confuse the frequent validity of their derived views with a proprietary right to impose their generalizations full bloom on others."
Meddlers, they conclude, perceive meddlees as engaged in actions the meddler regards as negative, dangerous, unhealthy, and the like. Meddlers are indomitable peddlers of anti-themes. "For instance, to oppose MADD is to somehow condone highway carnage caused by alcohol while failure to denounce smokers at every opportunity is translated into an endorsement of cancer and the threat supposedly posed by passive smoke becomes a grim symbol of our times - innocent people being done in by the seemingly innocuous habits of others."
These anti-themes have come to permeate society. The world has become a war zone for meddlers armed with a special anti-interest and a totalitarian vision of a world made safe by stamping out those who differ. Ironically a language of freedom is increasingly being used by meddlers to cloak their anti-ideology. Adjectives such as SMOKE-FREE, ALCOHOL-FREE, RADON-FREE, PRAYER-FREE, and FRAGRANCE-FREE are used to create the appearance of democratic action. "Such post-modern freedom for people not to do something that they were never required to do in the first place replaces the more classical freedom to do what one wishes."
"In a nation in which selfhood is becoming more and more defined by what people DON'T do than by what they do, defending oneself becomes a matter of attacking and controlling what others do. The meddler's own self-denial becomes the justification for denying others the opportunity to do whatever it is that the meddler is not doing. In this sense, people meddle because their very self is threatened. Deviance, from whatever standard is asserted or presumed, challenges the life of the meddler, not by threatening to sweep him into the abyss of inequity implicit in the meddlee's dissolute behavior but by its very existence."
To meddlers, the authors say, people are not only known by what they don't do, but also by what they don't TOLERATE: "I don't drink, smoke, use drugs, or eat the wrong foods" is not enough. Now self is preserved by adding emphatically: "and I don't tolerate those who do!"
"The international 'no' symbol - a red-slashed circle - is the perfect icon for an age in which people are coming to be known more by what they aren't than what they are."
"If the meddlee seems to be happy, interesting, fun-loving, perhaps even healthy, satisfied, and fulfilled, this only increases the grim-faced challenge offered the meddler."
America has become a nation of puritanical meddlers for whom "should" and "should not" are the predominant words, and they view life as a series of progressive or regressive diseases for which early intervention is the only antidote.
The authors point out that vocational meddlers, those who meddle for money, "include a vast and growing array of personnel ranging from social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists to lawyers, administrators, and government bureaucrats. The latter, operating in the belief that the presence of rules and regulations produces safety, security, and assurance, attempt to extend their own sphere of influence while claiming the noble justification of protecting the innocent. Despite the loftiness of motive, however, the primary task of all vocational meddlers is staying in business. Offices must be kept running, positions must be kept filled, budgets must be increased, promotions and raises must go on apace. The first concern of the meddling trades is steady work, and meddling is perhaps the closest thing there is to a recession-proof business. The only thing that could conceivably depress the economic forecast for professional meddlers would be an outbreak of health, harmony, and happiness. Unfortunately, these virtues have been so narrowly redefined by these same professionals that they are now more utopian abstractions than achievable realities."
Meddling in the name of health and safety a virtually unchallengable argument as well as a growth industry for those who would protect us. "The regulatory environment of the government bureaucracy, coupled with tort legislation, has turned injury and accidents into a national lottery in which too many citizens hope to transform their tragedies into jackpots. Accidents no longer exist, it seems, for everything is seen by the legal profession as 'preventative' and tort law has thus become unparalleled in its meddlesome consequences."
Edgley and Brissett quote Peter Huber in his "THE LEGAL REVOLUTlON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: "No other country in the world administers anything like it. Tort law was set in place in the 1960's and 70's by a new generation of lawyers and judges... Some grew famous and more grew rich in selling their services to enforce the rights they themselves invented." Huber observes that claims that other people's wrong doings are responsible for life's difficulties generates is, in effect, a "tort tax" on goods and services that amount to a $300 billion levy on the American economy accounting for "30 percent of the price of a step-ladder and 95 percent of the price of childhood vaccines. All in the name of health and safety."
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"A Nation of Meddlers" is scheduled for publication in the fall of 1998 by Westview Press. To be available in both hard cover and paperback, it promises to be interesting reading.
CONFUSION BY THE NUMBERS
Study: Secondhand smoke kills
Science and Medicine
AP 2-Mar-1997 12:02 EST REF5139
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)
Preface by Carol Thompson:
Hold onto your hats. This news report via Associated Press goes back to March 2, 1997. In it, you read that a study finds that secondhand smoke kills 4,700 non-smoking Californians each year, while 35,000 to 62,000 ETS-related deaths take place nationwide, 4,200 to 7,400 in California alone. We're told lung cancer caused by environmental tobacco smoke kills 3,000 Americans each year, 360 of them Californians. Meanwhile, a Harvard study claims that 6,700 children a year are killed by ETS. Why is it that central EPA has long taken its distance from the 30,000-death ETS figure, while this California report modifies it to a wide 35,000 to 62,000? In the meantime, the American Medical Association talks about 53,000 non-smokers killed by ETS year, while New York City's Public Advocate Mark Green claims that 100,000 Americans are killed by ETS. Confused? So are we. The criminal shotgun approach practice of scaring the public by throwing at it enormous, random, up-in-the-air death figures is well known by anyone who is involved in the fight against this fraud.
The important point is that this is not a study. It is just the anti-smokers' usual trick of applying their same old fraudulent computer program to raw demographic data, and spewing forth a bogus ETS death toll. It re-perpetrates all the epidemiological malpractice that I have exposed in "Deconstructing the anti-smoking movement".
And then they lie to us that they did a "study", when all they did was regurgitate their same old garbage. It's instant computer-generated propaganda: just add heated rhetoric and spew it in the public's faces.
Remember, the anti-smoking movement exists ONLY because of the media conspiracy set out to ram it down the public's unwilling throats. They railroaded their smoking bans through on the "strengths" of a corrupt EPA report; claiming to "save " people from an asthma death rate that's tripled since they came along; and making sacred cows out of a good squad of hyperventilators who accuse smokers of harming them, even when they know that the EMTs actually treated them for hyperventilation, not asthma.
These people should pay for everything they've done to humiliate and degrade smokers. We should not be satisfied until they've paid with every stick of property, and every penny they have made while lying to entire nations, and an entire generation, and trying to commit cultural genocide on smokers.
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Because of the strict copyright claim from Associated Press
we are unable to copy the press release verbatim.
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"Secondhand smoke kills at least 4,700 non-smoking Californians each year and causes respiratory illnesses in tens of thousands of children, according to a new state study" the report says.
And: "The state EPA report concludes that there is sufficient evidence from the body of existing research to conclude that secondhand smoke is responsible for a wide variety of health problems, including premature births, sudden infant death syndrome, lung cancer and heart disease."
"The reports estimates that secondhand smoke caused between 35,000 and 62,000 deaths nationwide from heart attack and stroke, and between 4,200 and 7,440 such deaths in California alone."
"In comparison, environmental tobacco smoke is responsible for lung cancer that kills 3,000 Americans each year, 360 of them Californians."
"Among the findings of the California study is that secondhand tobacco smoke hits the children of smokers especially hard. The study blames secondhand smoking for up to 3,000 new childhood asthma cases in California each year and for as many as 188,000 doctor visits for middle-ear infections."
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Reprinted with permission from the author
CHILD ABUSE
It would be interesting to know just how many times the phrase, "protect the children" or variations thereof have appeared in anti-smoking literature. Considering its occurrence in government agency statements plus those of all the supposedly privately funded coalitions at work on tobacco control it would be a pretty high figure.
Saving the children from the clutches of the Devil's weed and the "lethal" effects of second hand smoke is a constant refrain with the nanny antis. They love to take refuge behind the kiddies in their fund seeking and propaganda war.
Dictum: Widen the net with phony claims backed by spin doctors in the service of the Tobacco Inquisition. Rally 'round the lies, boys. If something is lacking, add "Save the Children" and stir. Appeal to that segment of the public uninformed enough to swallow it.
In 1994 the Marquette Law Review even published the statement that, "Parents who expose their children to ETS should be viewed as committing child abuse." Maybe they figured that might open the door to a whole new area of profitable litigation.
One of the main usages of monies realized through taxation or anti-tobacco litigation is always purportedly educational programs to not only warn "the children" about the heinous evils of tobacco, but to inform adults on the terrible peril their offspring are subjected to by evil smoking.
If one had access to all the figures it would be instructive to determine just what percentage of this money is actually funneled into such programs -- after lawyers, program administrators, PR teams and so on rake in their take from the funds passing through their hands.
When some dollars do trickle down to these oh so essential education programs, how much "education"" will result and how much propaganda? The antis often aren't too adept at getting their facts and figures right even for adult consumption, imagine how much laxity might prevail when they are dealing directly with innocent, vulnerable minds.
Unless you equate educating with scare tactics and brain washing there is little likelihood of much anti-tobacco education taking place.
Example: "Researchers revealed today that about half of the early childhood cases of asthma, chronic bronchitis and wheezing are attributable to exposure to second hand smoke. Based on their findings they found that environmental smoke (ETS) causes an extra 160,000 cases of asthma per year, 79,000 cases of bronchitis and 172,000 cases of wheezing in the United States. They also estimated that second hand smoke is responsible for between 40 percent and 60 percent of cases of asthma, bronchitis and wheezing among young children."
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"Based on their findings" they found... Interesting wording. And how do you determine "extra" cases of asthma? Probably by asking if anybody in the home smoked and if the answer was "yes," logging that case as an "extra" one. At least that's what I find... based on my findings.
They also published an article from "The Pediatrics" which found that 38 percent of children breathed in cigarette smoke from others smoking at home and 24 percent of children were exposed in the womb to their mothers' smoking.
Then there was the story published in the American Journal of Public Health with found that second-hand smoke can even show up in breast milk. "In fact," it said, "babies may get more exposure to tobacco through breast milk than by breathing second-hand smoke." (But nothing about nicotine stains on the mothers' brassieres?)
There is one organization that emphasizes child safety in the smoke filled world -- the "Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids." They come up with some dubious data at times. Take this bit:
"97,009 kids currently under age 18 will die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases. (CDC projection)" Not 97,000 but 97,000 and nine. How do they do it? I can't help getting suspicious when I run into data like that.
This is from one of a set of 50 flash cards the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids have come up with that show how tobacco is used among kids "in every state and all across the country." (If they just hadn't tried to double the impact by adding that "and all across the country" it might have been more believable.)
These cards, packaged in a flip top box like cigarettes are bound to be a waste.
Each card has a picture of a young person, cigarette in hand and copy which gives the statistics for the state represented.
On the card for Minnesota for example is says: "Each year minors illegally purchase 4.6 million packs of cigarettes resulting in $9.8 million in sales." Based on what is known about adolescent psychology stuff like that is as likely to encourage them to smoke as deter them. "Wow! kids around here are buying 4.6 million packs of illegal cigarettes a year. I better get in on that!"
And if that many packs of cigarettes are illegally sold to minors maybe the state should enforce the existing laws. But of course, there's no money in that. Better to sue the tobacco companies for big bucks. That'll teach the kids not to smoke.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
Contrary to the propaganda from anti-tobacco flaks who have closed their minds and want to close yours, there is another side to the question.
As long as we're at it, here are excerpts from a number of research projects sharply at odds with the propaganda put out by the anti-tobacco minions. It makes interesting reading and is an indication that you don't get the whole story from either the government or anti-tobacco activists.
Countering their one-sided myopia consider the following items:
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A new report based on research from the World Health Organization, reproduced in full.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Researchers said they were surprised and even embarrassed to find that smoking cigarettes apparently reduces the risk of breast cancer among women with an unusual gene mutation.
Researchers caution that the study does not mean women should smoke.
"The risks of smoking are so serious that there's absolutely no reason that any woman should consider smoking whether she is at high risk or low risk for breast cancer," said Dr. Lynn Schuchter, an oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center.
Smokers had half as many cancers
The study is being published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The authors were trying to find out what lifestyle factors might influence cancer development in women with a mutated gene called BRCA-1 or BRCA-2. By some estimates, about 80 percent of such women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. One in 250 women have the mutated gene. Doctors are hoping this discovery leads to new treatment strategies
The researchers were surprised by the results. "We found that among women who carried a mutation in one of these genes, cigarette smoking did have an effect in reducing their risk of developing breast cancer," said Dr. Caryn Lerman of the Lombardi Cancer Center.
The incidence of breast cancer among study participants who smoked heavily was 54 percent lower than among the non-smokers. The study found the more the women smoked, the less likely they were to get breast cancer.
Estrogen's role: The researchers said cigarettes are probably protecting these women because some compound in cigarettes interferes with the use of estrogen, a hormone already linked to breast cancer.
Doctors hope their research will lead to the development of new medications that reduce breast cancer risk without the deadly effects of smoking. Smoking still sharply increases the incidence of other cancers, including deadly lung cancer.
"We are embarrassed because we feel that the tobacco industry may propagate this without being responsible," said Gilbert Lenoir, a biologist who worked on the study.
Correspondent Dr. Steve Salvatore, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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"No statistically significant relationship was found in either community between smoking and coronary heart disease, hypertension or somatic complaints"
1477. University of Texas School of Allied Health Sciences. Philips, B.U., Jr.; Bruhn, J.G. "Smoking Habits and Reported Illness in Two Communities With Different Systems of Social Support." FUNDING: Univ. of Texas; National Institute of Mental Health. 1981-83.
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"Preliminary data indicate greater frequency of anterior infarctions among non-smokers." "Among patients with unstable angina, smoking was associated with less persistent rest pain and a lower proportion of smokers had chronic angina of effort prior to hospital admission. Preliminary analysis suggests a marginally lower in-hospital mortality rate among smokers after controlling for age and other prognostic factors."
0298. St. Vincent's Hospital, Dept. of Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Dept. (Dublin, Ireland). Cohort of 898 males and 415 female heart patients. 12/80-1/86.
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Pipe smokers have a higher intake of nicotine than cigarette smokers (as measured by serum and urinary cotinine levels). "Since pipe smokers have little excess risk of CHD [chronic heart disease], higher chronic nicotine exposure is unlikely to be the cause of the excess seen in cigarette smokers."
0534. Medical College of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Dept. of Environmental and Preventative Medicine (England). Wald, M.J.; Bailey, A. "Nicotine and Heart Disease.".
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"No difference in prevalence of cardiovascular symptoms was found [between those living with smokers and those not]"
0591. West of Scotland Cancer Surveillance Unit, Ruchill Hospital (Scotland). Gillis, C.R.; Hole, D.J.; Hawthorne, V.M. "Health Effects of Exposure to ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke] in the West of Scotland." Cohort of 16,171 (45-64 years old) screened in 1972 and 1976.
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"Secular trends in mortality from esophageal cancer in the United Kingdom are independent of secular changes in cigarette consumption, but well correlated with secular changes in alcohol consumption...alcohol acts as an indirect causal agent. The proximal causal agent is likely to be a precipitator, such as a microorganism. Genetic predisposition is also implicated"
0564. University of Leeds. Dept. of Medical Physics (England). Burch, P.R.J. "Tests of Causal, constitutional, and Mixed Hypotheses of Associations Between Smoking and Disease in Man." Funding: Univ. of Leeds. 1972 - continuing.
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"Overall, smoking was not found to be associated with any of the cancers studied." (Endometrial, Ovarian, and Breast Cancer)
Centres for Disease Control. Epidemiologic Studies Branch. Division of Reproductive Health. Rubin, G.; Tyler, C.W.; Franks, A.L.; Stroup, M. "Smoking and Endometrial, Ovarian, and Breast Cancer." FUNDING: NICHD.
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"The risk of breast cancer does not appear to be influenced by cigarette smoking"
1039. Boston University Medical Centre. Drug Epidemiology Unit. Shapiro. S Rosenberg. L.; Kaufman. D. "Multiple Case-Control Study of the Long Term Effects of Drug, Use in the Treatment of Chronic Disease." FUNDING: FDA (U01 FD01222-03) and NICHD [National Institute of Child Health & Human Development].
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"Women who smoke during pregnancy have full-term babies which, on the average are 5-6 grams [a fraction of an ounce] smaller than full-term babies born to non-smoking mothers."
0755. University of Colorado. Health Sciences Centre. Moore. L.C. "Maternal O2 Transport During Pregnancy at High Altitude "
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1. Birth weight lower in the smoking group, but the incidence of smoking was higher in young, unmarried women of lower socioeconomic status. Perinatal death was also higher among young, unmarried, low income women.
2. "No differences in antepartum hemorrhage or congenital anomalies between the groups"
3. "Hypertension and postpartum hemorrhage were lower in smokers."
0045. University of Tasmania, ( Queen Alexandra Hospital, Dept. of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Correy, J.; Newman. N.: Currarn, J "An Assessment of Smoking in Pregnancy." Method: Since I974, this study was conducted on ALL patients in Tasmania (smoking data was collected since Jan. 1981 ). Details of alcohol ingestion and drug use were also included. By 1984 information available on 90% of patients on average birth weight of infants, incidence of low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams), incidence of prematurity, congenital abnormalities, perinatal death antepartum hemorrhage and hypertension in pregnancy.
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No convincing differences for viral infection or respiratory illness were seen with parental smoking as an isolated factor..."
1462. Baylor College of Medicine, Influenza Research Centre (Texas). Gardner, G.C.; Frank, A.L.; Taber, L.H. "Effects of Social and Family Factors on Viral Respiratory Infection and Illness in the First Year of Life." A longitudinal study, 1975 - I980. This study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 39 (1); 42-48, March, I984.
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1. Smoking improves human information processing.
2. Higher nicotine cigarettes produce greater improvements [in information processing] than low-nicotine cigarettes.
3. Nicotine tablets produce similar effects.
4. Nicotine can reverse the detrimental effects of scopolamine on performance
5. Smoking effects are accompanied by increases in EEG arousal and decreases in the latency of the late positive component of the evoked potential."
0574. University of Reading, Department of Psychology (England). Warburton., D.M.; Wesnes, K. "The Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Human Information Processing and the role of Nicotine in These Effects "
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"In general, motor performance in all groups improved after smoking."
0530. London University, Institute of Psychiatry. O'Connor, K.P "Individual Differences in Psychophysiology of Smoking and Smoking Behavior"
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"Smokers in general are thinner than non-smokers, even when they ingest more calories." [Numerous studies, but only two are listed below]
0885. Kentucky State University. Lee. C.J.: Panemangalore. M. "Obesity Among Selected Elderly Females In Central Kentucky." FUNDING: USDA 0942. University of Louisville. Belknap Campus School of Medicine. Stamford, B.A.; Matter, S.; Fell, R.D., et al. "Cigarette Smoking, Exercise and High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol" FUNDING: American Heart Association.
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"...all smokers had less plaque, gingival inflammation and tooth mobility than non-smokers and similar periodontal pocket depth."
Veterans Administration, Outpatient Clinic (Boston). Chauncey. H.H,; Kapur, K.K.; Feldmar, R S. "The Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Study of Oral Health: in Healthy Veterans (Dental Longitudinal Study)
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"Smokers have lower incidence of postoperative deep vein thrombosis than non-smokers."
Guy's Hospital Medical School (England). Jones, R.M. "Influence of Smoking on Peri-Operative Morbidity."
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CONTINUE
---------------------------------------------------------------"Hypertension prevalence rate among smokers was 3.94 percent; among non-smokers the rate was 4.90 percent."
0146. Shanghai Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases. Chen, H.Z.; Pan, X.W.; Guo, G. et al. "Relation Between Cigarette Smoking and Epidemiology of Hypertension.
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"Hypertension and postpartum hemorrhage were lower in smokers."
0045. University of Tasmania (Australia). Correy, J.; Newman, N. Curran, J. "An Assessment of Smoking in Pregnancy."
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"RBCs [red blood cells] from cigarette smokers contain more glutathione and catalase and protect lung endothelial cells against O2 [dioxide] metabolites better than RBCs from non-smokers."
0759. University of Colorado. Refine, J.E.; Berger, E.M.; Beehler, C.J. et al. "Role of RBC Antioxidants in Cigarette Smoke Related Diseases." Jan. 1980 - continuing.
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"These results indicate that in sufficient doses chronic treatment with nicotine may be considered in the pharmacological treatment of Parkinson's disease. It remains to be demonstrated whether these protective actions can be extended to include also other injured neurons..."
1190. Janson, A.M.; Fuxe, K.; Agnati, L.F. Jansson, A. et al. "Protective effects of chronic nicotine treatment on lesioned nigrostriatal dopamine neurons in the male rat." Pub. in Progress in Brain Research 79:257-65, 1989.
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"Several studies have reported an apparent protective effect of cigarette smoking for the risk of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). These observations are supported by neurochemical studies..." These findings suggest that the inverse association between smoking and IPD may apply to NIP [neuroleptic-indiced parkinsonism]."
4014. Decina, P.; Caracci, G.; Sandik, R.; Berman, W. et al. "Cigarette smoking and neuroleptic-induced parkinsonism." In Biological Psychiatry 28(6):502-8, Sept. 15, 1990
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"There is a low prevalence of smoking in ulcerative colitis. The disease often starts or relapses after stopping smoking."
4101. Prytz, H.; Benoni, C.; Tagesson, C. "Does smoking tighten the gut?" In Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology 24(9):1084-8, Nov. 1989.
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"These results indicate that non-smokers and especially ex-smokers of cigarettes have greater risk of UC [ulcerative colitis] and thus confirm the results of other studies."
4134. Lorusso, D.; Leo, S.; Miscianga, G.; Guerra, V. "Cigarette smoking and ulcerative colitis. A case control Study." Hepato-Gastroenterology 36(4): 202-4, Aug. 1989.
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"Smoking has a protective effect on immunological abnormalities in asbestos workers."
0429. Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy (Poland). Lange, A. "Effect of Smoking on Immunological Abnormalities in Asbestos Workers.
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Relative risk of lung cancer for asbestos workers was "highest for those who had never smoked, lowest for current smokers, and intermediate for ex-smokers. The trend was statistically significant. There was no significant association between smoking and deaths from mesothelioma"
0565. University of London, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Cancer of the Lung Among Asbestos Factory Workers."
WHY, OH WHY?
"The demonization of smokers is one of the most remarkable ethical changes in American society in the 20th century. It has transformed what was once a bad habit into an outright sin."
Arthur Caplan, Director, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
Why do people smoke?
According to the anti-tobacco zealots it is due to seduction by the tobacco companies and the resultant addiction to nicotine.
This is the simplistic answer that fits their simplistic view that sees the whole picture in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil.
There is a strong moralistic tinge to their attitude and in their quasi-religious approach honest research and rationality give way to preaching and salvation. Even the former smokers in their ranks adopt the party line with the fervor of the newly converted, basking in their holier-than-thou sheen. After all, if you're against something the best policy is to concede no value whatsoever to it.
According to their philosophy there is no good reason for anyone to light up. But, as a few million smokers can tell you, it is not simply a matter of nicotine addiction; the act of smoking actually has some positive aspects. Research even bears out their claims.
Tobacco smoke is a mild stimulant which promotes the production of neurotransmitters. It has been found for instance that smoking releases dopamine in the nervous system activating nerve cells associated with sensations of pleasure. No wonder smokers report that they enjoy smoking.
It also increases cerebral glucose metabolism, heightening brain activity, thus improving alertness, concentration, cognitive performance and short term memory.
In addition, it reduces anxiety, relieves both fatigue and , boredom, aids digestion, raises the metabolic rate and suppresses appetite. Furthermore, it improves motor response speed and visual processing.
So, rather than being nothing more than pathetic addiction, the failure or refusal to quit smoking can be the result of weighing the benefits against the risks and making a conscious decision to smoke. What is at stake, as always, is the freedom to make choices and decisions in one's personal life.
The crusaders are fond of saying that most smoker want to quit. While that may be true of individual smokers at times, it is not an overriding and universal conviction. Among complaints associated with withdrawal smokers say that they feel more lethargic, can't concentrate and are getting fat!
"But," the antis yell, "don't they know how dangerous it is!" Yes, they do. As a matter of fact, polls show that as a group they tend to over estimate the dangers associated with smoking. Their decision to continue is a result of weighing the hazards against the benefits and choosing the latter.
So when a smoker says he/she feels better when smoking it is not simply a matter of imagination or wishful thinking; there really are some rewards for lighting up. Just because this is a claim that can't be heard across the chasm that separates them from the anti-smokers doesn't mean it isn't true.
TIGHTENING THE NET
In the first Food and Drugs Act of 1906 there was no mention of tobacco products. Only drugs and medicines listed in the U.S. Pharmacoepia or National Formulary were subject to control.
In 1914 it was decided to include tobacco -- only when used to cure, mitigate or prevent disease.
It was not until the sixties that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decided to step up the offense against tobacco by proposing strict regulation on the imagery and copy of cigarette ads to prohibit explicit or implicit health claims. But even then (1960) it was stipulated that the term "hazardous substance" not be applied to tobacco and tobacco products.
Three years later, in 1963, the FDA was still of the opinion that tobacco did not fit the "hazardous" criteria.
Then in 1965 the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act required a warning label to read "Caution: Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health." This applied to cigarette packages only, not in cigarette advertising.
In 1969 this became the Surgeon General's label -- "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to you Health." This was the only health warning permitted. About that same time the Department of Justice prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio.
Meanwhile, the FCC ruled in 1967 that the Fairness Doctrine applied to cigarette advertising and stations broadcasting cigarette commercials were required to donate air time to anti-smoking messages.
The net was tightening.
Still, in the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 aimed at preventing the abuse of drugs, narcotics and other addictive substances, tobacco was specifically excluded. This was still true in the 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act.
In 1973 the Civil Aeronautics Board required no-smoking sections on all commercial airline flights.
Cigarettes were discontinued in K-rations and C-rations for soldiers and sailors in 1975.
1984: Four rotating Surgeon General's health warning labels were permitted/required listing specific health risks associated with cigarettes. And in 1985 a new "nicotine-delivery-device," Favor brand Smokeless Cigarettes was ruled a "new drug" and removed from the market.
Smoking was banned on domestic airline flights of two hours or less in 1987. In 1989 this was changed to domestic flights of six hours or less. This is also when the Department of Health and Human Services established a smokefree environment in its facilities.
Nicotine patches introduced in 1991.
The notorious EPA report declaring ETS a "Group A" (known human carcinogen) was released in 1993. The Tobacco War was now in full swing.
In 1994 OSHA proposed regulations to prohibit smoking in the workplace except in separately ventilated smoking rooms. This would be about the last concession offered smokers.
In that same year the Department of Defense banned smoking in all its workplaces.
It was in 1995 that President Clinton announced the publication of the FDA proposal to restrict the sale, distribution, and marketing of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to "protect children and adolescents" and in 1996 he announced the first comprehensive program to prevent children and adolescents from smoking or using smokeless tobacco to be administered by the FDA which would also propose a requirement of major tobacco companies to educate young people about the real health dangers associated with tobacco use by means of a multimedia campaign.
In 1997 and 1998 the Big Guns were brought out and a series of multi billion dollar suits were brought against major tobacco companies by various state Attorneys General.
During May, 1998 an Alabama Circuit Court judge, acting as a private citizen, was trying to use an obscure law to revoke the corporate charters of five major tobacco companies, in effect putting them out of business in the state, for violating state law by contributing to the use of tobacco by minors and other alleged wrongdoings.
As of this writing only the 1998 Osteen ruling against the 1993 FDA study holds out any hope of halting and possibly reversing the rampant anti-smoking fanaticism which engulfs the country. Should this fail to happen we can brace ourselves for further onslaughts against civil liberties and freedom of choice in other arenas of public life employing all the seedy techniques polished in the war against tobacco such as faulty science, bogus reports, outright lying and politically correct screaming.
It is a prospect no one in possession of their faculties should relish.
(See also, APPENDIX D)
HEALTH COSTS
One of the cries of distress raised by anti-tobacconists is how much the smoking habit costs the government each year in health care treatment of smoking-related diseases.
For a change one might complain about the governmental costs of the anti-tobacco war due to the budgets of the various branches of government involved, such as Congress, EPA, OSHA, FTC, HIH, FDA, the Treasury Department, etc., not to mention funding of private anti-tobacco coalitions. Then add in the court costs for the mounting litigation suits and the total would probably far outstrip the direct health costs smokers are responsible for.
And how about those tremendous health costs? What do they really amount to?
Smokers already pay $60 billion a year in cigarette taxes. The Senate (McCain) Bill claimed $50 billion annual health costs for smokers. That amounts to a $10 billion profit.
Back in 1994 President Clinton's proposed universal health care program and the means of paying for it were being hotly debated. At that time the Congressional Research Service did a study on the issue and submitted a detailed report -- over 60 pages in length. Since that report is a model of even-handedness it is worth reproducing a few excerpts from it here to give an idea of how it reached its conclusion that smokers actually pay their own way without the imposition of additional taxes:
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Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform: An Economic Analysis
Executive Summary
A cigarette excise tax increase of 75 cents per pack has been proposed to finance part of the President's universal health care program. The tax enjoys considerable public support, would raise about $11 billion per year, and would be relatively simple to administer because it would increase an existing manufacturer's excise tax. The President's fiscal year 1995 budget stressed that the tax would help pay for the additional health care costs of smoking, and would discourage individuals, particularly young people, from smoking.
One reason economic theory suggests selective excise taxes generally are not desirable is that they distort individual choices among goods and services in the market and impede efficient resource allocation. Circumstances may exist, however, in which the efficiency case against selective excise taxes is stood on its head: should market failure be present, such taxes may actually be the preferred policy instrument to achieve economic efficiency. Such market failures may exist for cigarettes for two reasons: spillover effects and imperfect information. A cigarette tax is efficient if it forces smokers to pay for costs they impose on non-smokers (external costs or spillover effects) or if it raises smokers' costs to compensate for the effect that incomplete information has on their judgment about the cost to themselves (internal costs).
An initial question is whether the spillover effects alone are sufficient to justify the proposed increase in the excise taxes (Federal and State), which currently average 50 cents per pack. Estimates of perpack spillover effects require information on smoking-related health care costs, sick leave costs, life insurance costs, costs of fires, foregone tax revenue, costs of pensions, and costs of nursing homes. Many of these components are subject to considerable uncertainty due to often conflicting scientific evidence, the less than perfect data used for measurement, and the presence of some non quantifiable factors.
These uncertainties produce a wide range of estimates of per pack spillover effects. Midrange estimates based upon likely assumptions suggest net external costs from smoking in the range of 33 cents per pack in 1995 prices, an amount that by itself is too small to justify either current cigarette taxes or the proposed tax increase. An upperbound estimate of net external costs would justify current cigarette taxes and some or all of the proposed 75 cent tax increase. A lowerbound estimate suggests smoking does not impose external costs on non-smokers, but rather provides net external savings to the non-smoking population (primarily because smokers' early death leaves their Social Security and pension contributions unused and available to reduce future financing demands on non-smokers).
These estimates of spillover effects are confined to effects that can be quantified--they do not account for factors such as the general distaste many individuals feel for smoking. Regulation rather than taxation might be best suited to deal with these spillover effects. No value of "distaste" exists to provide guidance on the correct magnitude of the tax, the tax must be paid for smoking even when no repelled observers are present, and it is relatively easy to separate smokers and non-smokers in many business and social settings. In fact, it is arguable that a more efficient outcome may occur if private business regulates smoking without formal government regulation.
Some argue these estimates of net external costs are inaccurate because they do not account for the intangible costs of premature death (e.g. the grief of family and friends). On the efficiency grounds being discussed here, the relevance of this issue depends upon whether the individual accurately values the effect of this risk on his family and friends. There is no compelling reason to believe individuals, on average, undervalue this risk. In any case, a policy that assigned an arbitrary value for the underassessment of intangible cost of premature death would have far reaching implications. It would imply imposition of the rights and preferences of groups relative to those of individuals, a policy that could be viewed as inconsistent with certain basic political and economic values of society. Pleasure driving, many recreational activities, some dietary practices, and some occupations, to name just a few activities, involve the same actuarially validated risks of premature death and grief. In fact, we do not impose taxes on these activities. Taxing such activities involves value judgments that are beyond the scope of economic analysis.
A tax also may be justified on grounds of market failure if smokers have imperfect information about the health hazards of smoking or about the difficulty of quitting in the future. Although surveys suggest that some smokers are not aware of or do not accept the health hazards of smoking, available data indicate the average smoker is aware of, or overestimates, the health risks of smoking. Thus, there is considerable evidence that smokers seem to make their smoking decision with knowledge about the health risks of smoking.
The President's budget proposal stressed the adoption of a cigarette tax to decrease youth participation as one of its rationales. Recent research suggests increased regulation and increased enforcement of existing regulations against sale of cigarettes to minors might be effective, and would avoid the adverse economic consequences that cigarette taxation imposes on the mature smoking population.
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Exerpted from CRS Report 94214E to Congress
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So the upshot of the whole thing is that increased taxes are not needed to cover extra health costs due to smoking. Proposals for such increases are merely attempts to fatten the government treasury at smokers' expense. In other words, it would be levied as a "sin" tax... moralism vs economics. But "moralism" of a very unethical nature.
PASSING THE BUCKS
Project ASSIST
Using tax dollars for political lobbying is against the law. Nevertheless, for years a project know as "American Stop Smoking Intervention Study" (ASSIST) has been doing just that. Although it calls itself a "Study," ASSIST (the largest federally-funded program designed to reduce smoking) is really a subversive way to funnel money into state anti-tobacco coalitions to fund lobbying for anti-tobacco/anti-smoker legislation in their home states.
The honchos at ASSIST deny such use of federal funds for political lobbying but documents acquired through freedom of information acts at both state and federal levels demonstrate that the practice has in fact been going on over the years.
For instance, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) based in Atlanta, a federal agency, awarded a $30,000 grant to the American Lung Association (ALA). The California Department of Health contributed another $68,958 from state cigarette tax revenues. The monies were used to fund a 1993 conference for training anti-smoking activists how to lobby for higher tobacco taxes.
Tips on how to "tap an emotional issue," "use aggressive negative campaigning," and use children as an "emotional symbol and message of the campaign" were offered. A representative of the Massachusetts division of the American Cancer Society; advice based on that state's successful effort to raise tobacco taxes.
Many other informational seminars were presented offering guidance in all aspects of anti-tobacco strategy -- polling, fundraising, petition drives, and PR in addition to lobbying.
Doug Barr, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society spoke at the conference, suggesting that U.S. health charities quit using their millions of volunteers for providing direct services to disease victims and use them instead in political campaigning!
Tactics used in the 1988 California Proposition 99 campaigning were used as an example of useful subterfuge to influence more tolerant segments of the population to fall in line with the party line by temporarily setting aside their more militant anti-smoking rhetoric and present themselves as NOT an anti-smoking campaign but simply interested in requiring smokers to "pay their fair share of the costs associated with smoking" although the CRC had determined that tobacco taxes in the state already more than covered smoking related health care costs. The same conclusion was reached by an independent study by the Rand Corporation.
The New York Department of Health is also an ASSIST center. From there department workers are carefully coached, not in legitimate Health Department procedures, but in political lobbying and anti-smoking activism. For example, they were told that costs "associated with communicating with Executive branch regarding regulations, (in other words, lobbying) are reimbursable."
In Minnesota ASSIST funds were used to lobby state and local officials to adopt anti-tobacco legislation.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is one of the prime offenders in the use of federal funds for political action through ASSIST. They have spent about $135 million on the project. So far 17 states have contracted with NCI to receive ASSIST funds.
Funds are also shunted to the American Lung Association (ALA), the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Cancer Society (ACS) and its lobbying arm, Tobacco-Free America Coalition (TFAC).
All this despite the fact that the use of tax money for political lobbying is against the law. It all adds up to a tax-funded assault on freedom.
Closing the floodgates?
After an eight year trial period scheduled to end in the fall of 1999, ASSIST may come to an end. At least the National Cancer Institute has no current plans to keep it going. Many tobacco control advocates believe this is because NCI Director Rick Klausner is not enthusiastic about continuing it because "it does not fit in with NCI's traditional biomedical lab research." (Duh!)
Loose cannon Stanton Glantz fired a shot: "It has been trench warfare between the health community and Klausner. There has been continued foot-dragging at NCI."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has plans for a spin-off of ASSIST.
Lie, lie, lie and never say die.
WHY ANTI-SMOKERS SHOULD SUPPORT SMOKERS' RIGHTS
Because in doing so they defend their own rights. Failure to see the connection between smoking and civil freedom could be costly.
There are actually two issues at stake here: Smokers' Rights and Everyone's Rights. Put another way -- if one segment of society can have their rights stripped away with a stroke of the pen the same thing can happen to other groups. And don't think it won't.
The anti-smoking campaign has become so overblown that in some places it infringes on businesses by disallowing smoking in public places, restaurants and bars in particular, despite the owners desires.
On the other hand it has made anti-smoking hysteria so acceptable that in one case a business tried to ban employees from smoking in their own vehicles and even in their own homes! Fortunately a court decision forced them to back off and reinstate an employ fired for smoking in his own car.
Banning smoking in condominiums and apartment buildings has led to equally extreme measures. In at least one case an apartment resident tried to prevent another resident from smoking in his own apartment. The principle of being "invaded by tobacco smoke from nearby dwellings" is utterly ridiculous and indicative only of a presumptuous attempt to restrict another person's freedom. This is second hand smoke hysteria twice removed! But that's the way it goes once the trend starts.
If the anti-smoking bandwagon cruises to its ultimate destination -- the outlawing of tobacco and criminalization of smokers, what's next?
Certainly the food and drink we consume. Alcohol of course is already under heavy attack. Food? On the "Today" show February 10, 1997 an FDA spokesman offered the following definition of a drug: "...anything that effects the function or structure of the body..." On guard, people! Here they come again.
This opens the door for an attack of the food we eat employing all the malicious elements of the war on smoking -- government regulation, advertising restrictions, government subsidies, higher taxes and a mandated education program. Not to mention the moral outrage and judgmental snotiness previously aimed at smokers but now turned on the over-weight, high-cholesterol sinners who eat what they want to. Don't count out the animal rights activists either. Vegetarianism is apt to enter the fray as well. Moral outrage is the order of the day.
Incidentally, when it comes to the matter of defining tobacco as a drug the following from a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle is of interest:
"As a physician, I can say that tobacco and alcohol take years to kill -- predictably, 10 to 30 years. Drugs can and do kill, in 10 to 30 seconds.
It is ludicrous to hope for the media, educators, drug gurus and public authorities to make this distinction of difference, while they've bee teaching a whole generation that men and women are not distinct and different."
Carolyn M. Carr, M.D.
The recent changes in recommendations for ideal body weight for adults (reducing it by about 10 pounds) and blood pressure (adjusted from 140/90 to 140/80) may be just the first "official" volley in this battle.
Smoking, eating, drinking, owning a gun, in short, engaging in any life style should remain a matter of individual choice, not something dictated from outside. Especially not by a Big Brother Government. Given free rein the Lifestyle Police are unlikely to curtail their erosion of individual rights until few if any are left. And the last right will be an obligation -- to be politically correct!
Intolerance is on the march with a vengeance. The right to bear arms, to wear furs, to read or look at any material once chooses, to use proscribed, politically incorrect language, to smoke cigarettes and God knows what else are all under fire by the self-lobotomized do-gooders who are so positive they know what's best for us.
In their fervor to ban any action or language they consider offensive or improper they never stop to consider how offensive their own actions are in trying to impose their own standards on society as a whole. In their drive to muzzle, proscribe and outlaw they have no perspective. It is always others, never themselves who need to be criticized and controlled. In psychology this is called "projection" and is symptomatic of a sick mind.
It usually starts out for "the good of the children." In reality protecting individual rights would be better and safer for them. Liberty, not control and legislation should be the goal.
So, while you may not approve of the life style of smokers, all you anti-smokers out there should re-examine your priorities and start protecting my Rights in the interest of saving your own. After all, in the final analysis we will all stand or fall together.
BAD CASE OF THE UGLIES"Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions,
has always been the systematic organization of hatreds."Henry Adams
It used to be that people were content to live and let live. Not so any longer. In the last few decade it's gotten so that the only way some people can live their lives is by not letting others live theirs. This trend goes under the name of "Political Correctness."
Perhaps it all started over the sexism issue -- and even had some justification in that arena -- but then the anti-tobacco army got ahold of it and things got worse. ETS became the hot button. Some people objected to others smoking in their vicinity. Often it was just a matter of not liking the smell of burning tobacco but they had to claim they were being killed. What to do? Make a political issue out of it!
The control freaks knew a gold mine when they found it.
I can remember when the anti-smokers were even decent and courteous about it. In those days a common comment was, "I'd prefer it if you didn't smoke." Those gentle, well-mannered days are long gone. Now the stance is that smokers don't have a right to light up --- hardly anywhere -- and the PC gang has no qualms when it comes to getting nasty about it.
Anti-smokers are now the new Ugly Americans. With a vengeance. The cult has become fascistic; anti-smoking Nazis. (See following section.) In their view all Rights are on their side and they feel righteously justified in stripping the rights of those who don't agree with them. There is no longer any room for accommodation; "Smoking Areas" are not enough. The aim is to outlaw smoking altogether.
In Massachusetts a movement is already under way to do just that. No one should have any doubts about what prohibition and criminalization of smoking is likely to result in.
In the myopia of such narrow minded, anti-equal rights dictators there is no negative side to their philosophy. Never mind that they may be setting a dangerous precedent. What's next? Where do we go from here? Down a very dismal path, I'm afraid.
But let's get to the nitty-gritty of this trend: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
Never mind that the term is a howling oxymoron, the deluded are hell bent on enforcing it. Intolerance has become the politically correct stance.
Originally the movement may have had some virtue in so far as it betokened a certain social sensitivity. Doing away with the nastier varieties of sexist, racial and ethnic language and thinking is an admirable enough goal.
But let's face it, when the principle degenerates into such absurdities as "hearing impaired" for deaf, "physically challenged" or "differently abled" for disabled or "visually challenged" for blind (and, believe it or not, "inter-connectedness" has even been seriously proposed as a substitute for brotherhood/sisterhood!) it is no longer either useful or defensible. It has devolved into a pathological hypersensitivity.
When we hear such euphemisms red flags should wave like crazy -- at the craziness that not only gives them expression but actually believes in them.
How can such an ideological malady prevail? No one in their right mind would know. The ill-conceived neologisms of the politically correct dunces are a product of their belief that they are "thinking before they speak" when in reality no logical intellectual activity has taken place at all, only an impulse to bitchy nit-picking at other people's life styles.
There is a reason that an internet search for "political correctness" results in primarily humorous and satiric citations: It is such a joke.
Or would be if the perpetrators weren't so deadly serious and if their blatherings weren't taken so seriously in certain timid quarters. In their effort to be totally inoffensive they have become highly offensive to most rational thinkers. It's political correctness versus reality. The PC police are on the march!
Some of the misguided revisionists want to delete all scenes depicting smoking from movies and TV -- even old movies and TV shows. (Right. And the holocaust never happened either.) In some cases they are even out to get cartoon characters. No holds barred, take no prisoners!
In Massachusetts these flakes actually pushed through a law which forbids score keeping in games played by children under the age of 10 in the Youth Soccer Association where trophies are awarded! They call it "non result oriented competition." They didn't want anyone's self-esteem damaged by being identified as losers. Even the coaches apparently went along. But you can bet the kids know what the score is.
It is not really surprising that the madness of political correctness has gained such a foothold in Protestant America with its Puritan heritage (and, no, I'm not Catholic) but the phenomenon is hardly limited to the United States; it's a global sickness that has reared its ugly head in numerous other countries of the world as well.
And the war is not only about tobacco, it's over life-style control, in whatever area the PC's disapprove of. Alcohol, tobacco, sports utility vehicles, caffeine, food -- they are all among the issues to be "corrected."
We need to reclaim our sanity.
A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE
HELP STAMP OUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!
HELLO, FAT TAX
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Reprinted with permission from the National Smokers Alliance
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Rally ?Round the Fat Tax!
Finally, taxes and government regulations have been proposed that every smoker in America should support!
The National Smokers Alliance has consistently warned that more taxes and more regulations on the nation?s adult smokers create a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to more of the same on other lifestyle choices.
As it turns out, we may be well down the slippery slope already. A Yale University professor has seriously proposed a complete program of government regulation, including advertising restrictions, government subsidies, higher taxes and government-mandated education programs -- all for the good of the children.
Yale Professor Kelly D. Brownell has called for changes in public policy as a means for altering diet, including:
1. "Subsidizing healthy foods to increase consumption."
2. "Taxing unhealthy foods to discourage consumption."
3. "Teaching the public about proper nutrition and encouraging a militant attitude about promotion of unhealthy foods."
4. "Regulating food advertising aimed at children."
5. "Enhancing opportunities for physical activity."
Brownell has even come up the equivalent of the anti-smokers? environmental tobacco smoke shams. He describes individuals as being exposed to a "toxic food environment." (Will they inhale deadly levels of fat and cholesterol?) It will come as no surprise that he published his conclusions in the journal, Addictive Behaviors.
If this doesn?t sound familiar to smokers we don?t know what will. And this is no frivolous proposal. No less than our old friend, Dr. C. Everett Koop, has engaged on this issue, saying if he had stayed in office for another term as U.S. Surgeon General he would have launched the same kind of national war on obesity that he waged on tobacco.
Koop has already said, "300,000 Americans will die each year just because they?re fat." Experience tells us that number will creep ever upward as anti-fat activists gravitate to this new trend.
"But wait," you say. "Wouldn?t it be crazy for smokers to mobilize in support of this proposal? Isn?t that what they?ve been doing to us for all these years? Isn?t that the very kind of government intrusion we?ve been fighting? Aren?t some of us overweight, too?"
Of course. But isn?t this a golden opportunity to shed light on the oppression of smokers? Is there a better time to send a message to the rest of America, those who have remained silent while only smokers bear the brunt of government intrusion into our private lives?
If enough smokers get behind the "fat tax" to encourage the government nannies and the other "good for you" social engineers to energize themselves, maybe, just maybe, other mainstream Americans will wake up to the fact that the slippery slope is real and not just an argument.
If, instead, we shrug off this new assault on personal freedom, just as so many have ignored the assault on smokers? freedoms, another opportunity will have been lost.
So let?s help things along a little bit. Let?s help them get as crazy on this issue as they have become on smoking.
Let?s urge Congress to impose a dollar tax on a Big Mac, or better yet on a Happy Meal for the kids. Let?s ban those colorful playgrounds luring children into a vat of fat.
Let?s ask the FTC to ban television advertising that targets kids (or adults, for that matter) promoting sugared cereals or "the other white meat." Let?s not forget that Dunkin? Donuts banned smoking so they could push their calorie-laden concoctions.
Let?s challenge legislators to come up with new government subsidies and programs to support bean sprouts, tofu and granola to lower the price and encourage consumption.
Let?s encourage a transfer of wealth through taxes from those who choose not to bicycle or jog to those who do. Let?s create tax credits for the purchase of exercise equipment. Let?s sue somebody; it?s the American way.
Cite Dr. Brownell?s study. Write in support of his conclusions. Ask your elected leaders to intervene.
The Resistance manifests itself in many forms, and creativity is prized.
From The Resistance, September, 1997
The Resistance is a publication of the National Smokers Alliance
Copyright 1997 National Smokers Alliance. All right reserved.
Especially choice is that bit about a "toxic food environment." So what's their spiel going to be this time? That being forced to be in the same room with someone eating French fries exposes them to dangerous levels of fat and cholesterol? And that item about "enhancing opportunities for physical activity," what does that amount to? Big fines for failure to take part in mandatory daily exercises? It wouldn't be surprising. The fools recognize no limits when it comes to whipping us into shape.
WHO'S TAXING WHO?
One of the tactics anti-tobacco forces take delight in is punitive taxation of cigarettes. Their reasoning is that this will (eventually at least) make them so expensive as to put them out of reach of their despicable enemies, the smoking population. This would be true of lower income smokers, often cited as the largest group of remaining smokers and those least able to afford exorbitant costs in exercising their personal rights to use a still legal product.
But primary in the aim of the tax-crazy proponents is the aim of discouraging young smokers on the theory that they will be the first to be cut off by such a maneuver. This point of view is hotly contested by those on the other side of the fence who point out that if kids can afford to pay $100 or more for a pair of canvas shoes or a jacket sporting the logo of their favorite basketball team there is little reason to suppose that doubling or even tripling the price of a pack of cigarettes will constitute an insurmountable barrier to teenage smokers.
Add to that the well known fact that when the young and rebellious are presented with a big no-no it is likely to be taken as an invitation to explore the forbidden territory. With this in mind higher taxes to lock them out and strenuous effort to educate them against smoking will very likely have just the opposite of the desired effect. Therefor neither approach is likely to work. The net result will only be to economically penalize those who smoke anyway and add to their ranks in the process.
In any case, every state in the union already has laws on the books prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to minors. If the nanny state really wants to discourage teenage smoking all they have to do is enforce these laws. But that would be too simple and too logical for control freaks determined to totally eradicate the "evil empire" of tobacco. Besides, it wouldn't fatten the treasury.
The trouble with the whole principle of higher taxation is that it will be the smokers themselves, not the tobacco companies, who will pay. The companies would simply pass this increased cost of doing business to their customers. And since nobody has proposed confining higher taxes to young smokers, smokers of all ages and economic means will foot the bill.
As to the proposition that higher taxes are needed to recoup the extra health care burden smokers impose on states, a policy study by The Heartland Institute points out that, "Research clearly shows that smoking does not impose a net financial injury on state treasuries. In 1993, state and federal cigarette taxes averaged 52.6 cents per pack; estimates of the medical care costs imposed on society by smokers that year range between 50 and 55 cents per pack. Smokers may actually save society money when lower nursing home care pensions, and Social Security costs are accounted for."
Try telling that to anti-smoking advocates; they will be conveniently deaf.
Hit them with the certain result of higher taxation producing smuggling and a black-market in cigarettes (its already happening) and they will still cling to their addiction to taxes. Oh well, what do you expect from addicts?
BLACK-MARKET RESULTS FROM HIGHER TAXES
Anti-tobacco activists are blithely confident that their high taxation tactics won't contribute to cigarette smuggling. Fact is, they already have.
In Michigan where taxes reached $7.50 per carton smuggling activity in one ring alone was netting $1 million a month back in 1994. It began in Detroit in a an Amer-Can Shop, one of a string owned by a man named Thomas Salamey who established contact with a cigarette wholesaler in Minneapolis from whom he purchased untaxed cartons of cigarettes.
In addition to owning Amer-Can Shops, Salamey worked as a salesman for Garden Foods of Dearborn, Michigan, a wholesaler of fruit juices to stores, gas stations and food retailers. While making his rounds on that job, Salamey began offering his cut-rate cigarettes, unknown to the sales manager of Garden Foods. He soon had more than 150 buyers around the state.
His $7.50 "discount" on the stock he bought from his Minnesota connection gave him room to deal on transactions that netted him between $4.50 and $5.50 on each carton. Within five months his volume totaled 600,000 cartons.
Salamey also set up some Canadian with his contact in Minneapolis who worked the same routine across the border.
All might have gone well, hadn't a wholesaler selling taxed cartons at the higher price alerted state police who began an investigation in which they met considerable resistance from many people who said they'd prefer going to jail rather than talk. Their reluctance however was not enough to shield Salamey.
Investigators found shredded receipts in trash outside Salamey's store that showed legitimate cigarette purchases on the front, but on the back carried hand scrawled records of the actual, illegal purchases.
All in all, eighteen people involved in the operation were arrested and charged with conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion.
As a result of the smuggling by this one ring alone, monies slated for use in Michigan health programs was reduced by at least $6 million, resulting in budget cuts.
ANTI-SMOKING NAZIS
On pro-smoking web sites one not infrequently runs into the phrase, "Anti-Smoking Nazis." Does the phrase sound a little strong, over the top to you? That's the way it struck me -- until I ran into the following:
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The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis:
a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45
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Robert N. Proctor
Department of History,Pennsylvania State University
Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising, restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world's most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer. The anti-tobacco campaign must be understood against the backdrop of the Nazi quest for racial and bodily purity, which also motivated many other public health efforts of the era.
Medical historians in recent years have done a great deal to enlarge our understanding of medicine and public health in Nazi Germany. We know that about half of all doctors joined the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilization, "euthanasia," and the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies.(1) (2) Much of our present day concern for the abuse of humans used in experiments stems from the extreme brutality many German doctors showed towards concentration camp prisoners exploited to advance the cause of German military medicine.(3)
Tobacco in the Reich
One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.(4-6) Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race.(1) (4)Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers.(7) Hitler was the most adamant, characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." At one point the Fuhrer even suggested that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.(8)
German smoking rates rose dramatically in the first six years of Nazi rule, suggesting that the propaganda campaign launched during those early years was largely ineffective.(4) (5) German smoking rates rose faster even than those of France, which had a much weaker anti-tobacco campaign. German per capita tobacco use between 1932 and 1939 rose from 570 to 900 cigarettes a year, whereas French tobacco consumption grew from 570 to only 630 cigarettes over the same period.(9)
Smith et al suggested that smoking may have functioned as a kind of cultural resistance,(4) though it is also important to realize that German tobacco companies exercised a great deal of economic and political power, as they do today. German anti-tobacco activists frequently complained that their efforts were no match for the "American style" advertising campaigns waged by the tobacco industry.(10) German cigarette manufacturers neutralized early criticism-for example, from the SA (Sturm-Abteilung; stormtroops), which manufactured its own "Sturmzigaretten"-by portraying themselves as early and eager supporters of the regime.(11) The tobacco industry also launched several new journals aimed at countering anti-tobacco propaganda. In a pattern that would become familiar in the United States and elsewhere after the second world war, several of these journals tried to dismiss the anti-tobacco movement as "fanatic" and "unscientific." One such journal featured the German word for science twice in its title (Der Tabak: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der International en Tabakwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, founded in 1940).
We should also realize that tobacco provided an important source of revenue for the national treasury. In 1937-8 German national income from tobacco taxes and tariffs exceeded 1 billion Reichsmarks.(12) By 1941, as a result of new taxes and the annexation of Austria and Bohemia, Germans were paying nearly twice that. According to Germany's national accounting office, by 1941 tobacco taxes constituted about one twelfth of the government's entire income.(13) Two hundred thousand Germans were said to owe their livelihood to tobacco -- an argument that was reversed by those who pointed to Germany's need for additional men in its labour force, men who could presumably be supplied from the tobacco industry.(14)
'Tobacco capital' raining down to spoil the people's health
Culmination of the campaign: 1939-41
German anti-tobacco policies accelerated towards the end of the 1930s, and by the early war years tobacco use had begun to decline. The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938 and the post office did likewise. Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals, and rest homes. The NSDAP (National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty.(15) The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Hermann Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.(16) Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on street cars in 1941.(17) Smoking was banned in air raid shelters-though some shelters reserved separate rooms for smokers.(18) During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.(19) From July 1943 it was illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.(20) Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself, who was worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.(21) Nazi policies were heralded as marking "the beginning of the end" of tobacco use in Germany.(14)
German tobacco epidemiology by this time was the most advanced in the world. Franz H. Muller in 1939 and Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schoniger in 1943 were the first to use case-control epidemiological methods to document the lung cancer hazard from cigarettes.(22) (23) Muller concluded that the "extraordinary rise in tobacco use" was "the single most important cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer."(22) Heart disease was another focus and was not infrequently said to be the most serious illness brought on by smoking.(24) Late in the war nicotine was suspected as a cause of the coronary heart failure suffered by a surprising number of soldiers on the eastern front. A 1944 report by an army field pathologist found that all 32 young soldiers whom he had examined after death from heart attack on the front had been "enthusiastic smokers." The author cited the Freiburg pathologist Franz Buchner's view that cigarettes should be considered "a coronary poison of the first order."(25)
'Our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler drinks no alcohol and does not smoke...His performance at work is incredible...(from Auf der Wacht, 1937)
On 20 June 1940 Hitler ordered tobacco rations to be distributed to the military "in a manner that would dissuade" soldiers from smoking.(24) Cigarette rations were limited to six per man per day, with alternative rations available for non-smokers(for example, chocolate or extra food). Extra cigarettes were sometimes available for purchase, but these were generally limited to 50 per man per month and were often unavailable -- as during times of rapid advance or retreat. Tobacco rations were denied to women accompanying the Wehrmacht. An ordinance on 3 November 1941 raised tobacco taxes to a higher level than they had ever been (80-95% of the retail price). Tobacco taxes would not rise that high again for more than a quarter of a century after Hitler's defeat.(26)
Impact of the war and postwar poverty
The net effect of these and other measures (for instance, medical lectures to discourage soldiers from smoking) was to lower tobacco consumption by the military during the war years. A 1944 survey of 1000 servicemen found that, whereas the proportion of soldiers smoking had increased (only 12.7% were non-smokers), the total consumption of tobacco had decreased-by just over 14%. More men were smoking (101 of those surveyed had taken up the habit during the war, whereas only seven had given it up) but the average soldier was smoking about a quarter (23.4%)less tobacco than in the immediate prewar period. The number of very heavy smokers (30 or more cigarettes daily) was down dramatically-from 4.4% to only 0.3%-and similar declines were recorded for moderately heavy smokers.(24)
German cigarette consumption in 1940-1. Germans smoked 75 billion cigarettes, or enough to form a cylindrical block 436 metres high with a base of 1000 square metres. (From Reine Luft.)
Postwar poverty further cut consumption. According to official statistics German tobacco use did not reach prewar levels again until the mid-1950s. The collapse was dramatic: German per capita consumption dropped by more than half from 1940 to 1950, whereas American consumption nearly doubled during that period.(6) (9) French consumption also rose, though during the four years of German occupation cigarette consumption declined by even more than in Germany(9)-suggesting that military conquest had a larger effect than Nazi propaganda.
After the war Germany lost its position as home to the world's most aggressive anti-tobacco science. Hitler was dead but also many of his anti-tobacco underlings either had lost their jobs or were otherwise silenced. Karl Aster, head of Jena's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research (and rector of the University of Jena and an officer in the SS), committed suicide in his office on the night of 3-4 April 1945. Reich Health Fuhrer Leonardo Conti, another anti-tobacco activist, committed suicide on 6 October 1945 in an allied prison while awaiting prosecution for his role in the euthanasia programme. Hans Reiter, the Reich Health Office president who once characterized nicotine as "the greatest enemy of the people's health" and "the number one drag on the German economy"(27) was interned in an American prison camp for two years, after which he worked as a physician in a clinic in Kassel, never again returning to public service. Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, the guiding light behind Thuringia's anti-smoking campaign and the man who drafted the grant application for Astel's anti-tobacco institute, was executed on 1 October 1946 for crimes against humanity. It is hardly surprising that much of the wind was taken out of the sails of Germany's anti-tobacco movement.
The flip side of Fascism
Smith et al were correct to emphasize the strength of the Nazi anti smoking effort and the sophistication of Nazi era tobacco science.(4) The anti smoking science and policies of the era have not attracted much attention, possibly because the impulse behind the movement was closely attached to the larger Nazi movement. That does not mean, however, that anti smoking movements are inherently fascist(28); it means simply that scientific memories are often clouded by the celebrations of victors and that the political history of science is occasionally less pleasant than we would wish.
1 Proctor R N. Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988.
2 Kater M H. Doctors under Hitler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
3 Annas G, Grodin M. The Nazi doctors and the Nuremberg code.New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
4 Smith G D, Strobele S A, Egger M. Smoking and death.BMJ1995;310:396.
5 Borgers D. Smoking and death. BMJ 1995;310:1536.
6 Proctor R N. Nazi cancer research and policy. J Epidemiol Community Health (in press).
7 Bauer D. So lebt der Duce. Auf der Wacht 1937:19-20.
8 Picker H. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Athenaum Verlag, 1951.
9 Lee PN, ed. Tobacco consumption in various countries. 4th ed. London: Tobacco Research Council, 1975.
10 Reid G. Weltanschauung, Haltung, Genussgifte.Genussgifte1939;35:64.
11 Kosmos. Bild-Dokumente unserer Zeit.Dresden: Kosmos,1933.
12 Reckert FK. Tabakwarenkunde: Der Tabak, sein Anbau undseine Verarbeitung.Berlin-Schoneberg: Max Schwabe, 1942.
13 Erkennung und Bekampfung der Tabakgefahren. DtschArztebl 1941;71:183-5.
14 Klarner W. Vom Rauchen: Eine Sucht und ihre Bekampfung.Nuremberg: Rudolf Kern, 1940.
15 Rauchverbot fur die Polizei auf Strassen und in Dienstraumen. Die Genussgifte1940;36:59.
16 Berlin: alcohol, tobacco and coffee. JAMA 1939;113:1144-5.
17 Kleine Mitteilungen. Vertrauensarzt 1941;9:196.
18 Mitteilungen. Off Gesundheitsdienst 1941;7:488.
19 Charman T. The German home front 1939-1945. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989.
20 Fromme W. Offentlicher Gesundheitsdienst. In: Rodenwaldt E, ed. Hygiene. Part I. General hygiene. Wiesbaden: Dietrich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1948:36.
21 Informationsdienst des Hauptamtes fur Volksgesundheitder NSDAP. 1944;April-June:60-1.
22 Muller F H. Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom. Z Krebsforsch1939;49:57-85.
23 Schairer E, Schoniger E. Lungenkrebs und Tabakverbrauch.Z Krebsforsch1943;54:261-9.
24 Kittel W. Hygiene des Rauchens. In: Handloser S, Hoffmann W, eds. Wehrhygiene. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1944.
25 Goedel A. Kriegspathologische Beitrage. In: Zimmer A, ed.Kriegschirurgie. Vol 1. Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1944.
26 Pritzkoleit K. Auf einer Woge von Gold: Der Triumph der Wirtschaft.Vienna: Verlag Kurt Desch, 1961.
27 Werberat der deutschen Wirtschaft. Volksgesundheit und Werbung. Berlin: arl Heymanns, 1939.
28 Peto R. Smoking and death. BMJ 1995;310:396.
Funding: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC; Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung in Hamburg.
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BMJ, 313 (1996): 1450-1453
Reprinted with permission from the author.
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MINNESOTA HATS OFF TO THEE!
In August of 1994 Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry alleging violation of state antitrust and fraud statutes.
This was not against a single tobacco company, but the entire industry. In the same way antitrust suits could no doubt be brought against the automobile industry for causing injury and death or the detergent industry for causing pollution.
Three and a half years after filing the lawsuit, jury selection began.
During proceedings the tobacco companies fought to avoid turning over 39,000 secret industry documents until finally ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court. Overall, 33 million pages of industry documents were collected.
The case went on for almost 4 full years, until May 8, 1998 when a $6.1 billion settlement was reached. The amount is to be paid out over a 25 year period.
Thus Minnesota became the fourth state -- after Mississippi, Florida and Texas -- to win settlements from the industry.
In July of 1998 the state is in the process of setting up a nonprofit group to administer $202 million of the settlement money to be dedicated to anti-smoking efforts and research into smoking and public health. (Apparently they don't have all their facts yet?) An additional $650 million may be added to the ante later. Already, gubernatorial candidates have lined up with ideas on how to spend it, from buying prescription drugs for senior citizens to a comprehensive anti-smoking campaign.
BEHOLD THE RIGHTEOUS
To one degree or another the anti-tobacco forces see themselves as engaged in a Holy War against the Devil's Weed. This manifests in different ways, from the religious ardor characteristic of the movement in general, to some of the methodology employed.
There is for instance one document titled "The Collaborators" in which appears a long list of publications rated as to whether or not they carry tobacco advertising to readers 18 or under.
Included is a "gang of twelve noxious magazines" that do carry the offensive advertising. On that list, Cosmopolitan, People, Better Homes, Playboy, Time, TV Guide, Newsweek, Family Circle, McCalls, Woman's Day, U.S. News and Sports Illustrated. A pretty "noxious" group alright. Maybe they should be happy -- a 22 country study showed that advertising bans have led to a rise in smoking.
There is also a list of approved retail stores in various cities and of course, a Black List of scores of retailers, publications and even cultural organizations which are either "carriers" or "collaborators."
In the last category appear the Metropolitan, Whitney and Guggenheim Museums, Joffrey Ballet, National Newspaper Publishers Association, Untied Jewish Appeal Federation of New York and the League of Women Voters. The list goes on.
(The document is printed in its entirety in APPENDIX A)
---------------------------------------------------------------
An even more interesting albeit obnoxious document is one put out by "Action on Smoking and Health" (ASH), an aggressive anti-smoking organization entirely supported by tax-deductible contributions -- at least so they say. This little gem lays out guidelines for tax-wise charitable giving including making contributions in the form of 1) stocks which have appreciated, 2) insurance policies no longer needed, 3) a remainder interest in real property and 4) setting up a charitable remainder trust (CRT).
It then goes on to caution readers that retirement plan assets are subject to a combination of taxes which "reasonably can be described as confiscatory in three forms: taxes on "income in respect of a decedent," estate taxes and excess accumulations taxes.
As a desirable alternative to losing such assets to taxation ASH will be willing to discuss "with your spouse, children and tax advisors" various tactics for participators in 401k, 403b IRA or a similar plan to dispose of such assets otherwise.
All of which sounds like a thinly veiled hint to hand your money over to ASH. It puts one in mind of some cults which have been in the new in recent years and their practice of milking their adherents of their assets. Almost makes you wonder if anyone ever gets out of ASH alive.
THE TOBACCO DANCE
As the anti-tobacco war progresses there is no longer any room for accommodation, either in government policy or the minds of the more vehement and impatient adherents of the anti-tobacco movement. The howl is for anti-smokers' rights alone, no quarter to be given to smokers' rights.
Thinking is becoming more and more polarized, anti-smoking action more and more repressive. New, restrictive laws are enacted and existing legislation re-interpreted at an astounding rate with little regard to the direction they are taking us. With precedents being set on the tobacco front the worst elements of authoritarian control will be encouraged to slam further limits on our traditional liberties.
This may sound unduly alarmist to the casual observer, but a closer look will find ample cause for such concern.
Some indications of this trend have been presented in the preceding pages, others will be listed here.
Because they function so cohesively it is hard to assign responsibility for this state of affairs between the two camps at work -- the official/governmental and the private organizations. Particularly so in view of the overlapping funding of private groups by state and federal monies. In other words, your tax dollars subversively at work.
The two parties are engaged in an obscene waltz to seduce the country into a sense of being looked after, well taken care of while our options, and with them, our liberties are systematically stripped away under the guise of "Public Health."
According to "The Weekly Standard," a conservative weekly magazine, the anti-tobacco crusade is doing more harm than tobacco itself, that it is promoting victimization rather than personal responsibility. "The only conceivable consequence of equating hard drugs, which can destroy the mind and soul, with tobacco, which can actually have positive effects on the mind and has no deleterious effect on the soul, is to lessen the fear of real drugs among young people... The truth is that tobacco doesn't interfere with the soul, mind, conscience or emotional growth of a smoker." (July 20, 1998 issue)
Contrary to what anti-tobacco activists and Public Health cheerleaders would have you believe, a Washington Post poll published July 14, 1998 indicated that tobacco legislation ranked low in importance in voter's minds. Unfortunately the truth is, the majority of people probably have little idea of what is going on in the tobacco arena or what it portends.
Non-Smokers' Rights are riding roughshod over Smokers' Rights and in so doing is, by its tactics, raising the specter of social control by taxation, litigation and legislation -- all this attacking an industry subsidized by the government in the production of a legal product.
A smoke-free society is a society in which a sizable segment of the population has been discriminated against and deprived of rights. Forget equal protection under the law. If necessary, change the law... Constitutional Amendments... the Constitution itself. According to this philosophy due process and equal protection under the law are antiquated concepts.
According to a Heartland Institute Policy study, as of June, 1997 "Two dozen state had filed lawsuits against the tobacco industry seeking reimbursement of Medicaid and other public health monies spent on smokers." They add that such suits "are flawed and do not fall within standard legal theories of liability" and go on to say that "they represent a dangerous expansion of tort law that conscientious state attorneys general should avoid." Few if any attorneys general seem to be paying any attention.
The craze for litigation against the tobacco industry is epidemic. As of this writing four states have settled with tobacco companies; Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Minnesota. Other State suits Scheduled:
Washington, 1998
Arizona, 1998
Oklahoma, 1998
Massachusetts, February 1, 1999
Wisconsin, September 13, 1999
Ohio, May, 2000And other Attorneys General await in the wings, law books and tax proposals in hand. All the State and Federal taxes are not for Public Health either, as the antis would have you believe, they are for fattening big government's purse. Just look at the settlements -- $11.3 billion... $3.4 billion...$14.5 billion... $6.1 billion. And guess who will wind up paying when all is said and done.
For the industry it is harassment. For smokers themselves it is taxation without representation, pure and simple.
WILLFUL MISCONDUCT
May, 1998
Two examples of the way the government and its agencies play fast and loose with laws, rules and regulations are a recent congressional funding shift and a statement on VA policy.
First, a move to fund a pork-barrel project to finance transportation projects involving highway construction by cutting veterans health benefits. Since most elected officials have such projects in their state/district which they believe their constituents want they were anxious to pass the scam in an election year. Monies skimmed from the VA program were variously estimated at $10.5 billion to $23.8 billion over five years.
The Clinton Administration has been advocating cutting veterans disability benefits for tobacco-related illness because they are "expensive and inconvenient to process." On the other hand, military service during wartime has presumably always been cheap and convenient for veterans.
Secondly, the above move was followed a week later by news that the lawmakers went so far as to declare any veteran who smoked on active duty as having engaged in "willful misconduct"! This from a government which has not only long subsidized tobacco growers, but whose policy on servicemen's smoking has traditionally been permissive, even actively encouraged by the military.
This is government by whim, one finger in the wind, another proctologically placed. With such fickle U-turns of policy no one should assume that their rights are going to be protected if the tide should turn against them.
America fights its wars with the help of tobacco. During the Revolutionary War George Washington made a public appeal: "If you can't send money, send tobacco."
Tobacco was given out as a ration in both the Union and Confederate Armies during the Civil War. In 1862 the first Federal tax on tobacco was introduced and yielded about $3 million to help pay for the war.
During World War I, General John J. Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American forces in France, cabled Washington, "Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons of it without delay."
In WWII General Douglas McArthur emphasized the need to keep U.S. troops supplied with tobacco. Cigarette ads during World War II, like those during World War I, linked the product with patriotism and the boys in uniform."
In fact, the military provided free cigarettes to overseas service personnel up through the Vietnam War.
In the Army the lingo was, "Smoke 'em if you've got 'em." In the Navy it was, "The smoking lamp is lit."
To turn around now, in 1998, and charge veterans who smoked with "willful misconduct" is scurrilous. Veterans were properly outraged. Without delay they took their complaints to the Whitehouse and Capitol Hill and won a no doubt grudging agreement that the language would not appear in the proposal that was part of Clinton's budget audit and, it was said, did not originate in the Congress.
RESPONSIBILITY VS LIABILITY
June 10, 1998 -- In Florida a jury found the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation responsible for the death of Roland Maddox and awarded his family $950,000, ($500,000 compensatory damages plus $450,000 punitive damages.) This is the largest ever jury verdict in a lawsuit over tobacco's dangers and the first time punitive damages have been ordered in such a case.
The anti-smoking brigade undoubtedly crowed over the victory. I think it stinks. Not because it is aimed at a tobacco company but because it is one more (giant) step in the ongoing resignation from personal responsibility taking place in today's society.
Before his death from lung cancer in 1997 Maddox had been a smoker for nearly 50 years. The risks of smoking were well known during that period, even before the Surgeon General's warnings began to appear on every pack. You didn't have to have been a long-time smoker to be aware of them.
In the trial it was asserted that Maddox did know the dangers associated with smoking, often referring to cigarettes as "coffin nails." The term goes back to mid nineteenth century. So who didn't know??
Choosing to smoke despite the dangers associated with the practice is tantamount to accepting those risks. It should also signal acceptance of personal responsibility for one's actions in so doing.
To claim ignorance of the risks and victimization, then charge the company with negligence for failing to warn the public of the dangers of smoking is ridiculous, fraudulent, perjurious and should be a crime in itself.
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Suspicious of my motives here? Read the DISCLAIMER on Page 1 again.
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GOVERNMENT VERSUS ITSELF
The government's actions on the tobacco front have some peculiar aspects and ramifications on various levels. It may be doing harm to itself in more ways than one.
Numerous writers, speakers and researchers are remarking on the dissipation of American trust in government and democracy these days. More people are said to consider the government as the single greatest threat facing the country -- ahead of big labor and big business.
One poll indicated that only about 20% of the public trusts government. When it comes to the politicians who run the government the level of distrust runs much higher. In the popular view politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy. In terms of trustworthiness they rank below lawyers but above used-car salesmen!
This overwhelming disenchantment cannot be laid at the feet of the anti-smoking crusaders. In fact, what with all the encouragement, reinforcement and funding they get from government sources, they are most likely among the staunchest supporters of current government practices.
But, to the extent that the truth surfaces about government complicity in the despicable activities launched against not only the tobacco industry as such, but against a sizable (although declining) proportion of its citizens, such distrust can only increase.
In participating in malicious propaganda, dubious research and faulty science as well as in its funding the attack on tobacco through various of its agencies, government shows once more that it is not deserving of respect and trust.
Our legislators certainly dropped several points in the minds of veterans when they tried to scam them out of well-earned VA health benefits. Many of these are the very men who are often held up as the nation's saviors for their efforts in World War II. To spit in their faces with such a move is reprehensible.
If the current philosophy prevails and further personal liberties are destroyed or effectively limited, the time will come when an effective backlash will occur at the ballot box if nowhere else.
But this isn't the only way our government is demeaning itself. If the current trend continues and a smoke-free society were to be realized it would be hitting itself where it really hurts -- in the pocketbook.
In 1994 tobacco was the 7th largest cash crop, worth over $4,000 per acre. 673,000 acres were harvested bringing in $2.8 billion at auction. Manufactured tobacco products that year were worth almost $27 billion, including exports of $5.4 billion and providing nearly $2.1 billion in compensation for more than 42,000 people.
According to R.J. Reynolds (and who should have more accurate figures on this than a tobacco company), the excise taxes on cigarettes raked in a total of $13,226,759,000 in 1997. This represents sub-totals of $7,306,959,000 on the state level, $5,734,393,000 in federal revenues and $176,407.000 on the local level.
For organizations that are constantly trying to raise money through taxation, this represents quite a debit. If it came to pass it would only mean a comparable increase in your taxes in some other area.
Not only that, when it comes to tobacco the federal government has a conflict of interest. While trying to convince the public that tobacco is deadly and smokers are "serial killers," federal crop insurance subsidies to tobacco growers add up to approximately $30 million per year.
On the whole, our government looks more and more as if it is suffering from a serious fragmentation; the tobacco industry is killing people... but we'll support them in doing it. Could it be that they are doing so to keep the industry on its feet and keep the excise money rolling in?
If that's the case our "leaders" (pardon the expression) are even more duplicitous than we thought.
It looks more and more like the two party system is in mental, moral and ethical decline and changing horses in mid-stream is the only hope.
So where is a third party that can deliver us from these crackpots? Really deliver us?
BACKLASH?
ITEM: As reported in the Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1998:
----------------------------------------------------------
A federal judge ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency wrongly declared secondhand tobacco smoke a dangerous carcinogen in a landmark 1993 report, a decision that could impact some local and regional ordinances banning indoor smoking.
The controversial EPA report concluded that environmental tobacco smoke is a Class A carcinogen, as hazardous as radon and responsible for about 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year. The tobacco industry promptly sued in federal court to force the study to be withdrawn, arguing that the agency ignored accepted scientific and statistical practices in making its risk assessment -- a contention made at the same time by many independent scientists.
After five years of court pleadings and deliberations, U.S. District Judge Thomas Osteen of the Middle District of North Carolina ultimately agreed with the industry. He issued his opinion late Friday, and many EPA and tobacco industry officials were still unaware of it even when contacted Saturday evening.
Michael York, an attorney for cigarette giant Philip Morris Cos., called Osteen's decision "a very important ruling" that could force the EPA to reverse its stand on secondhand smoke. "Now it will be up to the agency to reexamine all of the relevant studies and make the honest determination that the statistical correlations are extremely weak -- certainly below that necessary to justify their classification of [secondhand smoke] as a Class A human carcinogen."
From the time the report was issued, even scientists not affiliated with the industry criticized the EPA for using too low a standard for what constitutes causation rather than chance.
Osteen agreed that the agency's science was lacking. "Using its normal methodology and its selected studies, EPA did not demonstrate a statistically significant association between [secondhand smoke] and lung cancer," he said.
Statistical significance is the scientific standard that separates interesting results that could be the product of chance from more convincing evidence that is likely to constitute a true association.
"EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun; excluded the industry by violating the Act's procedural requirements; adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion; and aggressively utilized the Act's authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended to restrict Plaintiffs' products and to influence public opinion," Osteen wrote.
Since the report was issued, indoor smoking bans have popped up in hundreds of states, cities and counties. California, for example, prohibits smoking even in bars.
Of course the anti-smoking storm troopers immediately went to work trying to discredit Judge Osteen and blasting away at his ruling. Stay tuned for later developments.
The blow to the EPA report could give new energy to opponents of these bans, since "the release of the original risk assessment gave an enormous boost to efforts to restrict smoking at the state and local levels," said Matthew L. Myers, a spokesman for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids.
In addition, a number of lawsuits filed against tobacco companies over claims of injury from secondhand smoke still hang in the balance. For example, a class-action suit was settled with airline flight attendants last year for $349 million, but individuals still have to sue the industry and prove that secondhand smoke harmed them, which could be more difficult without the EPA's support.
Myers said, however, that one judge's ruling could not blunt the national trend, especially given that so many reports have found secondhand smoke dangerous. "While the move to restrict smoking indoors could be temporarily set back by this decision," he said, "it won't be stopped."
From an Internet posting by Northwestern University School of Law in Boston:
"As the anti-tobacco movement has gained strength across the nation, a backlash against tobacco control initiatives has emerged. While it is clear why the tobacco industry has a stake in a counter movement, it is also important to understand why some smokers feel compelled to affirm their "smoking rights" and how the tobacco industry supports the movement.
The ideology behind the backlash against tobacco control initiatives stems from arguments of liberalism and free choice. The Economist attacked anti-tobacco activists in an editorial (12/20/97) that posited, "...the attack on tobacco has crossed the admittedly fuzzy line that distinguishes moral enthusiasm from illiberal vindictiveness, and at such a time good fun should yield to good thinking." According to The Economist, the government should not have the right to regulate personal freedoms, even if they cause harm (they concede that smoking is risky, but that the risks are exaggerated).
Some companies are pursuing the reinstatement of smoking sections in public places. In September, 1997, R.J. Reynolds opened two smoking lounges in Georgia malls. The Associated Press interviewed a store employee at the North Point Mall in Georgia. She called the lounge, "[T]he weirdest thing in the world. I was thinking that everybody wanted to stop smoking in public places." According to RJR, 500 to 600 hundred smokers a week visit the North Pointe Mall store outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Eventually, cigarette companies like Philip Morris Cos. Inc., who has secured the rights to distribute its own products in all 50 states, may open their own cigarette-only stores.
Smoker's rights. Cyber support. New Products. New smoking lounges. Astro-Turf campaigns. Determined, dedicated smokers may be down, but they are not out. Indeed, some are fighting back through civil disobedience of smoking bans and other political actions. Tobacco control warriors should continue to monitor developments in the "smokers rights" movement. As the saying goes, where there's smoke, there may be fire."
There may be hope yet: Amtrak is bringing back smoking cars, the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport is said to be adding 20 smoking lounges and Air France is adding "smokers' bars."
Just possibly the madness will run its course after all!
But don't hold your breath. The dogs of the anti-tobacco war are rabid. If state lawsuits pending against the industry are any indication the struggle will go on well into the 21st Century. Either side may lose a battle now and then. Which side ultimately wins the war is open.
Right now things look dark for the tobacco industry and its clientele. The winds could change though. An informed public aware of all that is at stake could make a difference.
We could go on... and on... and on -- there's a mountain of material out there to counter the sound and fury of the anti-tobacco claims -- but why? By now it should be evident that it's not just about tobacco, somebody lighting up a cigarette, but their right to do so. And, along with that, everyone's right to follow their inclinations, make their own choices and decisions without having them made for them by Big Brother and the Nay Sayers.
THAT'S WHAT IS IMPORTANT AND WORTH DEFENDING.
The anti-tobacco crusade is only the tip of the iceberg. More significant by far is the assault on personal freedom which it spearheads.
Apathy becomes the enemy. Never mind that some people want to smoke while others don't -- think about how you want to live your life... and whether of not you want the Politically Correct crowd and Big Brother dictating your choices.
If not, BE ON GUARD!
CONTINUE
APPENDIX AOf Carriers, Collaborators
Because of its interest as an indication of not only the nit-picking detail work of the anti-tobacco forces, but the mean-mindedness of certain anti-tobacco fanatics in ferreting out even the slightest association with tobacco, this item, from the Tobacco BBS, is presented here in its entirety.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reprinted courtesy of Gene Borio, Tobacco BBS, http://www.tobacco.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ads and collaborative promotions not only buy journalistic silence, but innocence-through-association. Their very ubiquity across such a broad societal spectrum buys acceptance, and even tacit approval.
One anti-tobacco website carries an item -- An Ad-erage Day in the Life of a Kid. Who disregards the health consequences of tobacco to assist in the addiction of a generation?
"I figure if it's really so bad for you, they wouldn't be selling them everywhere. I mean, you walk into Stop 'N' Go, and there's a whole wall of them right up front at the cash register. If they were really *that* bad for you, they'd make them less accessible."
--18-year-old smoker, "Young, Carefree and in Love With Cigarettes," The New York Times, July 30, 1995
---------------------------------------------------------------
A full list of tobacco ad carrying magazines, plus lists of magazines which REFUSE tobacco advertising.
* Tobacco-ad-carrying magazines the FDA Rule refers to in its discussion of youth readership
* Tobacco-Ad-Carrying Magazines in the News
"The Dirty Dozen"... a gang of 12 "noxious" magazines (Cosmopolitan, People, Better Homes, Playboy, Time, TV Guide, Newsweek, Family Circle, McCall's, Woman's Day, U.S. News, Sports Illustrated)
* Time, Inc. (Sports Illustrated, Time, People, Entertainment Weekly)
* Elle
* Cosmopolitan
* Redbook May, 1995
* Sports Illustrated
* Life Magazine
* Ebony Magazine
* Essence Magazine
* National Black Monitor/Black Media, Inc.Corporations that collaborate in the Marketing of Cigarette Brands
* Ticketmaster
* Panasonic
* Kellogg's
* Mobil
* Renault
* Benetton
* Toyota
* Land RoverCultural Institutions that collaborate in the marketing of cigarette brands, or accept industry donations:
Arts Groups
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
* Whitney Museum of American Art
* Whitney Museum at Philip Morris
* Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
* Museum of Modern Art
* Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
* Museum of American Folk Art
* American Association Of Museums
* Morgan Library
* Guggenheim Museum
* International Center of Photography
* Alliance for the Arts
* American Museum of Natural History
* Franklin Furnace
* P.S. 122
* Crossroads Theater
* Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks
* Intar Hispanic American Arts Center
* La Mama
* Studio Museum
* Kennedy Center Washington, DC
* MacDowell ColonyDance
* American Ballet Theater
* Joyce Theater
* Dance Theater Workshop
* Dance Theater of Harlem
* Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
* Joffrey BalletPolitical/Ethnic Groups
* American Civil Liberties Union
* Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
* National Association of Media Women
* National Black Caucus of State Legislators
* United Negro College Fund
* National Urban League
* Congressional Black Caucus
* NAACP
* Black Journalism Hall of Fame
* National Newspaper Publishers Association
* National Council of La Raza
* National Association of Hispanic Publications
* National Association of Hispanic Journalists
* National Puerto Rican Coalition
* National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE)
* United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York
* Gay Men's Health Crisis
* Gay and Lesbian Alliance
* Act Up (Aids Coalition To Unleash Power)
* National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund
* League of Women VotersEducational/Young People's Groups
* Phillips Academy (Andover, MA)
* Yale Divinity School
* Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund
* Discovery Place children's science museum (Charlotte, N.C.)
* Tisch Children's Zoo (Central Park, NYC)CONTINUE
APPENDIX AOf Carriers, Collaborators
Because of its interest as an indication of not only the nit-picking detail work of the anti-tobacco forces, but the mean-mindedness of certain anti-tobacco fanatics in ferreting out even the slightest association with tobacco, this item, from the Tobacco BBS, is presented here in its entirety.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reprinted courtesy of Gene Borio, Tobacco BBS, http://www.tobacco.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ads and collaborative promotions not only buy journalistic silence, but innocence-through-association. Their very ubiquity across such a broad societal spectrum buys acceptance, and even tacit approval.
One anti-tobacco website carries an item -- An Ad-erage Day in the Life of a Kid. Who disregards the health consequences of tobacco to assist in the addiction of a generation?
"I figure if it's really so bad for you, they wouldn't be selling them everywhere. I mean, you walk into Stop 'N' Go, and there's a whole wall of them right up front at the cash register. If they were really *that* bad for you, they'd make them less accessible."
--18-year-old smoker, "Young, Carefree and in Love With Cigarettes," The New York Times, July 30, 1995
---------------------------------------------------------------
A full list of tobacco ad carrying magazines, plus lists of magazines which REFUSE tobacco advertising.
* Tobacco-ad-carrying magazines the FDA Rule refers to in its discussion of youth readership
* Tobacco-Ad-Carrying Magazines in the News
* Time, Inc. (Sports Illustrated, Time, People, Entertainment Weekly)
* Elle
* Cosmopolitan
* Redbook May, 1995
* Sports Illustrated
* Life Magazine
* Ebony Magazine
* Essence Magazine
* National Black Monitor/Black Media, Inc.Corporations that collaborate in the Marketing of Cigarette Brands
* Ticketmaster
* Panasonic
* Kellogg's
* Mobil
* Renault
* Benetton
* Toyota
* Land RoverCultural Institutions that collaborate in the marketing of cigarette brands, or accept industry donations:
Arts Groups
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
* Whitney Museum of American Art
* Whitney Museum at Philip Morris
* Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
* Museum of Modern Art
* Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
* Museum of American Folk Art
* American Association Of Museums
* Morgan Library
* Guggenheim Museum
* International Center of Photography
* Alliance for the Arts
* American Museum of Natural History
* Franklin Furnace
* P.S. 122
* Crossroads Theater
* Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks
* Intar Hispanic American Arts Center
* La Mama
* Studio Museum
* Kennedy Center Washington, DC
* MacDowell ColonyDance
* American Ballet Theater
* Joyce Theater
* Dance Theater Workshop
* Dance Theater of Harlem
* Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
* Joffrey BalletPolitical/Ethnic Groups
* American Civil Liberties Union
* Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
* National Association of Media Women
* National Black Caucus of State Legislators
* United Negro College Fund
* National Urban League
* Congressional Black Caucus
* NAACP
* Black Journalism Hall of Fame
* National Newspaper Publishers Association
* National Council of La Raza
* National Association of Hispanic Publications
* National Association of Hispanic Journalists
* National Puerto Rican Coalition
* National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE)
* United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York
* Gay Men's Health Crisis
* Gay and Lesbian Alliance
* Act Up (Aids Coalition To Unleash Power)
* National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund
* League of Women VotersEducational/Young People's Groups
* Phillips Academy (Andover, MA)
* Yale Divinity School
* Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund
* Discovery Place children's science museum (Charlotte, N.C.)
* Tisch Children's Zoo (Central Park, NYC)Anti-drug groups
* American Council on Alcoholism* Individual Collaborators
* Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame* Charitable and Cultural Organizations that have REFUSED tobacco industry money
* Coalition for the Homeless
* National Association of Black Journalists* Drug Stores and Groceries that actively collaborate
* Big Apple/Sloan's/Gristede's Supermarkets 212-956-5770
* Grand Union
* A&P Supermarkets
* Love Stores 800-427-5683
* McKay Drugs 627-2300
* CVS Pharmacies* Drug Stores and Groceries that REFUSE to collaborate
"Take your business where people care."
* National Chains
* D'Agostino's Supermarkets* Local:
* Connecticut
* Newtown
* Bates' Drug Center Pharmacy.* New York
* Monticello
* Family Drug Store* New York City
* Whitney Chemists
* Bigelow Drug
* Stadtlanders Pharmacy Wellness Center* Utah
* Kaysville
* Bowman's Thriftway.Michigan
Flint
* Diplomat Pharmacy
* Shorewood
* Hayek's Pharmacy* Georgia
* Butler PharmacyThe Collaborators
When all the garbage is stripped away, successful cigarette advertising involves showing the kind of people most people would like to be, doing the things most people would like to do, and smoking up a storm. I don't know any way of doing this that doesn't tempt young people to smoke.
-- advertising executive who worked on the Marlboro account, quoted in the 1994 Surgeon General's Report. Consumer Reports, March, 1995
---------------------------------------------------------------
I. The Promoters
Consider the never-ending flow of cigarette advertising and promotions, and their association with non-tobacco entities like sports figures, movie stars, corporations, grocery stores, the local pharmacy, doctor's office or even one's own living room. By their very ubiquity, coupled with their acceptance by the rest of society--including highly admired individuals and corporations--this flood of promotions serves to give silent rebuttal to the truth about tobacco.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"The tobacco industry buys silence from these groups... Even if that's not made explicit, that's what happens. It's had a tremendous impact because these are the very groups that most need to speak out, and they won't." -- Jean Kilbourne, Wellesley College, speaking of tobacco industry donations to black and women's organizations.
"They are peddling an addictive and lethal drug, and their ability to market their product depends on their ability to say they are a legitimate member of American society." --Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, current co-director of the Advocacy Institute in Washington:
"Thank God for sinners. They're the only people to support the arts." --anonymous dance company spokeswoman
"Like the reaction of so many to the relationship between culture and cigarettes, the comment [above] had at its core the argument that the end justifies the means. Only it doesn't." --Anna Quindlen
---------------------------------------------------------------
II. The Pointedly Silent Legitimizers
Philanthropic contributions to arts, charity and cultural organizations are effective in buying legitimacy and silence. Institutions that have accepted tobacco industry philanthropy may or may not believe there is no quid-pro-quo, but in a crunch, many have been urged to speak up for tobacco industry goals to political bodies. In 1994 in New York City, Philip Morris let its donees know that if a smokefree bill passed, PM contributions might dry up. The note urged institutions--some shocked, some more than willing to comply--to speak with their legislators.
By the mere fact of accepting tobacco industry donations, an organization lends a little of its legitimacy and status to tobacco companies, allowing the companies to shift the focus away from their commonly-perceived roles as merchants of death. Such an organization cannot be unaware it risks losing those donations if its members speak out about the 400,000 dead a year from tobacco-related diseases.
"If they kill off cigarette and alcohol advertising, black papers may as well stop printing." -- Keith Lockart, president of Lockart & Pettus, Inc., an African-American advertising agency.
"Groups representing those communities would be speaking out in opposition to aggressive marketing of the tobacco industry.... But what you see are groups like National Urban League and NAACP, who need the money and take the money from RJR and Philip Morris, saying not word one about this problem that afflicts their community. Groups in the gay community are by and large silent on this same concern. You could infer that tobacco company contributions, while helpful on the one hand, are buying silence on the other."-- Cliff Douglas of the Advocacy Institute
It is in this vein then, that the Tobacco BBS sets out to create a database of enablers -- those who by lending their good name, help establish the ubiquity and seemingly everyday innocuousness of smoking, help foster the legitimacy of tobacco companies, and help collaborate in the lie that cigarettes couldn't possibly be "*that* bad for you."
Tobacco-ad-carrying magazines the FDA Rule refers to in its discussion of youth readership
The FDA's estimations are based on 1994 data from MediaMark Research Inc. and Simmons Market Research Bureau, Inc
The number "1" after a magazine means the MediaMark measurement of youth readership exceeds the regulatory threshold of 2 million readers or 15 percent of total readership below the age of 18.
The number "2" after a magazine means the Simmons measurement of youth readership exceeds the regulatory threshold of 2 million readers or 15 percent of total readership below the age of 18.
Source: Barents Group LLC Tables IV-1 and A-2; Simmons Market Research Bureau, Inc.; R. Craig Endicott, "The Ad Age 300," Advertising Age, June 19, 1995.
* Sports Illustrated 1,2
* People 1,2
* TV Guide 1,2
* Time
* Parade 2
* Cosmopolitan 1
* Woman's Day
* Entertainment Weekly 2
* Better Homes & Gardens 1
* Newsweek
* Family Circle
* Field & Stream
* Glamour 1,2
* Rolling Stone 1,2
* Ladies' Home Journal
* McCall's
* Redbook
* Car & Driver 1
* Life 1
* Popular Mechanics
* Outdoor Life 1
* Us
* New Woman * Road & Track 1
* Soap Opera Digest
* Mademoiselle 1,2
* Vogue 1,2
* Hot Rod 1
* Ebony 1
* Gentlemen's Quarterly 1
* Motor Trend 1
* Premiere 1
* Sport 1,2
* Elle 1
* Essence 1
* Sports Afield
* True Story
* Jet 1
* Popular Science 1,2
* Self 1
* Harper's Bazaar 1
* The Sporting News 1,2
* Cable Guide 1
* Ski 1,2The FDA rule goes on to say:
The final regulation requires that specific youth and adult readership data be available for any magazine that displays a tobacco advertisement with color or imagery. Simmons currently conducts interviews with adults in approximately 20,000 households annually and subsequently returns to about 3,000 of these households to interview their youth members. In general, however, marketing research firms collect data on youth readership only for those magazines commonly read by this age group. Thus, although 78 percent and 48 percent of the magazines in the two youth readership samples described above exceeded the regulatory readership threshold, these sample results likely overestimate the percentage of magazines with current tobacco ads that exceed the threshold.
Simmons now collects adult readership data for about 230 magazines and youth readership for about 65 magazines. Because tobacco manufacturers currently advertise in about 100 magazines, the industry could often add magazines that are currently part of an ongoing adult readership survey to a youth survey, saving approximately 60 percent of the cost of collecting both adult and youth data.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tobacco-Ad-Carrying Magazines in the News
The Dirty Dozen . . . a gang of 12 noxious magazines (Cosmopolitan, People, Better Homes, Playboy, Time, TV Guide, Newsweek, Family Circle, McCall's, Woman's Day, U.S. News, Sports Illustrated.)
* Between Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated, People, Time and Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Information Bureau estimates placed the company's cigarette ad revenue in 1995 at $88.9 million--or roughly 27.5% of all cigarette advertising placed in consumer magazines.
* ELLE takes flack for its Elle Cigarette Case
* Cosmopolitan
* Simmons Research Bureau found that up to 44% of Cosmo's readers are under 20. The readership rolls contain over two million girls aged 12-19. In 1985, Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown was quoted thus in the Washington Post: "Having come from the advertising world myself, I think, 'who needs somebody you're paying millions of dollars a year to come back and bite you on the ankle?"
* Redbook
* One remarkable example of distortion was in the May Redbook, which spotlighted the "lifestyles of the cancer-free." Incredibly, there was no reference to the leading preventable cause of cancer - cigarettes.--Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, USA Today, Nov. 14, 1995
* Sports Illustrated 800-528-5000
* SI has been asked by 5 Congress members to stop carrying tobacco ads. Investment groups--like the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in Milwaukee and Healthcare West--have asked Time-Warner to clean up Time, Sports Illustrated and People.
* Life Magazine 800-621-6000
* A recent letter to Dear Abby castigated Life for its Joe Camel inserts.
* Ebony Magazine
* "Neither Ebony nor Essence published an extensive article about smoking and health, although the subject was mentioned briefly in articles on general health. --Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992
* Essence Magazine
* "Neither Ebony nor Essence published an extensive article about smoking and health, although the subject was mentioned briefly in articles on general health. --Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992
* According to Alan Blum, chairman of Doctors Ought to Care, "A minimum of 12 per cent of the color advertisements in each issue of Essence are for cigarettes, second only to advertisements for alcohol, at 20 per cent." --Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992
* National Black Monitor/Black Media, Inc.
* During 1988, the magazine National Black Monitor published a series of articles that urged African-Americans to support the tobacco industry. Published by Black Media, Inc., the Monitor is a monthly insert that goes to about eighty African-American newspapers, primarily in small cities and rural communities.-- Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992
--------------------------------------------------------------
Corporations that collaborate in the Marketing of Cigarette Brands
* Ticketmaster
* April, 1996. Ticketmaster joins with Joe Camel in RJR's "Rockin' Road Trip," offering gift certificates to rock concerts for "Camel Cash.".* Panasonic
* For enough "miles," you can get a Panasonic CD player with the Marlboro logo.* Kellogg's
* Special Winston Cup Commemorative Box 1995 of Kellogg's Corn Flakes have been sold in areas where NASCAR races are held.* Mobil
Marlboro Team Penske* Renault
Rothmans Williams Renault* Benetton
Mild Seven/Benetton/Renault Racing Team* Toyota
* Sponsored 1996 Marlboro Grand Prix of MiamiFrom a Press Release dated Feb. 29, 1996: the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami would not happen nearly at the scale -- particularly the national scale -- it does now without the involvement of major corporate sponsors. The main sponsors of the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami include Philip Morris USA's brand Marlboro, PPG Industries and Toyota.
"The up-front financial support of corporate sponsorship has helped make the PPG Indy Car World Series one of the fastest-growing event series in the United States. It allows event promoters to compete in major markets throughout the United States . . . As a result, sponsorship has enabled the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami to grow . . .
"That's why this study increases my concern about efforts to limit or ban tobacco-brand sponsorship of sports and entertainment events, such as the regulations recently proposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). . . . "
* Subaru
* Subaru -555 rally around the world including the rally in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Hong Kong-Beijing one week rally. All show 555 logos except the rally in Thailand which only show Subaru
* Land Rover
* 03/06/97 Camel Trophy Adventure. Like Marlboro's, but in a Land Rover. " . . . an unforgetable adventure in hostile climes and an extreme test of stamina, fortitude and the ability to get along with others in prolonged stressful situation. . . The Camel Trophy Adventure is sponsored by Land Rover, the British four-wheel drive manufacturer and Worldwide Brands, Inc., marketer of Camel Trophy brand adventure gear and clothing" 1997's trip is Mongolia.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cultural Institutions that collaborate in the marketing of cigarette brands or lend tobacco companies legitimacy by accepting industry donations
According to William Ecenbarger of the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Philip Morris gave $30,000 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington for an exhibition in 1987. At the opening, a gallery official complained about little packs of cigarettes being distributed free of charge. Soon after, Philip Morris told Corcoran it would no longer fund the museum, citing the complaint as one reason."
The following are arts institutions that reportedly are more cooperative.
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
* Philip Morris has sponsored many Met events and shows, including the Met's high-profile Matisse and Jacob Lawrence exhibits, and 1994's "Origins of Impressionism." (One journalist wrote that at the opening night party, so many free cigarettes were going that the Temple of Dendur was "enveloped in a cloud of smoke."
* Treasures of the Vatican, 1987. Terence Cardinal Cooke, then the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, led a prayer for Mr. Weissman and his Philip Morris colleagues. After the benediction, Frank Saunders, PM VP, said, "We are probably the only cigarette company on this earth to be blessed by a cardinal."
* "At this time, it is socially, economically and emotionally convenient to rationalize the politics of cigarettes, but only until you or someone you love is forced by circumstance to walk into a crowded oncology waiting room." --Carolyn Marks Blackwood
* Whitney Museum of American Art
* Whitney Museum at Philip Morris
* Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
* Philip Morris sponsored BAM's high-profile Next Wave Festival.
* William Campbell, president of Philip Morris USA until 1995, has been a board member of BAM.
* During 1994's smokefree air act battle, BAM "made discreet calls," to City Council members to express concern.
* Harvey Lichtenstein, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of the Arts, said he was informed of the upcoming vote and called Philip Morris out of concern for the millions of dollars that the corporation donates to his organization. "I have spoken to some City Council people," he said. "We've not been specific; I have simply said that Philip Morris is important to the city. ... We were acting in our own best interest, and it is quite clear that Philip Morris was acting in their own best interest."--Washington Post, 12/8/94
* "It is not easy to get support for something like the Next Wave. . . In this country there is no company as generous and as forward-looking. What we're worried about in this whole business is that they might leave the city, and we've seen other corporations do that and stop their support of the arts," says Harvey Lichtenstein, the president of BAM.
* Museum of Modern Art
* Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
* Ex-Philip Morris CEO George Weissman has been chairman of Lincoln Center since 1986, according to a 1994 New York Times Magazine article.
* Lincoln Center once ran an ad that required a Surgeon's General warning. The ad promoted the Marlboro Country Music Festival (at Lincoln Center), and Marlboro cigarettes.
* Museum of American Folk Art
* American Association Of Museums
* Morgan Library
* Guggenheim Museum
* International Center of Photography
1994: Philip Morris sponsored the "Talking Pictures" exhibition
* Alliance for the Arts
According to Randall Bourscheidt, executive director of the umbrella organization, "Arts organizations don't have the luxury of turning down money from any source. . . generosity as large and as widespread as Philip Morris's has a major impact on New York and the country."
* American Ballet Theater
* American Museum of Natural History
* Franklin Furnace
* Joyce Theater
* B Dance Theater Workshop
* P.S. 122
* According to Alisa Solomon in the Village Voice, "'Of course they're using us,' says P.S. 122 artistic director Mark Russell. 'We're using them, too.'"
* Crossroads Theater
* Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks
* Intar Hispanic American Arts Center
* La Mama
* Studio Museum
* Dance Theater of Harlem
* Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
* The Alvin Ailey company received $500,000 from Philip Morris to underwrite its 1991 New York City season and 1991-1992 North American tour.
* "Because of Federal cuts to cultural institutions in the 1980s," says Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, "we have to identify and solicit money from tobacco companies." --Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992.
* Jamison was quoted in Philip Morris' ads for its 1990 "Bill of Rights" tour: "we must keep a watchful eye" (to protect the Bill of Rights).
* "In 1991, Philip Morris gave the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation $200,920; the year before, Alvin Ailey representatives testified in support of the tobacco industry in Congress."--James Ridgeway, Village Voice, Nov. 9, 1993
* Kennedy Center Washington, DC
* MacDowell Colony
CONTINUE
William Campbell, president of Philip Morris USA until 1995, has been a board member.* Joffrey Ballet
Stephanie French, vice president for corporate contributions and cultural affairs for Philip Morris was a board member as of 1994.
* American Civil Liberties Union
* According to a recent report by the Advocacy Institute, the ACLU, which has been advocating the tobacco industry's cause in Congress, netted $500,000 in funds from Philip Morris between 1987 and 1992, along with additional sums from RJR Nabisco and the Tobacco Institute.
In 1990, Morton H. Halperin, then the ACLU's Washington director and currently a controversial Clinton appointee to be an assistant secretary of defense, testified before the Senate that "there is simply no evidence that tobacco advertising increases the level of smoking, and no evidence that eliminating tobacco advertising will reduce the amount of smoking." --James Ridgeway, Village Voice, Nov. 9, 1995
* United Negro College Fund
* In fiscal 1989 . . . the United Negro College Fund picked up $285,500 from RJR Nabisco, $200,500 from Philip Morris, and $65,000 from an employee donation at Brown & Williamson. Hugh Cullman, then a UNCF board member, was a retired vice chair of Philip Morris.--Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992
* National Urban League
* Received "$4.4 million to the National Urban League from cigarette concerns" from 1989-1992, according to Progressive Magazine.
* "Has anyone ever called Lincoln Center and asked why they haven't turned down tobacco money?" retorts Donald Hense, vice president of development at the National Urban League. "There's $4 billion out there in cigarette money, and you come asking me about $400,000?"--Progressive Magazine, Dec., 1992.
* DO NOT confuse the National Urban League with the Detroit Urban League, which is a resistor to tobacco influences. On October 5, 1995, it will host its Second Annual Call to Action Summit on drug use. DUL President/CEO Ronald L. Griffin, said, Any individual or organization contributing to the perpetuation of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Related Violence needs to be held fully accountable.
The conference will feature Dr. Nathan Hare, Ph.D. and his wife Julia Hare, Ph.D., co-founders of the Black Think Tank.
* Congressional Black Caucus
* NAACP
* According to William Ecenbarger of the Philadelphia Enquirer, "In recent years, the NAACP, a major object of tobacco philanthropy, worked with African American journalists to oppose clean air acts because of alleged discrimination against black workers, and opposed grants to universities to study African American smoking patterns."
* In ads for Philip Morris' 1990 "Bill of Rights" tour, Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, loaned his visage for PM's ads.
* Hazel Dukes, president of New York state chapter of NAACP fought against New York City's Clean Indoor Air act and said it was discriminatory--executives could smoke in their offices, whereas rank-and-file could not.
* Black Journalism Hall of Fame
* At the 1987 dedication in Baltimore, the keynote speaker was Stanley Scott, vice president of Philip Morris Companies, Inc.
* National Newspaper Publishers Association
* The trade association of the black press. Tobacco companies underwrite meals and receptions at meetings.
* Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
* The country's preeminent black think tank
* National Black Caucus of State Legislators
* National Council of La Raza
* National Association of Hispanic Publications
* California's Hispanic Business magazine reports that Philip Morris was the second-largest advertiser in Hispanic media for fiscal 1989, spending $8.6 million. In 1988, Philip Morris topped the list. Last year, the National Association of Hispanic Publications named Philip Morris "company of the year."--Progressive Magazine, Dec. 1992
* National Association of Hispanic Journalists
* According to William Ecenbarger, "A $10,000 contribution to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for its annual conference helped secure the group's opposition to restrictions on tobacco advertising."
* National Puerto Rican Coalition
* According to president Louis Nunez, "You don't sign anything . . . It's sort of understood that you're going to work with them. . . . Obviously the tobacco industry is very involved in legislation, and I would assume that any organization that takes a very strong position on the use of tobacco, not even a strong position but a public position, would not get their support."
* National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE)
* Ecenbarger writes that a Philip Morris memo explaining a $5,000 contribution stated that NABE's president, Macario Saldate, NABE president, opposed an attempt to pass an anti-tobacco resolution during a National Hispanic Leadership Conference.
* United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York
* On May 15, 1997, JAMES S. TISCH, president & CEO of Loews Corp., which owns LORILLARD TOBACCO, was elected president of the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York. Critics included the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, the Commission on Social Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Religious Action Center, Jewish Theological Seminary students, plus some rabbis and Jewish lay figures. No sooner was Tisch elected than the UJA named PHILIP MORRIS board member RUPERT MURDOCH "Humanitarian of the Year."
* Gay Men's Health Crisis
* In 1994, Philip Morris was GMHC's largest single corporate contributor--$150,000. R.J. Reynolds gave about $50,000.
* 1995-1997: November AIDS Dance-a-Thon co-sponsored by R.J. Reynolds.
* Gay and Lesbian Alliance
* Act-Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)
* In May, 1991, ACT-UP called off its boycott of MARLBORO cigarettes and Miller Beer over anti-gay remarks by JESSE HELMS, in return for increased AIDS funding and encouragement from PHILIP MORRIS for local groups to apply for grants.
* WILLIAM DOBBS from the New York chapter, however, spoke up at the press conference announcing the decision. "Is it linked to the people you kill every year?" he asked the Philip Morris representative. Dobbs called the pact "despicable," and said taking such money is like "stepping over thousands of dead" to help AIDS victims.
* American Council on Alcoholism
* National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund
* National Association of Media Women
* League of Women Voters
* Phillips Academy
A row erupted in August, 1995 over this Andover, MA private school's acceptance of a $200,000 grant from Philip Morris, earmarked for the recruitment of minorities into teaching.
* Yale Divinity School
* Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund
* Discovery Place children's science museum (Charlotte, N.C.)
* Philip Morris donated $5,000 to this children's museum to establish a meeting room where smoking is to be allowed.
* Tisch Children's Zoo (Central Park, New York City)
In 1997, LAURENCE A. TISCH agreed to donate $4.5 million to the renovation of the Children's Zoo in Central Park, and the WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY agreed to rename the children's zoo after the head of a tobacco company (Tisch is co-chairman of LOEWS, which owns LORILLARD Tobacco.)
* 4-H Club--North Carolina
* As a youth-oriented group, the national organization does not feel it appropriate to accept tobacco industry money. But the North Carolina affiliate does accept about $7,000 a year from Philip Morris. "This money is used to honor our adult volunteers, and it does not find its way into any direct programs for children," said an official.
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Individual Collaborators
* Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame
* As part of Philip Morris' $30 million "Bill of Rights" campaign, Hesburgh lent his visage on ads, and his statement that the Bill of Rights "did not automatically guarantee life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans. We have had to enlarge our freedoms, promote human dignity and eliminate injustice during all 200 years of the Bill of Rights. The ideal is there, but the reality has always needed enlarging. It still does."
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Charitable and Cultural Organizations that have REFUSED tobacco industry money
* Coalition for the Homeless
* Columnist Anna Quindlen said CH's director REFUSED to accept any more industry money after being asked in 1988 to write to the City Council in regards to the Smokefree Air Act.
* National Association of Black Journalists
* At its 1990 convention, in the wake of the Uptown controversy, NABJ voted to REFUSE all tobacco sponsorship.
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Drug Stores and Groceries that actively collaborate
Getting your prescription filled? How much do you think a store that hawks cigarettes knows about health matters? How much do you think they care? How scrupulously clean do you think such a grocery store will be? How careful do you think they are when handling your meat, dairy products and frozen food?
Your health or their money--which do you think comes first?
* New York City
* Big Apple/Sloan's/Gristede's Supermarkets
* A&P Supermarkets
* Grand Union
* Love Stores
* McKay Drugs
* CVS Pharmacies---------------------------------------------------------------
Drug Stores and Groceries that REFUSE to collaborate
* National Chains
* D'Agostino's Supermarkets
* Local
* New York State
* Monticello
* Family Drug Store
* New York City
* Greenwhich Village
* Whitney Chemists
* Bigelow DrugBigelow is one of the oldest drug stores in the city, but that doesn't mean they don't still bustle; though their lunch counter is long gone, they have a very large and unusual collection of body-care and grooming aids. They also have a sign in the front, stating their no-tobacco policy.
* Chelsea
* Stadtlanders Pharmacy Wellness Center
A unique new-age pharmacy in a cleanly-designed space, Stadtlanders has a "Gifts that Give Back" program. "Each time you buy a gift at Stadtlanders, 90% of the item's price goes directly to a non-profit organization that serves people living with long-term health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, organ transplants and cancer." Standtlanders started as a mail service pharmacy headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.
* Connecticut
* Newtown
* Bates' Drug Center PharmacyThe couple says the profits they'll lose don't really matter, but what worries them more is watching a new generation of smokers. . . . Many of the Bates' customers agree with and respect the decision. Meanwhile, the Bates stocked the shelves that used to house cigarettes with products to help smokers kick the habit. They say it's too soon yet to tell how much money they'll lose with the decision.--Connecticut News 30/MSNBC, April 5, 1998
* Utah
* Kaysville* Bowman's Thriftway
From an article by T.J. Quinn, published in the Salt Lake Tribune, Sept. 19, 1995:
[Though facing competition from a new Albertson's, Dick] Bowman... has plans to build a new, 46,000 square-foot store on the property just south on Main Street from his store and will go to the city for approval Sept. 28, the same day Albertson's is scheduled to ask for approval of its 51,000 square-foot store.
But Bowman, 67, still won't open his store on a Sunday and he still won't sell liquor or tobacco. It is not a moral issue, he said. He just doesn't believe selling things that could cause kids harm is a good message to those young people.
Some neighbors thought Bowman was crazy when he decided to take those items off the shelves, that he would regret it in the pocketbook.
Business is good enough for Bowman to go ahead with expansion plans, so somebody must like the way he runs his store, he says.
* Michigan
* Flint* Diplomat Pharmacy
Phil Hagerman took a steamroller to his tobacco stock in 1995. It was a customer-service issue: I didn't want it to seem that I was telling customers who bought their cigarettes here for 20 years that I didn't care anymore about their personal needs, he has said. Now, For every customer who said they're never coming back, I've had two or three people I never heard of calling to say, `We want you to be our pharmacy now."
* Shorewood
* Hayek's Pharmacy
Was once the place where connoisseurs went to buy unusual brands of cigarettes. But on April 1, the 80-year-old drugstore will go tobacco-free. "It's not an April Fool's Day joke," says Bill Quandt, the owner of the drugstore for the past eight years. "I've been thinking about doing it for some time. "It's just kind of a contradiction. On one hand we're selling drugs to cure what ails people, and on the other we're encouraging people to buy cigarettes that are a detriment to their health." Not only will the store at 4001 N. Downer Ave. Quandt sent a letter to his regular customers announcing his decision a couple of weeks ago. He included a $2 coupon that can be applied toward any product designed to help smokers kick the habit.
Shorewood Drugstore To Go Tobacco-free Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 18, 1998
* Georgia
* Butler
* Allan Smith's Pharmacy
Allen Smith is putting his money where is mouth is. . . "It reached the point where I'd be selling them cigarettes, they'd eventually get sick and I'd wind up selling them prescription drugs to treat their illnesses," Smith said. "I just couldn't look into their faces any more." . . And that's not an easy thing to do for an independent druggist. One cigarette company paid Smith $300 a month simply to put its rack in a favorable position on the counter. In all, tobacco advertising brought in almost $1,000 a month.
This material is continually updated. For the latest, check it out at Tobacco BBS --
CONTINUE
APPENDIX BState Cigarette Tax Rates
As of January 1, 1998
TAX RATE TAX RATE
STATE
Cents
per pack
RANK
STATE
Cents
per pack
RANK
Alabama (1)
16.5
43
Nebraska
34
26
Alaska
100
1
Nevada
35
25
Arizona
58
12
New Hampshire
37
21
Arkansas
31.5
29
New Jersey (1)
80
3
California
37
21
New Mexico
21
36
Colorado
20
37
New York (1)
56
14
Connecticut
50
16
North Carolina
5
49
Delaware
24
32
North Dakota
44
18
Florida
33.9
27
Ohio
24
32
Georgia
12
46
Oklahoma
23
35
Hawaii (3)
80
3
Oregon
68
9
Idaho
28
31
Pennsylvania
31
30
Illinois (1)
58
12
Rhode Island
71
8
Indiana
15.5
44
South Carolina
7
48
Iowa
36
23
South Dakota
33
28
Kansas
24
32
Tennessee
13
45
Kentucky
3
50
Texas
41
20
Louisiana
20
37
Utah
51.5
15
Maine
74
7
Vermont
44
18
Maryland
36
23
Virginia (1)
2.5
51
Mass.
76
5
Washington
82.5
2
Michigan
75
6
West Virginia
17
41
Minnesota
48
17
Wisconsin
59
11
Mississippi
18
39
Wyoming
12
46
Missouri
17
41
Dist. of Columbia
65
10
Montana
18
39
U. S. Median
34.
0
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Source: Compiled by FTA from various sources.(1) Counties and cities may impose an additional tax on a pack of cigarettes in AL, 1? to 6?; IL, 10? to 15?; MO, 4? to 7?; TN, 1?; and VA, 2? to 15?.
(2) Dealers pay an additional enforcement and administrative fee of 0.1? per pack in KY and 0.05?.
(3) HI, cigarette tax will increase to $1.00 per pack on 6/30/98.
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APPENDIX C
Minnesota Cigarette Excise Tax
Although this data applies only to the State of Minnesota, other states are probably similar. At least it will give some idea of the income a state receives as a result of its cigarette tax.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Rate: 48? per pack of 20 cigarettes.
Credits: Distributors receive a 1% discount on the first $1,500,000 of stamps purchased and 0.6% on additional purchases. The discount covers tax compliance expenses.
Revenue Collections:
FY1993 $175,801,000
FY1994 $175,586,000
FY1995 $177,028,000
FY1996 $176,296,000History: Enacted in 1947 at 3? per pack.
Tobacco Products Tax
Tax Base: Tobacco products, other than cigarettes, sold or used in Minnesota, including cigars, smoking tobacco, and chewing tobacco.
Rate: 35% of wholesale price.
Credits: Distributors allowed discount equal to 1.5% of tax for tax compliance expenses.
Revenue Collections:
FY1993 $8,423,000
FY1994 $9,456,000
FY1995 $10,205,000
FY1996 $11,296,000History: Enacted in 1955 at rate of 15% of wholesale price.
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Impact of Cigarette Smoking in Minnesota
December 1, 1997
[Caution: The following data comes from the Minnesota Blue Cross organization. All health care providers are big guns in anti-smoking circles and their figures tend to be biased with an eye to their bottom line.]
Deaths
* One of every six deaths each year in Minnesota is related to smoking cigarettes.
* 6,400 deaths per year in Minnesota are caused by cigarette use, including deaths by cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases and cigarette-ignited fires.
Costs
* Cigarette smoking is estimated to cost Minnesotans $1.3 billion each year, including health care costs and lost income from death and disease. This is seven times greater than the annual $183 million collected by the state in excise taxes on tobacco (48 cents per pack tax rate).
* Estimated health care costs attributed to cigarette smoking, including costs for hospitals, physicians and other medical professionals, nursing homes and medications, were more than $513 million in 1995. This equals $111 for each person in Minnesota.
Teen smoking
* Between 1993 and 1995, smoking among Minnesota adults declined by 2 percent - 22.5 percent in 1993 to 20.5 percent in 1995. However, smoking among children under age 18 increased.
* In 1995, more Minnesota 12th graders reported smoking cigarettes during the previous 30 days than 12th graders across the United States - 39 percent vs. 33.5 percent - about 5 percent higher than the national average.
* 12th graders smoking at least once each week increased from 22 percent in 1993 to 25 percent in 1995.
* From 1989 to 1995, the rate of smoking among 9th graders who smoked weekly rose from 14 percent to 18 percent.
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APPENDIX D
Timeline Of U.S. Tobacco Climate
World War II
President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes tobacco a protected crop and cigarettes are included in GIs' C-rations. Tobacco companies send millions of cigarettes, mostly the popular brands, to GIs.
1947 The song "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke That Cigarette" is a national hit.
1950 TV Guide picks Lucky Strike's "Be Happy, Go Lucky" spot as the commercial of the year. In it, cheerleaders sing: "Yes, Luckies get our loudest cheers on campus and on dates. With college gals and college guys a Lucky really rates."
1951 "I Love Lucy" begins and is the top-rated show for four of its first six full seasons. It is sponsored by Philip Morris.
R.J. Reynolds introduces Winston filter-tip brand, emphasizing taste.
1952 Reader's Digest publishes an article about dangers of smoking under the headline: "Cancer by the Carton."
1954 The Marlboro cowboy is created for Philip Morris by Chicago ad agency Leo Burnett. At the time Marlboro has 0.25 percent of the American market.
1957 U.S. surgeon general says statistical evidence indicates that excessive cigarette smoking may cause lung cancer.
1964 Debate over airing cigarette commercials heats up after the surgeon general issues a report that finds smoking to be a health hazard.
1964 Marlboro Country ad campaign is launched with the slogan: "Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country." Marlboro sales begin growing at 10 percent a year.
1966 Congress passes a law requiring a warning label on cigarette packages. The label reads: "Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health."
1966 R.J. Reynolds filter-tip Winston becomes top-selling cigarette in the United States.
1968 Philip Morris introduces the Virginia Slims brand aimed at women.
1970 Congress votes to ban cigarette advertising on radio and television starting in 1971.
1970 The warning label on cigarette packages changes to: "Warning: The surgeon general has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health."
1971 The on-air ban of cigarette ads takes effect and the broadcast industry loses $220 million in advertising.
1971 R.J. Reynolds begins sponsorship of NASCAR's Winston Cup Series.
1971 Virginia Slims tennis begins.
1972 Marlboro becomes the best-selling cigarette in the world, and Marlboro Lights are introduced.
1973 The Civil Aeronautics Board starts requiring no-smoking sections on all commercial airliners.
1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match features Billie Jean King, wearing Virginia Slims colors and Virginia Slims sequins on her chest. She defeats Bobby Riggs.
1974 Lynn Smith organizes the first D-Day (an annual day set aside for smokers to quit in Monticello, Minn., leading to a statewide D-Day.)
1975 The Minnesota Clean Air Act goes into effect, and Minnesota becomes the first state with a comprehensive law restricting indoor smoking in public places.
1977 The American Cancer Society sponsors a nationwide D-Day called the Great American Smokeout.
1979 Minneapolis and St. Paul become the first U.S. cities to ban the distribution of free cigarette samples.
1981 Insurance companies start offering discounts for non-smokers.
1984 The FDA approves nicotine gum as a "new drug."
1984 The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act was amended to require that warning labels appear in a specific format on cigarette packages and in most related advertising.
1985 Philip Morris buys food and coffee giant General Foods (Post cereal, Jell-O, Maxwell House Coffee) for $5.6 billion. Philip Morris Companies Inc. is founded as a diversified holding company with headquarters in New York City, comprising Philip Morris Inc. and the General Foods Corp.
1986 The surgeon general says secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer.
1986 R.J. Reynolds Industries Inc. becomes RJR Nabisco Inc.
1987 Congress bans smoking on domestic flights of less than two hours.
1987 RJR begins the Joe Camel ad campaign.
1988 The surgeon general issues a report saying cigarette smoking is addictive by the same scientific standards that apply to illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
1988 The World Health Organization sponsors a worldwide version of D-Day.
1988 Northwest Airlines declares all North American flights to be smoke free; other U.S. carriers eventually follow suit.
1988 Philip Morris acquires Kraft Inc. for $12.9 billion.
1989 Saatchi and Saatchi designs Northwest Airlines' Smoke-free Skies campaign; R.J. Reynolds withdraws its Oreo account, which Saatchi had for 18 years.
1989 Marlboro has 25 percent of the American market.
1989 R.J. Reynolds abandons Premier, its smokeless cigarette, after unsuccessful test-marketing in Arizona and Missouri.
1990 Smoking is banned on all domestic flights of less than six hours, except to Alaska or Hawaii. Smoking also is banned on U.S. intercity buses.
1991 The American Heart Association says second-hand smoke causes 53,000 deaths in the United States annually.
1991 Saatchi and Saatchi unit Campbell Mithun tests a campaign for Kool that featured a cartoon smoking penguin wearing shades, a buzz cut and Day-Glo sneakers.
1992 Nicotine patch is introduced.
1992 Supreme Court rules that the 1966 warning label law does not shield tobacco companies from all lawsuits.
1992 Marvin Shanken publishes first issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.
1993 The Environmental Protection Agency says secondhand smoke can cause cancer in humans and estimates it is responsible for 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in non-smoking adults and impairs the lungs of hundreds of thousands of children.
1993 Financial World ranks Marlboro the world's most valuable brand (value: $39.5 billion).
1994 Frank Blethen's Seattle Times becomes the largest U.S. newspaper to refuse tobacco advertising. "These ads were designed to kill our readers," said Times President H. Mason Sizemore, "so we decided to refuse them."
1994 Minnesota and Blue Cross/Blue Shield sue tobacco companies for violating antitrust laws by failing to disclose addictive qualities of tobacco.
1994 The Federal Trade Commission votes 3-2 not to file a complaint that the R.J. Reynolds Joe Camel ad campaign encourages children to buy cigarettes. Two commissioners issue strongly dissenting opinions.
1994 Financial World ranks Marlboro the world's No. 2 most valuable brand next to Coca-Cola (value: $38.7 billion). The brand also has 29 percent of the U.S. market, the highest share it has ever had.
1995 Philip Morris announces unprecedented recall of 8 billion cigarettes due to a suspected chemical containment.
1995 FDA declares nicotine a drug.
1995 The five largest tobacco companies file suit in a North Carolina court challenging the FDA's authority to regulate tobacco and advertising. The advertising industry files in North Carolina within days. Smokeless tobacco manufacturers U.S. Tobacco Co. and Conwood Co. file suit in Tennessee.
1995 ABC-TV apologizes to Philip Morris after a libel suit for a "Day One" report that the company had manipulated nicotine levels in its cigarettes. The network paid Philip Morris an estimated $16 million in legal fees.
1995 The New York Times reports that CBS killed a "60 Minutes" interview with a whistle-blowing former Brown and Williamson executive (later revealed to be Jeffrey Wigand). That day, a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, KCBS, killed an anti-tobacco ad that had been running for weeks.
1996 Liggett Group makes dramatic break with industry, offers to settle Medicaid and addiction-based suits.
1996 Liggett tentatively settles with five states over Medicaid suits.
1996 The FDA releases statements of three more tobacco industry insiders claiming Philip Morris carefully controls nicotine levels in cigarettes.
1996 Former heavy smoker Grady Carter awarded $750,000 from Brown and Williamson Tobacco by a Florida jury that determined the manufacturer was negligent for not warning about the danger of cigarettes. The verdict is being appealed.
1997 Florida settlement with tobacco industry. $11.3 billion over a 25 year period.
1997 Mississippi tobacco settlement. $3.4 billion over a 25 year period.
1998 Texas tentative tobacco settlement. $14.5 billion.
1998 McCain bill which would have raised cigarette taxes an additional $1.10 per pack and fined the tobacco industry $368 billion defeated in the Senate because of porkbarrel riders.
1998 Minnesota tobacco settlement. $6.1 billion over a 25 year period.
1998 $950,000 verdict against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation for smoker's death. The largest award ever and the first for punitive damages.
May, 1998 $15 billion diverted from VA health benefits to new $216 billion road and mass transit programs, canceling health benefits to veterans who smoke.
5-29-1998 Congress claimed veterans who smoked on active duty engaged in willful misconduct. Veterans groups protested so much the language was deleted.
7-19-98 A North Carolina Federal judge rules 1993 EPA study wrongly declared secondhand smoke a dangerous carcinogen, a decision that could impact some local and regional ordinances banning smoking.
THE END
