When you're done with this collection there's more!
 
 

The Liberty Manifesto P. J. O'Rourke - Cato Inst.

All we have is the belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people. And that had better be clear and provable harm. No nonsense about second-hand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language, please.  There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

 

I'd rather smoke than kiss National Review - Florence King - 7/9/90

A misanthrope is someone who hates people. Hatred of smokers is the most popular form of closet misanthropy in America today. Smokists don't hate the sin, they hate the sinner, and they don't care who knows it. Their campaign never would have succeeded so well if the alleged dangers of smoking had remained a problem for smokers alone. We simply would have been allowed to invoke the Right to Die, always a favorite with democratic lovers of mankind, and that would have been that. To put a real damper on smoking and make it stick, the right of others not to die had to be invoked somehow, so "passive smoking" was invented. The name was a stroke of genius. Just about everybody in America is passive. Passive Americans have been taking it on the chin for years, but the concept of passive smoking offered them a chance to hate in the land of compulsory love, a chance to dish it out for a change with no fear of being called a bigot. The right of self-defense, long since gone up in smoke, was back.

 

And The Sound of Music will disappear in smoke New Zealand Herald - Stephen Ross - December 29, 2004

I don’t smoke, but I sat in a bar once with someone from Ash, and had I known they were from Ash I’d have had a "serendipitous moment". I’d have lit up. And if no cigarettes had been handy, I’d have smoked a chair leg.  Like most New Zealanders, I don’t like being told what to do by a bunch of people who have designated themselves "mother".  Well, the mothers at the Health Ministry have succeeded in outlawing smoking in bars - and pretty much anywhere else human beings gather to socialise.  I don’t smoke and I rarely frequent bars, so it will have little effect on me, but it still annoys me. What if I wanted to? And anyway, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in a bar?  What really annoys me is the Health Ministry’s latest proposal - to go after the movies. Flush with success from its victory in the bars, it now wants to place an age restriction on films that feature smoking. The head of Ash suggested 18 would be a good age.  Excuse me? But just how do you passive-smoke a reel of celluloid?  It’s bad enough that this month’s legislation makes it illegal for actors in live theatre to light up, even if the script depends upon it - live theatre is a work environment.  Actors on the stage can perform in the nude, they can drink and swear, simulate sex, rape and vomiting. They can unleash practically any manner of bodily carnage a script calls for, but if they light up a cigarette they’re going straight to hell.  I imagine the Health Ministry’s concern about movies is not the issue of passive smoking, but rather a desire to prevent the little ones from seeing people engage in the act of having a puff - so they don’t get the idea to try it themselves when they grow up. Brilliant: it’s not like people actually smoke in real life, now is it?  And there’s the rub. In real life people smoke, and that’s what films do - they reflect real life. Age-restricting films that feature smoking would be about as logical as banning films that feature actors with red hair.  And anyway, have the mothers from the ministry thought this through? All three of the Lord of the Rings films would suddenly be restricted to adults-only, as would nearly all the works of Steven Spielberg, not to mention a fair chunk of the Disney back catalogue.  Not even The Sound of Music would be safe. That archetype of wholesome entertainment would be relegated to the restricted section of your local video library. Julie Andrews would be sharing shelf space with the likes of The Happy Hooker and Debbie Does Dargaville.  It would come down to this: if you’re a kid, you can forget about watching virtually any film made between 1901 and 1990 that has adult human beings in it, because it’ll probably have at least one instance of someone lighting up.  And for those of us old enough to still get into the movies, will our ticket stubs then come with health department warnings?  I have a fondness for the movies of the 1940s and 50s, when cigarettes were de rigeur. I grew up on a regular diet of James Dean, Barbara Stanwyck and Humphrey Bogart, whose first words were most likely, "Got a light?" Does this mean I’m now more likely to succumb to cancer? Can I sue Phillip Morris?  And what about television? Will this be restricted, too? Smoking might not feature so prominently in American-made television anymore, but it’s still there by the ashtray load in British productions. And, kids, say goodbye to The Simpsons.  It’s a shame the anti-smoking brigade weren’t around a few years back. In days gone by people used to smoke in the audience as well as up on the screen.  That would have put a whole lot of something in their pipes to smoke.  The Government, fortunately, has pretty much nixed the Health Ministry’s new idea - for now. But you can guarantee it still smoulders in the darkest veins of the ministry mothers. And remember, people laughed at their proposal to ban smoking in bars.  It’s really bad enough you can’t smoke in a pub anymore. They’ll ban the alcohol next - that’ll be the next serendipitous moment, just you wait and see, and then it’ll be a bunch of folk sitting around playing Scrabble, with an official from the Government standing over them vetting the words.

 

Price of freedom lost in hazy cloud of secondhand smoke  Columbia Journal  - Tony Messenger  - December 1, 2004

Monday is smoking night. Actually, it’s bowling night, but judging by the reaction of my family when I return home each week, I might as well have been sucking down a pack of Marlboros rather than rolling a ball down a lane and trying to hang on to my pitiful 136 average. Each Monday night, I proudly don my "Big Mess" bowling shirt, and several hours later I immediately take it off and try to protect it from a ceremonial burning as I walk into my house to shrieks of "Gross!" There’s no doubt that I arrive home smelling like a giant smoldering cigarette even though I haven’t smoked one all night. In fact, except for a couple of college nights of foolishness and the occasional celebratory cigar, I’ve never smoked. Such is life in the bowling alley world, however. Many folks in the Monday night league are smokers. They have their section, back away from the bowling area, and those of us who don’t smoke play a weekly game of trying to get a table that keeps us from direct contact with wafting smoke. It’s impossible really, but we try anyway. Even on nights when we’re successfully free of the blowing smoke zone, we still come home reeking. A group of Columbians is in the process of trying to change that. Along with like-minded folks all over the nation and the world, the group is trying to move Columbia into the realm of a smoke-free society. The movement is picking up steam in the United States, with places from Boulder, Colo., to New York City banning smoking in public places, even restaurants and bars, even bowling alleys. Like a fast-moving locomotive, support is building for a vote that will add Columbia to the list of healthy cities that make it possible to go out and have a night of bowling without coming home and smelling like an ashtray. It sounds like a fair enough idea. Smoking is unhealthy. With the exception of a few stubborn teenagers who believe they’re invincible, every breathing human being in the United States knows that. Smoking kills. Secondhand smoke kills, too. Besides that, it smells. It’s dirty. You can’t walk into a smoky bowling alley or a bar without coming out smelling like somebody flicked ashes all over you for a couple of hours. It’s why this issue is so important to Columbians. It’s time to take a stand. That’s why - with apologies to my wife and children, and particularly to the abuse I heap upon my poor bowling shirt each week - I stand firmly for the only value that should matter when it comes to banning things in Columbia or anywhere else. I stand for freedom. It doesn’t matter that I don’t smoke. It doesn’t matter that I don’t like the smell. It doesn’t matter that I think the industry puts profits over health. It doesn’t matter that I hate the fact that my 21-year-old son smokes and that my grandfather’s life was cut short because of years of tobacco abuse. It matters that our country, in the name of one group’s vision of a healthy society, has found it appropriate to ban legal substances and cause irreparable harm to businesses whose only sin has been following the law. My friend Ron Leone, another nonsmoker who believes in freedom, put it best in an opinion piece he wrote a few years ago: "Freedoms once lost are all but impossible to restore." How perverted have the attempts by healthy special interests been to change our laws by banning legal activity? The latest health bandwagon has been the anti-obesity efforts, built on what many scientists have called flawed statistics that show America getting wider around the middle. Last week’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that its recently released obesity morbidity statistics were off by 80,000 or more is a case in point. Advocates pointed to the numbers as a sign that obesity is overtaking smoking as the leading cause of death, but the fact is it’s not true. Meanwhile, we have local governments forcing changes in what our children are eating, affecting market economies because of special interest pressure. It’s un-American, I say. Smoking is still legal in this country. So is sucking down an extra-large Imo’s pizza. Healthy? No. But until pizza and cigarettes are illegal, then it’s not government’s place to affect their status in the marketplace. Unless government commits to the same process that occurs when it takes a person’s land so it can build a new highway - reasonable compensation determined by the market - this movement to ban smoking in private businesses that make their living on folks who want to come in and have a beer and a cigarette is an unconstitutional taking. How silly will Columbia look if it bans smoking months after passing an ordinance to make it easier to possess marijuana, an illegal drug? How inconsistent is it that some of the same folks who rail against the Patriot Act for taking away our freedoms want to do the same thing to merchants who happen to participate in a business that some folks simply don’t approve of? On Mondays, I smell like smoke because I like to bowl. That’s my choice. Just like it was my grandfather’s choice to smoke cigars until it killed him. I still remember a birthday one year when my grandmother bought a cake for me. My party had to be moved back a day because of a snowstorm, so she stored the cake in her refrigerator. When she and my grandfather came over the next day, all of us bit into our first bites of birthday cake and stared at each other as we tried to determine the flavor. It was Cohiba, I believe. After one day at my grandfather’s house, nothing escaped the stench of cigar smoke. I ate the cake and asked for a second piece. Smoke be damned, I thought. It’s my birthday, and I’m eating my cake. Let the anti-smoking crusaders eat their cake, too, I say. But keep their unconstitutional laws off our books. Otherwise, our freedom will go up in smoke.

 

Minding our own business The Cavalier Daily - Eric Wang - December 1, 2004

LIKE THE family fissures that sometimes erupt during holiday gatherings, the "public health" community couldn't keep it together last week. Incensed by a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that obesity was Public Enemy Number One -- killing more than 400,000 Americans each year -- the anti-tobacco lobby sprang into action. Smoking opponents just couldn't stand playing second fiddle to their anti-obesity comrades. Although both are supposed to be concerned about public health, one is just more concerned than the other. Thus, the anti-tobacco lobby forced the CDC to slim down the obesity statistics and restore smoking to its rightful place as the leading public health killer.  While the tobacco prohibitionists got to keep their "street cred" and public funding for pet programs on how to run other people's lives, the obesity police were left licking their wounds. Oh, can't we all just get along? Can't we all just stop worrying about other people and mind our own business? Can't the nattering nabobs of nosiness please just give it a rest?  Since the latter half of the last century, our society has been rolling back regulations into personal lives. From contraceptives to abortion to same-sex relationships, prudes and puritans have consistently lost to the enlightened elite. But the same liberal promoters of personal choice, who turned their noses at prying behind bedroom doors, began sticking their noses into some of the most common activities.  Today, in many cities in our alleged land of freedom, you can't even willingly walk into a bar where people smoke; smoking is not allowed -- anywhere. Bartenders, waiters and waitresses can't assume the risk of working in an environment where it's known that they will voluntarily expose themselves to second-hand smoke. Thank goodness the anti-obesity lobby is too busy fighting the anti-tobacco lobby over who's number one. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to walk into the bar and order a cheeseburger either.  The public health elite needs to put its ego on a diet and stop treating everyone as if they need protection from themselves. Originally understood as a centralized effort to prevent highly communicable diseases like smallpox and influenza, the public health movement has morphed into a lifestyle Taliban. Eating too much cholesterol or too many calories? Ten lashes of the whip for you.  The danger posed to individual autonomy by treating all of our activities as public health issues is not limited to smoking or eating too much. Because there is no principled public health distinction between these activities and drinking, having sex and other activities that college students like to engage in, there is no telling where the fickle public health fiends will strike next.  Many alarmists justify the current anti-obesity crusade by pointing to skyrocketing health insurance costs and the rising number of Americans classified as obese. But if there is any causation between these phenomena, that is solely because we make it so. In any other line of insurance, individuals must pay premiums that are adjusted for their particular risk factors. Thus, people who buy dangerous vehicles or live in flood plains must pay more for coverage, if they are able to buy any at all.  When it comes to health insurance, however, sedentary overeaters pass the costs of their lifestyle on to the most avid health nuts. Some would object to insurance premiums based on a body mass index or physical exam as unfairly punitive against those with inherited conditions. But in many obesity cases today, we are clearly confronting matters of lifestyle. Unless the human gene pool is somehow mutating to produce more fat people, personal behavior is the only explanation for the ever-greater percentage of the population that is obese.  Even if the obesity epidemic were a genetic problem, it would still not be unfair to charge a premium for this risk factor. After all, there are plenty of other immutable characteristics that force us to pay more, such as being male in the case of car insurance, or being old or predisposed to a disease in the case of life insurance. Putting aside the problem of external costs, which is easily resolved if only we had the political will, there is no principled reason for treating obesity any differently than any other lifestyle choice. An individual's body weight is nobody's business but his own, and the public health busybodies should butt out.

 

Passive smoking? It's all lies, damn lies and statistics In the absence of proof, health campaigners use smoke and mirrors Telegraph - Robert Matthews - November 21, 2004

Smokers can hardly say they didn't see it coming. The partial ban on smoking in public places proposed in last week's White Paper has been on the cards ever since 1997, when scientists claimed to have conclusive evidence that smokers were killing innocent bystanders via "passive smoking". Until then, the idea that non-smokers could also die from cigarette-induced lung cancer and heart disease had seemed like health-zealot paranoia. For decades scientists had tried to measure the risk in dozens of studies, but three-quarters of them came up empty. Then, in October 1997, the British Medical Journal published two studies by researchers from St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, which pulled all these inconclusive studies together and put them through the statistical mangle.  Out dripped the result that many just knew was in there: evidence that passive smoking leads to a 26 per cent increased risk of lung cancer, with a similar increase for heart disease. This was the turning point in the long-running debate over smoking and health. For years, anti-smoking campaigners had sought ways of getting the habit banned, but had been frustrated by the lack of proof that smokers were harming anyone but themselves.  Now they had what the scientists themselves hailed as "compelling confirmation" that passive smoking causes lung cancer and is an "important" cause of ischaemic heart disease, or stroke. Ever since, it has been open season on smokers, who are now routinely accused of killing 1,000 people each year in the UK. Meanwhile, the scientific foundation of such claims has steadily vanished behind a veil of political correctness. Even if the results are accepted at face value, the impressive-sounding risk figures for lung cancer and heart disease imply that passive smoking accounts annually for one extra death in every 10,000.  Yet those who attempt to question the reality - let alone the importance - of the threat from passive smoking are condemned as fools or lackeys of the smoking industry. No one knows this better than Professor James Enstrom of the University of California. He was the principal investigator on a huge study of the health effects of living with smokers, which was begun by the American Cancer Society in 1959. Covering more than 100,000 people, it was expected to produce the definitive answers that had eluded smaller studies. By the late 1990s, it became clear what that answer would be; unfortunately for Prof Enstrom, it was not the right answer. Funding for the study was suddenly cut off and he was compelled to accept funding from the only organisation apparently interested in the outcome: the tobacco industry. Despite insisting that his results were in no way influenced by the industry, Prof Enstrom's study was rejected by several journals.  His paper finally appeared in 2003 in the British Medical Journal - and showed absolutely no evidence for a link between passive smoking and either heart disease or lung cancer. Prof Enstrom was immediately attacked for failing to reach the right result. Critics seized on his acceptance of tobacco-industry funding, with even the American Cancer Society, which had set up the study, dismissing the study as nothing more than a propaganda exercise. Such tactics have become a standard feature of the passive smoking debate. After reporting the failure of a World Health Organisation study to confirm the supposed risks from passive smoking, campaigners attempted to have this newspaper censured by the Press Complaints Commission; they failed. Privately, some scientists and anti-smoking lobbyists concede that the evidence for the lethal effects of passive smoking is less than compelling.  Yet they insist that qualms over the scientific evidence should not get in the way of the ultimate goal: the elimination of an avoidable cause of more than 100,000 deaths in the UK each year. It is a line of argument with potentially lethal consequences. For despite all the efforts of campaigners and governments, around one in five people on the planet are smokers. Passive smoking is thus ubiquitous, and its effects must be taken into account in any study into potential causes of cancer or heart disease. If the risks from passive smoking have been exaggerated, there is a real danger that the risks from other causes will be underestimated - with untold consequences for human health.

 

Fag-bashing Smokers are the new lepers Spiked Online - Jamie Douglass - November 18, 2004

Defending smoking bans is frighteningly easy: public health, shouldn't be subjected, passive death, poisoning yourself and others, hurts your children (that'll hit 'em hard), dries out your skin (get the vain ones), guilt, guilt, guilt. Add to this the fact that many smokers are self-flagellatory to a point that would unnerve the most pious of Cistercian monks, and the argument doesn't even need to take place. Which is good news, really, because it hasn't. Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party, stated that 'the time [had] come for a ban on smoking in public places', but noted that 'some people have yet to be persuaded', which - given that the public have yet to be consulted - augurs badly for an impartial, democratic discussion. The final nail in the coughing was the encouraging proclamation that this ban would help the '70 per cent of smokers who desperately want to give up'. Even if this figure is correct - and one wonders how the data was garnered without public consultation - that's an awful lot of very weak-willed people. Seventy per cent thinking it would be a good idea to give up is plausible - 70 per cent wanting to give up, but finding it a bit hard, is credible. But in desperation? With emotive and seemingly unjustified statements like these, it appears that the ban will go through nae matter how the populace feels. But this may not just be an attempt to boldly follow the trail blazed by the Celtic Tiger. It does not require conspiracy-theorist paranoia to wonder if this is in fact a vanguard action to assess how a ban might work in England and Wales. Already smokers are the subjects of numerous attacks. Actually banning smoking would be rather counterproductive, given that the tobacco industry produces annual revenue of £9.5billion, but smoking is now verboten in almost all buildings, transport, many restaurants, and at most bars. Furthermore, even where you can smoke you'd better not leave any evidence behind. Many cities have now started to issue on-the-spot fines of £50 for dropping a cigarette end in the street, and in London the number of wardens empowered to enforce this has trebled to 750. In fairness, London mayor Ken Livingstone is planning to distribute 15,000 'heat-resistant cigarette butt pouches' so that smokers can carry around their litter like a carcinogenic kangaroo, but this is in keeping with the tenor of that attack, which is being billed as an initiative to protect London from the alleged 2,700 tonnes of cigarette related litter produced each year. Since this cannot save money (the employment of 500 extra wardens will surely swallow any profits generated by not having to sweep up those tabs at the same time as you sweep the rest of the street), and won't make London look any cleaner (not while there's all that chewing gum on the pavement) it comes across as a thinly veiled attack on smokers. Smokers are the new lepers. Practically the only place where a quiet cigarette can be enjoyed unmolested nowadays is around a corner and up against an outer wall, which puts me, for one, in mind of blindfolds and barked orders. Every packet of cigarettes you buy carries dire warnings of what they will do to you, and there has even been talk of putting photos of cancerous lungs under the cellophane as well, in case smokers can't read. No discussion of the issue is complete without at least one person declaring that smoking is 'a disgusting habit'. It isn't. It may be a habit that some people find disgusting, but it's really only the enjoyment of the by-products of combusting fossil fuels, and if you find that 'disgusting' then you'd better have forsworn your car, which works on the same principle. Passive smoking is not nice, but in pollution terms it's peanuts - which, given the rising number of allergy sufferers, are probably more statistically dangerous anyway. Smokers are easy to bash because they're a minority, albeit one that pays an awful lot of tax. When UK health secretary John Reid recently suggested that smoking was one of the few remaining pleasures left to some, he was shouted down by those on his own side concerned he might have strayed off-message, as well as anti-smoking campaigners desperately worried that he might have a point. As a former 60-a-day man who has now given up - and is in charge of creating a viable national health strategy - one could be forgiven for assuming that Dr Reid was well-placed to make an even-handed judgement on the issue, unlike, say, the single-issue lobbyists of ASH. But he was defending the indefensible. Smoking is the one vice guaranteed to get everyone's thermals in a twist because it represents the last dying (emphysemic) gasp of the freedom to take the consequences for your own actions. Smokers engage in an expensive activity that may well kill them in return for transitory pleasure. What with all the government awareness campaigns, it follows that they do so knowingly and willingly. The argument that they are physically craven addicts (no pun intended) does not wash, as nicotine leaves the body within half an hour - were this so, all smokers could use patches, and the problem would end. No, smokers do it because they enjoy it. And we all reap the benefits (it would, no doubt, be somewhat easier to swallow the New Labour cant if they renounced all tobacco revenue. How can they profit from such evil?). Philosophically, smoking represents the freedom to damage yourself if you wish to, unsupported by popular sanction, and unplanned by government strategy. No wonder they hate it so much. Only time will tell if the Scottish Plan works out. The evidence from Ireland is that trade in pubs has not suffered from the ban, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the Irish didn't like smoking, more that they still like drinking. If there isn't a public outcry, rioting in Leith, and queues of quivering addicts down the Royal Mile crawling in search of an angry norepinephidrine fix, then we may well find ourselves saddled with a smoking ban this side of the border. No doubt some people will be happier that the air around them no longer hangs thick with the pall of a thousand tabs, but I, for one, will watch with wrathful regret as one more freedom vanishes in a puff of...what?

 

Quit nagging the smokers, will ya? Bucks County Courier Times - J.D. Mullane - November 18, 2004

Today is the day we set aside each year to badger, harass and pester that marginalized subculture of Americans, the Doorway People.  You know the Doorway People. They stand in doorways at work or at the mall smoking cigarettes because lighting up in mixed company has become as distasteful as nose-picking. Yes, today marks the 27th anniversary of the Great American Smokeout, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, where modern incarnates of pinch-mouthed prohibitionists attempt to further ghettoize smokers. Now, it's not that I think smoking is good. I have friends who smoke. I wish they didn't. On average, they will trade 10 years of their lives to enjoy their habit. But we're all grownups. Smoking is their demon and I have enough of my own demons to wrestle with. But, unlike anti-smoking zealots, I sympathize with smokers. That's because I was a smoker. When I quit for good in 1996, I was burning through 2 1/2 packs a day. I ditched the habit because each time I coughed, my lungs rattled as if someone had backed into metal trash cans. Still, I loved every puff. I still miss it. In fact, I still have nicotine cravings.  So I'm sympathetic to smokers and believe they should be free to enjoy their addiction, which, last I checked, remains legal. Which is why I dislike the anti-smoking scolds. They are trying to criminalize smoking.  From New York City to Dallas, from Toledo, Ohio, to Eugene, Ore., anti-smoking zealots have racked up successful campaigns to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, the last bastion of peace and acceptance for smokers. Eventually, the anti-smoking "movement" will have won enough smoking bans in enough cities in enough states to introduce national no-smoking legislation, said Zoe Mitchell, co-founder of Ban the Ban, which recently defeated efforts to enact similar no-smoking legislation in Washington, D.C. "Ultimately, their goal is to make it a national issue based on their success at the local level," she said. Anti-smokers say they're acting in the best interest of public health. They say all those smokers burden the healthcare system with their cigarette-related maladies. It costs all of us more in healthcare premiums, they say.  Nonsense. Smokers die sooner than most of us nonsmokers, never collecting a cent from Social Security, which they've paid for decades. Also, smokers pay outrageous cigarette taxes on each pack of smokes, which pours billions of dollars annually into government coffers. At best, the money argument is a wash. When an anti-smoking nut steps into a place like the Puss N' Boots Tavern in Fairless Hills, all they see is the blue-gray cloud of smoke hovering over the patrons crowded around the bar. When I walk into the Boot, I see it differently. I see a local cop who's seen more than his fair share of tragedy.  Or an emergency room nurse who was up to her elbows in blood just a few hours before.  Or a construction guy who's sacrificed years of Saturdays to work overtime so he could save for his kid's college tuition.  Or a middle-aged father worried about his son, who's fighting the war.  These are the good people the anti-smoking zealots want to stigmatize as public health leeches. And if they accomplish their goal, they won't go away.  They will persecute the overweight, stigmatize SUV drivers and haul into court those who don't recycle. They've got the money and the time and the lawyers.  They're coming for you.

 

Smoke Screen The Independent - November 16, 2004

There's never been more pressure on Britons to stub out their fags. But the anti-tobacco lobby exaggerates how dangerous cigarettes really are, says Tim Luckhurst. Smoking is under attack as never before. Today, the Government is expected to publish a white paper proposing restrictions on smoking in public places in England and Wales. Meanwhile, the Scottish Executive has agreed on a "comprehensive ban" on public smoking. Promoting the Scottish ban on the Today Programme, the country's deputy health minister, Rhona Brankin, declared "One in four of all deaths in Scotland is directly attributable to smoking." In a separate interview she said "one in four of all deaths (is) attributable to smoking. About 13,000 people die every year as a result of smoking." She was wise to omit the "directly" that sneaked onto Today. The most recent statistics reveal that 57,382 people died in Scotland in 2001. If one in four of them died for the reasons Rhona Brankin offers that would give a smoking-related death toll of 14,345, not 13,000. So is the minister guilty of modest exaggeration in the service of a noble cause? The one- in-four statistic is more than that; it is an article of faith among anti-smoking campaigners, but it is not as straightforward as it sounds. These are not just lung-cancer deaths. Brankin's toll includes every Scot who has died of "smoking-related complaints." To get into that category alleged victims of smoking do not need to have smoked. They are counted in on the basis that killers including heart disease, strokes and bronchitis can be caused by smoking. Nobody checks the lifestyles of the victims to ascertain that they did smoke. Some of these dead Scots did smoke, but died at or beyond the average Scottish lifespans of 73 years for men and 78 years for women. The same applies to many of the 140,000 English men and women whom the leading anti-smoking charity, ASH, asserts die each year as a result of smoking. ASH justifies including them on the grounds that deaths from smoking can follow years of painful disability and are thus worth preventing, even if they have not technically shortened a life. The issue here is not whether smoking kills, but whether it is legitimate to lie in the service of a good cause. Amanda Sandford, the head of research at ASH, offers an intriguing response. "Smoking is the biggest single cause of preventable death, and anti-smokers do not deliberately abuse statistics. But I don't really want to be drawn into that. It isn't black and white." Pushed to explain precisely what she means, Sandford says: "Epidemiology is not a direct science. Our business is promoting public health. It is possible that in certain cases some anti-smoking campaigners do exaggerate [she is adamant that ASH does not] but if statistics lied it would be bad. There needs to be a justification for it. To deliberately distort would not be acceptable. If there is an element of doubt we should express that. Scientists usually express their statements in terms of caution." She acknowledges that figures like Rhona Brankin's 13,000 deaths and ASH's 140,000 are sometimes "rounded up" but insists that any inflation is slight and is ironed out by annual variations in death rates. ASH has excellent motives. The problem is that the degree of exaggeration that has converted hostility to tobacco from a health cause to a neo-religious crusade does not look slight when it is exposed to careful analysis. It has created a very misleading impression about the real chance of a smoker dying from lung cancer. Habitual, lifelong smokers face a 30- to 40-fold higher risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smokers. That sounds massive and many smokers are persuaded to quit because they believe it is. But, since the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers is minuscule it does not amount to an objectively high risk. Amanda Sandford admits "Smokers are more likely to die of heart disease than lung cancer." The pro-smoking campaigner Joe Jackson argues "Even if you're a heavy smoker, your chances of NOT getting lung cancer are still more than 99 per cent." Jackson's claim is based on Professor Sir Richard Doll's research on smoking and lung cancer. It calculated that 166 smokers in every 100,000 died from lung cancer. Subsequent research has proved that conservative. One doctor says "If you smoke 30 a day for 50 years you probably face a one-in-10 chance of developing lung cancer. It is a horrible way to die." For that reason, the demonisation of tobacco companies as merchants of death does not offend me. Above the desk in the office where I used to smoke 15 cigarettes a day, until health concerns persuaded me to give up, hangs a reminder of the lies told in defence of a vicious business. It is a Camel advertisement from about the time of Professor Doll's ground-breaking report. Beneath the question "How mild can a cigarette be?", it asserts that there has been "not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking Camels" and supports this with the evidence of "noted throat specialists". Cigarette manufacturers have murdered facts and perverted science to persuade consumers to continue smoking. When they first learnt that cigarettes killed, they responded by deliberately advertising preposterous claims about health benefits. Smokers of my father's generation were told that the habit eased digestion by increasing the flow of digestive juices and the alkalinity of the stomach. But, as Scotland's devolved administration leads Britain towards a ban on the public indulgence of a dangerous but legal habit, it is worth recognising that the lies told by anti-smoking campaigners are substantial as well. Their intentions may be magnificent, but their tactics are not. If objective truth counts for anything then the title "merchants of sanctimony" is too generous. Anti-smokers have allowed their moral antipathy to smoking to distort their scientific advocacy. In private, many scientists and some doctors acknowledge this. Dr Ken Denson, of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation, says: "I simply do not know where they conjure up their statistics. The statistics for passive smoking, in particular, would not be published or even considered in any other scientific discipline. Deaths from smoking in general have been grossly exaggerated, particularly in relation to heart disease. " Dr Denson is a medical scientist. He has published peer-reviewed research in respected academic journals. He is not funded by tobacco companies. Is he right? The method by which Rhona Brankin arrived at her "one in four" claim and from which ASH derives its 140,000 deaths categorises 16 diseases as "smoking-related". Many of them are also caused by poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity and other poverty-related problems that are regrettably common in urban Scotland and similar post-industrial areas. If you use cigarettes and are poor, fat and reluctant to eat vegetables, you are substantially more likely to die young than a smoker who is affluent, active and well-fed. "One in four" includes people who would have died when they did without smoking a single cigarette. It also includes affluent smokers who pass away from heart attacks in their late eighties. The evidence that passive smoking harms health, on which the Scottish and UK governments both base their arguments for statutory restrictions, is even more inflated. Dr Denson, whose work on passive smoking has been published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, says much of the evidence that passive smoking harms health "has been exaggerated, contrived, or at worst falsified". Even Amanda Sandford admits: "A lot of the studies that have been done on passive smoking produce results that are not statistically significant according to conventional analysis." But she still insists that passive smoking is a real health risk, made worse by the fact that it is involuntary. There might appear to be no objective difference between overlooking conventional scientific method and deliberate distortion. But that is the problem with the modern debate about smoking. It is no longer conducted between good people who say that smoking kills and liars paid to deny it. Now it involves an industry that has, belatedly, been forced to admit that smoking kills and campaigners who are simply not satisfied with that. They want to convince the public that death is always the result and that every smoker and many non-smokers are at risk. They see no moral fault in lying to advance their case. Perhaps they are right and the end does justify the means. But I suspect their tactics may make the remaining minority of smokers still more determined to smoke. As one GP told me: "The danger of overstating a very real problem is that people always know anecdotal exceptions. They say, 'I ken Tam and he's smoked 40 a day since the battle of Narvik and never had a day ill in his life.' We might do better to admit that people like that exist, and even to speculate about why. That would lend authority when we point out the real risks." The willingness of militant anti-smokers to corrupt a good case has turned the smoking debate from a laudable campaign to improve public health into a bitterly resented attack on the minority who choose to risk smoking. One medical researcher says: "Statistically the evidence for the evils of smoking has been grossly distorted. For many people the ideal of a complete end to smoking has become a sort of Holy Grail with a limited basis in fact. More of us would say this, but it is politically unacceptable to speak the truth about these things." He suggests that rabid anti-smokers should look at the prevailing rates of smoking among young people born after the relationship between smoking and cancer was admitted by the tobacco industry - and remind themselves what happened to the boy who cried wolf.

 

We have ways of making you stop smoking The parallels - and differences - between Nazi Germany's 'war on cancer' and New Labour's crusade against the evil weed. Spiked Online - Dr Michael Fitzpatrick - November 15, 2004

[Tobacco is] 'one of the most deadly poisons'.  -Adolf Hitler, 1941   There are striking parallels between the Nazi 'war on cancer' and the New Labour crusade against smoking (1). In Nazi Germany, every individual had 'a duty to be healthy'; furthermore, to ensure that individuals fulfilled this duty, the government insisted on 'the primacy of the public good over individual liberties' (2). Tony Blair acknowledges that smokers - and non-smokers - have rights. More importantly, however, 'both have responsibilities - to themselves, to each other, to their families, and to the wider community' (3). To ensure that smokers meet these responsibilities, the government is planning further bans and proscriptions on their activities. In Germany in the 1930s, the medical profession played a leading role in the state campaign to restrict smoking. In Britain today, doctors again provide medical legitimacy and moral authority for state regulation of individual behaviour. There are of course also striking differences between the Nazi and New Labour anti-smoking campaigns. The anti-Semitic and eugenic themes of the 1930s are absent today; many of Germany's leading anti-tobacco activists were also war criminals (4). Another difference is in the consequences of an authoritarian public health policy for science. Whereas in Nazi Germany pioneering scientific research took place into the health effects of tobacco, we find today in Britain that epidemiology has been degraded in the service of political expediency. There has been a marked reluctance among British medical authorities to acknowledge German achievements in research into the health effects of smoking. Yet according to Robert Proctor's authoritative account, The Nazi War on Cancer, up to the Second World War, 'German tobacco epidemiology was the most advanced in the world'. In 1929 Franz Lickint, a physician from Chemnitz, published the first statistical evidence - a 'case series' study - suggesting a link between cigarettes and lung cancer (5). He went on to become a leading campaigner against smoking in the Nazi era. In 1939 Franz Muller at the University of Cologne published the first controlled epidemiological study - according to Proctor, 'an exquisite piece of scholarship' - establishing a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer (6). As late as 1943, Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schoniger, working at the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research at Jena, produced a 'very subtle study', providing 'the most conclusive epidemiological evidence up to that time, anywhere in the world, that smoking posed a major lung cancer hazard' (7). It was more than a decade later that researchers in Britain and the USA confirmed the findings of the German scientists, claiming these discoveries as their own. Sir Richard Doll is the leading figure in smoking epidemiology in Britain. He was a co-author of the 1954 study, which showed the link between smoking and lung cancer among British doctors, and also of the 50-year follow-up study of the same population, published earlier this year (8). The headline conclusion from these researches was that smoking leads, on average, to a 10-year reduction in life expectancy. In recent years, however, the focus of the anti-smoking campaign has shifted from the (firmly established) dangers of smoking to the smoker to emphasising the (more contentious) dangers of smoking to others, particularly to non-smokers. In the process, the science of epidemiology appears to have surrendered to the demands of public health propaganda. In 1988, the Froggat Committee, an independent scientific committee on smoking and health, estimated that passive smoking caused an increased risk of lung cancer of between 10 and 30 per cent and recommended restrictions on smoking in workplaces and in public (9). The case against passive smoking gathered momentum through the 1990s. In 1997 meta-analyses confirmed increased risks of lung cancer (24 per cent) and coronary heart disease (23 per cent) (10, 11). A re-analysis of the same studies three years later acknowledged a 'modest degree of publication bias' (a result of the fact that studies which reveal no increased risk are less likely to be published) and adjusted the excess risk of lung cancer down from 24 per cent to 15 per cent (12). Despite the growing medical (and political) consensus about the dangers of passive smoking, the issue has remained controversial. The Swedish toxicologist Robert Nilsson, while accepting the plausibility of the lung cancer link and the fact that numerous studies appear to show a statistically significant increase in risk, has questioned its epidemiological significance (13). He offered estimates of the annual incidence of cancer in a population of 100,000 resulting from various environmental factors: unknown (177), diet (135), smoking (68), other lifestyle factors (45), sunshine (23)...environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) (2). By contrast, in a population which consumes Japanese seafood (which contains Arsenic) this will cause 12 cases of cancer, where there are traces of natural Arsenic in drinking water, this will cause five cases; eating mushrooms will cause three cases. In other words, the risk of ETS is comparable with that of environmental agents that are generally regarded as an insignificant threat to health. Perhaps the most fundamental defect of the presentation of the risk of passive smoking is the failure to distinguish between relative and absolute risk. In a critical commentary, the Australian medical research scientist Raymond Johnstone noted that the annual death rate from lung cancer among the non-smoking wives of non-smoking men is around six per 100,000, whereas among the non-smoking wives of smoking men the corresponding figure is eight per 100,000. Now this may be reported as an increased (relative) risk of 33 per cent. Yet in absolute terms it amounts to an absolute (or exposure) risk of one in 50,000, which is, for practical purposes, negligible. Johnstone's conclusion was that 'the most that one can say about the alleged link between passive smoking and lung cancer is that if there is one, then it is so small that it is difficult to measure it accurately and the risk, if any, is well below the level of those to which we normally pay attention' (14). The alarming estimates of deaths attributable to passive smoking result from multiplying miniscule risks of dubious validity by vast population numbers - an effective propaganda device but statistical sharp practice. The intense moral fervour and political commitment now driving the campaign against passive smoking has created a climate inimical to serious scientific inquiry. In 2003 the British Medical Journal published a study of 120,000 adults in California over a 40-year period, which concluded that 'the results do not support a causal association between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality, though they do not rule out a small effect' (15). The authors, James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat, were subjected to a barrage of personal attacks and unfounded insinuations of dishonesty. In response, they pointed out the selective reporting of the anti-smoking campaigners and their attempts to suppress divergent data (16). They noted that 'what is most dangerous is the willingness to distort the truth to defend one's position, claiming all along that science and righteousness are on one's side'. In an editorial published alongside the original paper, George Davey Smith, one of Britain's leading epidemiologists, tried to bring some reason into the debate, pointing out that 'the considerable problems with measurement imprecision, confounding, and the small predicted excess risks limit the degree to which conventional observational epidemiology can address the effects of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke' (17). The fact that Davey Smith is well known for his hostility to the tobacco industry, and for his earlier writings exposing its apologetic use of science, did not save him, the authors or the BMJ from the wrath of the anti-smoking campaigners (18). The drive to impose restrictions on smoking in workplaces and in public has not been in the least inhibited by expert doubts about the validity of the evidence on which it is based. Indeed, as medical historian Virginia Berridge has observed, 'the coalition advocating those restrictions pre-dated the evidence' (19). Yet, as she acknowledged, 'by the mid-1990s, there was widespread agreement that the epidemiological evidence on passive smoking was at least debatable'. When Sir Richard Doll was asked in 1998 to compare the epidemiological evidence on passive smoking with his work in the 1950s, his response was 'it's utterly different' (20). Recalling that his study had shown a fifty-fold increase in risk for heavy smokers, he commented that 'for passive smoking the evidence is qualitatively different'. While indicating that he did believe that passive smoking was harmful, he conceded that 'the quantitative relationship is very weak', suggesting that his belief was more grounded in loyalty to the anti-smoking cause than his confidence in the figures. When he appeared on Desert Island Discs in February 2001, Doll told Sue Lawley that 'the effects of other people smoking in my presence are so small that it doesn't worry me'. Recent headlines quoting British chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson's statement that 'we are in the grip of a smoking epidemic' mark a new low point in the abuse of science in the anti-smoking cause (21). Reports quoted Professor Donaldson's statement that 106,000 people were 'dying needlessly' in the UK every year. Some newspapers provided the further breakdown detailed in the Health Development Agency press release: 1,600 deaths a week, 230 a day, 10 every hour. This alarmist rhetoric disguises the fact that mortality from lung cancer has been declining in Britain since the 1960s; over the past decade it has fallen by more than 25 per cent among men (who account for 60 per cent of deaths). Closer scrutiny of the report on which these accounts are based reveals that the figures presented are not of recorded deaths but 'are estimates and should be treated as such'. They are derived from a novel technique known as 'synthetical statistical estimation': they 'reflect expected values for the topics under investigation…and should not be regarded as absolute or exact'. The authors warn that their results 'must be used with caution' - a caveat that does not appear in any of the newspaper reports, or indeed in the HDA press release. Though such estimates may be of value for research or policy purposes, using them to scare the public cannot be considered legitimate. If anti-smoking campaigners have been slow to recognise the German contribution to tobacco epidemiology, they have been even more reluctant to acknowledge the parallels between their public health policies and those pursued by the Nazis. Yet the similarities are remarkable. According to Proctor, the government in Germany in the 1930s 'launched an ambitious anti-smoking campaign, involving extensive public health education, bans on certain forms of advertising, and restrictions on smoking in many public spaces' (22). Women and youth were a particular focus of anti-smoking propaganda and restrictions on sales. Furthermore, 'activists called for bans on smoking while driving, for an end to smoking in the workplace, and for the establishment of tobacco counselling centres' (23). Enterprising firms marketed a range of anti-smoking preparations, from mouthwashes to intravenous infusions. Therapists offered hypnotism and a range of counselling techniques to encourage people to quit smoking. A number of themes recur in the anti-smoking campaigns. In Germany, campaigners asserted that smoking caused infertility among women and impotence among men, dubious claims echoed in the recent British Medical Association report on 'the impact of smoking on sexual, reproductive and child health' (24). Anti-tobacco activists have consistently emphasised the particular vulnerability of women, both to the physical effects of smoking and to the seductive power of cigarette advertising. National socialist propagandists railed against 'tobacco capitalism' and stigmatised tobacco as an 'enemy of the people'; they condemned 'smoking slavery' and even 'tobacco terror' - slogans with an alarmingly contemporary ring. Scaremongering about smoking as an 'epidemic', even a 'plague', was as familiar in Germany in the 1930s as it is in Britain today. At the founding conference of the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research in 1941, Professor Otto Graf warned of the dangers of 'passive smoking' and called for a workplace ban. There are also differences in the anti-smoking campaigns. The Nazi emphasis on smoking as a threat to racial purity and national efficiency is absent in modern Britain. Similar themes today assume a more individualistic form: smoking is depicted a threat to the body, now replacing the nation as a 'fortress of purity, cleanliness and muscular macho health fanaticism' (25). However, the recent advertising campaign featuring cigarettes oozing a viscous paste over a convivial group of young smokers identifies smoking as a source of social, as well as individual, pollution and contamination. The Nazis were more concerned about the economic burden of smoking-related ill-health and the resulting loss of skilled and professional manpower. In Britain, the anti-smoking campaign has recently focused particularly on the differential impact of smoking on poorer communities, a particular theme of the 'smoking epidemic' report, which implies that cigarettes are the main cause of class differentials in health in Britain. Whereas the Nazis associated cigarettes with communism, for New Labour it seems that the prohibition of smoking now points the way forward on the British road to socialism (though this goal is not apparent in other areas of government policy). In this era of evidence-based policy, we can look back on the German public health experiment in relation to smoking and ask - did it work? Needless to say, this is not an easy question to answer. According to Proctor, the Nazi campaign did not succeed in reducing overall tobacco consumption until the later stages of the war (when production and supply were disrupted). After the war, poverty and rationing may have curtailed smoking. He believes that whereas Nazi militarism led to an increase in smoking among men in the armed forces, Nazi paternalism was effective in discouraging women from smoking. Whatever the reason, women in Germany took up smoking at a much slower pace than women in the USA. Proctor calculates that this delay may have contributed to a reduced rate of lung cancer among women, possibly preventing 20,000 deaths over the postwar decades. The experience of anti-smoking measures in Britain over recent decades is also inconclusive. Contrary to the impression created by the doom-mongers, there has been a dramatic decline in smoking since the dangers first became widely publicised in the 1960s. Interestingly, the sharpest fall took place in the 1970s and 80s, before the current wave of anti-smoking measures. The intensive anti-smoking policies introduced in the 1990s, with further restrictions on advertising, workplace bans and the promotion of a panoply of 'smoking cessation' therapies, appear to have had relatively little effect. There is some evidence that among young people, these measures may have been counterproductive - a danger recognised by the Nazi public health authorities who recognised that 'forbidden fruit is tempting'. However, the ineffectiveness of more coercive measures in Britain has not led to any questioning of the policy, but simply to calls for more of the same. For the anti-smoking zealots, the loss of civil liberties resulting from their widening range of bans and proscriptions is justified by the anticipated health gain. Yet, as the great microbiologist Rene Dubos observed, health should not be considered an end in itself, but as 'the condition best suited to reach goals that each individual formulates for himself' (26). By curtailing the autonomy of the self-determining individual, authoritarian public health policies infantilise society, weaken democracy and diminish humanity. (See article at http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA7A4.htm for footnote citations)

 

You've got to stub out that irritating fact Times Online - Mick Hume - October 16, 2004

I AM an ex-heavyweight champion smoker. From my teens to my thirtieth birthday, I happily got through 20 to 40 Player’s No 6 (the schoolboy’s choice) a day. It may not have been a coincidence that, shortly after I gave up, they stopped making that brand of little coffin nails altogether. As a “recovering” smoker, it is often assumed that I must hate anybody else indulging the dirty-but-delicious habit. True, other people’s smoke gets in my eyes. But not as much as the self-righteous “ban public smoking” crowd get up my nose.  Come round the back of the bike sheds, I want to tell you something that some in high places don’t want you to hear. Did you know that there is another Weapon of Mass Destruction that we have been warned about for years, but which does not really exist? This illusory WMD goes by the name of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) — passive smoking to you.  Yes, of course it is true that smoking tobacco can cause cancer and terrible illnesses. But the scientific case against passive smoking is far cloudier. Just about the only thing we know for certain is that inhaling other people’s second-hand smoke can cause some irritation and the odd argument.  If you are wondering why the well-founded doubts about passive smoking are rarely aired, look at the extraordinary episode reported in The Times this week. The Royal Institution in London, a famous centre for scientific research and debate, has hired out its rooms to the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, for a one-day event entitled “The Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke”. As a result, the Royal Institution finds itself under heavy fire from anti-smoking crusaders and senior medics for whom any debate about the effects of passive smoking must be stubbed out before it starts. Professor John Britton, chairman of the Royal College of Physicians’ tobacco advisory group, warned the Royal Institution that the tobacco manufacturers “want to create the impression that Britain’s top scientists are debating these issues, and there is no such debate”.  Not content with demanding a ban on smoking in public, it seems that the anti-ETS lobby wants a ban on talking about smoking in public too. Stub that fact out and extinguish that opinion immediately, my lad! This affair is a symptom of the spreading epidemic of tobacco intolerance — not a medical condition, but a new moral orthodoxy. It may soon be easier to smoke a joint than a cigarette on the street.  I detest any attempt to prostitute science for political or moralistic ends. Campaigners emphasise how Big Tobacco tried to bury the evidence that smoking causes cancer. Yet the Big Prohibition supporters can be accused of being cavalier with the facts today. They broadcast claims that passive smoking causes ill-health, while ignoring reports that suggest otherwise. In a recent letter to The Times, one over-excited professor of public health declared that research proves “ second-hand smoke is more dangerous than directly inhaled smoke”. Perhaps the healthy option is to leave that fuggy pub, and go smoke a few fags in the fresh air.  Far more than wanting smokers to stub their fags out, I want the illiberal liberals now running health policy to butt out of people’s personal habits. This week, an unapologetic Tony Blair made clear that he will use the dodgy intelligence on ETS to launch a war against smoking in public. However, Mr Blair is still too soft on smokers for some tastes; one leading medical journal wants him to ban tobacco altogether. There is no “right to smoke”; but that is no reason to tolerate smokers being burnt at the stake for infringing the new conformism.  Worst of all, I cannot stand the way that passive smoking has been turned into a metaphor for that mantra of modern miserabilism: “Other people are ruining my life!” This was the spirit of morbid self-pity that Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, tried to tap into, arguing that restrictions on public smoking would ensure that “nobody will be bullied into a lifestyle they do not wish to join.” If lighting up in a bar means bullying (grooming?) others into adopting a hostile lifestyle, who could object to banning such abuse?  The unhealthy assumption behind all this is that smokers are helpless addicts in need of drugs and psychotherapy to save them from themselves, while the rest of us are hapless victims in need of state protection from other people’s putrid lifestyles. Never mind about passive smoking, how about launching a war against the cancer of passive living?

 

GOP TOBACCO TWO-STEP NY Post - Robert A. Levy - October 12, 2004 Robert A. Levy is a Cato Institute senior fellow. His book "Shakedown: How Corporations, Government and Trial Lawyers Abuse the Judicial Process" is out next month.

REPUBLICANS love to criticize judicial shakedowns — using the court system to redistribute income from unpopular industries to "more deserving" plaintiffs. So why has a Republican-run Justice Department embraced the mother of all baseless lawsuits — the crusade against tobacco?  If ever there were an appalling example of government's addiction to litigation (and a waste of $136 million in taxpayer money as the trial began), this lawsuit is it.  Basically, the executive branch is trying to bypass Congress and legislate via the courts — a tactic the Bush administration denounces whenever it's used by the reviled trial lawyers.  Justice accuses cigarette manufacturers of making false statements, manipulating nicotine content, marketing tobacco products to kids and misleading customers about less hazardous cigarettes. For those misdeeds, Justice wants $280 billion, to be disgorged under the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.  But government investigators already rejected these charges: In a five-year, multimillion-dollar inquiry by two dozen prosecutors and FBI agents, the Justice Department came up dry. Prosecutors probed allegations that tobacco executives perjured themselves when testifying before Congress and plowed through documents for evidence that cigarette makers manipulated nicotine levels. Whistle-blowers and company scientists testified before grand juries. The outcome: not a single indictment of a tobacco executive. Still, the civil trial moves forward.  If the Court of Appeals rejects the government's demand for disgorgement of "ill-gotten" gains, as it should, the case will likely be settled: The only dispute remaining would be over Justice's insistence on industry behavior-modifications, none of which goes much beyond what the tobacco companies already agreed to in their 1998 settlement with 46 states. But if $280 billion remains on the table, don't count on a settlement.  This case is not like the state Medicaid recoupment suits, when the cigarette giants rolled over for $246 billion. The industry covered that price tag with some sleight-of-hand that the public hasn't fully digested. Essentially, the major companies, state attorneys general and soon-to-be-billionaire tobacco lawyers colluded to "cartelize" the industry — requiring tobacco companies that didn't agree to the settlement to post damages in escrow. That sufficed to prevent those companies from cutting prices to capture market share. That way, the four large cigarette makers could raise their prices with impunity, foisting the entire cost of the settlement onto their customers.  Not even the politicians are willing to burn smokers with yet another quarter-trillion-dollar cost. Thus the cigarette giants, who'd have to raise prices significantly to cough up $280 billion, won't be protected against price-cutting rivals. So the major companies must 1) resist the Justice Department suit with all of the weapons in their considerable legal arsenals, or 2) be forced into bankruptcy, or 3) reduce their payments to the states.  The 1998 settlement provides for cuts in those payments if cigarette sales fall markedly. But the states won't sit still for that: How would they fund their favorite "tobacco-cessation" programs like improved sidewalks, cuts in college tuition and flood control?  Assume the cigarette companies did exactly what the Justice Department claims. Who were the victims? Smokers? If so, let them sue for damages: Several have done so — somesuccessfully — in private lawsuits. The Medicare system, which paid for smoking-related injuries? Sorry, a federal judge has already dismissed that claim.  Instead of helping smokers or Medicare, the federal lawsuit is designed to punish an industry for quasi-criminal infractions for which federal investigators could not produce sufficient proof. This suit is a second bite at the apple, a blatant and shameful attempt to extort money from a tobacco treasure-trove perceived as bottomless.  Plain and simple, the Justice Department is engaged in double dipping — a failed criminal investigation has given way to a new civil suit by that same government for the same charges originally found wanting.

 

Loopy Links Tech Central Station  - Sandy Szwarc - September 30, 2004

You are about to learn of a beverage so dangerous, that we must ban or restrict its sales, or at least enact tax penalties on it to deter consumption. Here's what the research shows:  • Every American who drinks it dies.  • It's been linked to obesity: in fact, bigger people drink the most of it.  • It's associated with type 2 diabetes and all diabetics drink it in especially large amounts.  • All heart attack victims drink it and it's a known factor in heart failure.  There are been hundreds of studies finding these correlations -- correlations so strong they make the evidence irrefutable. This is bad stuff. Everything you've just read is true. What is _it ?  Water.  Of course, you could have filled in the blank with anything that today is frequently blamed for obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease or premature death: sodas, high fructose corn syrup, dietary fat, carbs, high cholesterol, prediabetes, fast food, snacking, trans fats, watching television and all sorts of things others want to fix in us. And they're all just as spurious as water. This illustration demonstrates just how easy it is to think that correlations (links between things) mean anything at all. Just because certain lifestyle or dietary habits, laboratory values or numbers on the scale, rise or fall in synch or appear together, doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. Yet, we hear assertions made every day by mainstream scientists and medical professionals, reputable healthcare organizations, public policy makers and, most of all, media in which correlations are used as proof of a cause. These are taken as facts, not because of any sound evidence, but because they seem intuitively correct and match what "everybody knows." But correlations taken as cause become even more nonsensical ... and dangerous ... when the link is turned backwards to say:  "Therefore, restricting or eliminating water ("it") will prevent or cure obesity, heart disease or type 2 diabetes."  Please don't try that at home. It's clearly a preposterous and groundless cure. We should all be concerned by how correlations found in "studies" or even simply incorrectly assumed, are being used to support healthcare guidelines and public regulations, with absolutely no proof that such solutions work. Even worse, they completely disregard the harm that can result. For instance, people at risk for type 2 diabetes, believing sodas and sweets are the cause, might change their diets but fail to do the very thing that averts, minimizes and even reverses the condition: physical activity. This mistake could cost them their lives, vision or limbs. People might restrict their calories, fats or carbs (dieting) in futile attempts at weight loss, but fail to do the one thing that would avert, minimize and even reverse supposed "obesity-related" health concerns: physical activity. This could significantly increase their risks for premature death, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancers.  To protect yourself from making unsound health choices for you or your children, or putting your support behind costly public health solutions, learn to identify "data dredge" studies -- where correlations frequently come from -- and to differentiate them from evidence you can trust to mean something. Data dredges,  are among the weakest types of epidemiological studies upon which we can base any meaningful conclusions about our own health. Data Dredge of the Week Last week, a study led by Barry Popkin, PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was released which claimed soda consumption had increased 135% since 1977 and since rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity were rising, too, that was evidence that "consuming these [drinks] increase weight gain in children and adults."  Based on that correlation alone, they then leapt in reverse to conclude, "reduced soft drink and fruit drink intake ... would seem to be one of the simpler ways to reduce obesity in the United States." Did you catch the fallacies in this example? Just because consumption of a certain food goes up or down among an entire population does not demonstrate that only fat people are eating that food or that that food is the cause of obesity or type 2 diabetes. Such correlation-generated claims rely on the belief that fat people eat differently. But consumption of sodas and sweets, for instance, have been shown to actually be as high or higher among thinner, more active people. Such claims also rely on the belief that sugary foods and beverages cause obesity and type 2 diabetes. But sugar has been studied probably more than any other food ingredient in history and it's been repeatedly found to not cause obesity, type 2 diabetes or any chronic disease. In fact, a surprising number of studies have demonstrated an inverse relationship between dietary sugars and obesity. Popkin cited a study led by David Ludwig of Boston Children's Hospital in 2001 to support sweet beverages' role in obesity, which Popkin said "showed the effect of increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages on increased energy intake and obesity among U.S. teens." But Ludwig's study actually found no difference in the BMIs of children consuming the most and least amounts of sugar and the researchers noted "there is no clear evidence that consumption of sugar per se affects food intake in a unique manner or causes obesity." The Popkin study was a "meta-analyses," lumping together five different dietary surveys (telephone surveys to questionnaires) gathered over the decades from a total of 73,345 random individuals. These one- and two-day population dietary surveys were all done using different methods and also underwent significant redesigns over the years to probe for more complete information and lessen under-reporting, meaning the earlier surveys would be more likely to under-estimate how much people actually ate and using them would accentuate perceived increases. Like all meta-analyses, when researchers combine data from several different sources trying to create something bigger and more convincing, their results are actually more untenable. I call them Rorschach2 studies. That might explain why sounder studies, such as those at the University of Michigan led by Youngme Park which closely following the diets for weeks at a time for years of a total of 12,000 children, have found no increase in soda consumption and no evidence that sodas were reducing milk consumption. Of the thousands of foods and beverages people consume, this study chose sodas. But in typical data dredge fashion, Popkin could have mined that databank and pulled out anything...and has. For example, in a previous study he found grains, legumes and low-fat milk intake up among adults since 1965, along with significant decreases in calories and percentages of dietary fat. Yet he didn't tie these overall "healthful" eating trends to rising rates of obesity or type 2 diabetes. Why, that wouldn't have made sense.

 

Smoking lights up elitist force The Australian - September 23, 2004

ANYONE who has read Alan Bullock's esteemed history, Parallel Lives - meticulous portraits of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin - would be aware how the extreme political Left can so easily enmesh with the extreme Right. The political spectrum isn't linear, it's circular. The aims and philosophies of Hitler and Stalin met so often that Left and Right became meaningless, mocking, laughable labels. Those listening a week or so back to Sandy McCutcheon's Australia Talks Back (Radio National, 6pm) program about tobacco smoking might have mused on how easily this political convergence can occur. You could hear callers you sensed would almost certainly regard themselves as "progressive" to the Left of Centre becoming increasingly authoritarian and inflexible. Smoking is Totally Undesirable and that's all there is to it. The faintest deviation from this dictum Is Wrong. It was one of those very few occasions when the courteous, pleasant, usually fair McCutcheon seemed to take sides. You had this intimation the sighting of a single strand of stray tobacco would be enough to melt RN's transmission cable.  The bossy, semi-bullying, know-all tone pervading some callers and studio experts may well have deterred many smokers from bothering to contribute. The self-righteous, the moral high-groundists, the self-appointed guardians of community behaviour, certainly hadn't ignored a forum from which to prove Left can become Right at the flick of a wireless switch.  In truth, the media at large has become a helpless captive of the anti-smoking lobby. Newspaper anti-tobacco stories would probably outnumber individual choice stories by about 500 to one. It's an overwhelmingly one-sided debate. Anti-smoking idealists are effectively organised via a host of official bodies providing natural platforms from which to sell a receptive media their largely unchallenged pronouncements. Pro-choice individualists are not organised. Their only outlet is often the letters-to-the-editor page.  So it is that the anti-smoking lobby wins the battle for media exposure. It's virtually unopposed. Politicians -- the Premier of NSW, Bob Carr, being the latest -- blithely pronounce a pub smoking ban is "inevitable" and no one demurs. No one from the other side is even half-organised enough to author a media release pointing out the vast majority of the world doesn't find it in the least inevitable. Pubs, particularly small country pubs in isolated regions, are natural meeting places where generation after generation have congregated for a talk, a beer and a smoke.  It's a fair bet a smoking ban would send many such pubs out of business. To say - as Carr's Queensland counterpart, Peter Beattie, informed McCutcheon - that Queensland's ban will result in greater patronage of pubs is, of course, patent nonsense. Ask the operators of non-smoking casinos and thousands of restaurateurs. It's further proof, following on from the republic referendum campaign, that an "elite" - media, politicians and a handful of fevered zealots - are frequently out of step with a significant proportion of the community.  Ironically, the scribe once found himself out of step on this issue. In war-threatened Zagreb, several years ago, he was summoned to a meeting with various dignitaries. Conditioned by anti-smoking hyperbole in Australia and deciding to get the tobacco issue out of the way from the beginning, the scribe asked timidly if he might smoke. After a short silence, everyone burst out laughing and began waving cigarette packets above their heads. Eventually a Croat-Australian across the table said: "Mate, you'll find people here have a bloody sight more to worry about than that." Other travels over the years indicate restaurants and pubs in a vast variety of countries jog seamlessly along simply by designating smoking and non-smoking areas. The scribe once lived for several months in a smoking/non-smoking hotel while working for this journal in London. There were no huddles of smokers outside on the pavement, notobacco-related theatrics, at least none the scribe ever witnessed. In media terms, it was a hotel in which smoking was a non-story.  The scribe is aware he doesn't stand the slightest chance of influencing this lop-sided, one-eyed discussion. Nor will he prevent whatever the latest raft of anti-smoking legislation may be. The media has already connived - albeit, perhaps, in an unwitting, de facto, tacit kind of fashion - in a debate largely involving an unelected elite from which a foregone conclusion was always going to emanate. The debate is so exclusive there's small purpose even in pointing out humankind has always used recreational drugs which, if overused, harm the user and others. Alcohol is an obvious modern example. Nor is there any point in suggesting those who are prevented from using tobacco will very probably start using Something Else and that whatever it is could well be more harmful than the occasional cigarette or cigar. The debate is so grotesquely skewed there's no dividend in pointing out that idling motor vehicles pour out more poison in a few seconds than any number of cigarettes. So one-sided and over-blown is it that there's no purpose to hauling out a host of ancillary argument which dents and contextualises much anti-smoking hysteria.  The scribe, as some would be aware from previous missives, is a smoker. But even if he wasn't the bigoted, media-encouraged tone of many of those from the other side might ensure he took it up.  The moral high ground is one thing. Fussy, nosy, prissy, bossy Nanny Stateism is something completely different.

 

Did the Tobacco companies fool anyone or everyone? Townhall.com - Jacob Sullum - September 17, 2004

American Tobacco used to promote its Carlton brand with the soft-sell slogan, "If you smoke, please try Carlton." Philip Morris has taken this approach a step further: If you smoke, please stop. "Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers," the cigarette manufacturer's Web site warns. "If you're a smoker and you're concerned about the health effects of smoking, you should quit."  Although "cigarette smoking is addictive" and "it can be very difficult to quit," Philip Morris adds, "this shouldn't stop you from trying to do so." It provides links to several sites that offer advice to would-be ex-smokers.  This is the new face of Philip Morris. The company hopes it will help fend off a potentially ruinous federal lawsuit that portrays the leading cigarette manufacturers as participants in a five-decade conspiracy to defraud the public. As the trial, scheduled to begin on Tuesday, gets under way, the tobacco companies want everyone to know that 1) they didn't really do anything wrong and 2) they've changed their ways.  If that seems contradictory to you, you should have a look at the Justice Department's case. The government argues that the tobacco companies conspired to refrain from marketing reduced-risk cigarettes because they were loath to admit there was any risk to be reduced. At the same time, it faults them for selling lower-yield cigarettes as safer alternatives to full-strength brands.  It's true that lower-yield cigarettes did not deliver the substantial health benefits that were originally expected. The main problem is that people do not smoke cigarettes in the same way as the machines that are used to measure "tar" and nicotine delivery.  If you reduce nicotine along with the "tar," which is what the cigarette manufacturers generally did, smokers tend to compensate by taking more puffs, inhaling more deeply, holding the smoke longer, and subconsciously covering ventilation holes. The upshot is that they may not be significantly reducing their exposure to the toxins and carcinogens in tobacco smoke.  A logical response to this problem is to maintain nicotine levels while reducing "tar" delivery. But this requires "nicotine manipulation," which the government portrays as a sinister plot to keep smokers hooked, part of the "pattern of racketeering activity" for which it is suing Philip Morris et al. under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.  Another problem with attacking the tobacco companies for conspiring to falsely reassure smokers by introducing lower-yield cigarettes is that the government was part of this conspiracy. It approved the testing method and required the inclusion of "tar" and nicotine ratings in cigarette ads.  Although doubts about the reliability of the ratings were publicly expressed early on, it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, and the initial epidemiological evidence was promising. Only relatively recently have public health officials started emphasizing that "there is no conclusive evidence of reduced risk from 'low-tar' cigarettes," as the National Cancer Institute put it in 2001.  By contrast, the health risks of smoking have long been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, something the tobacco companies acknowledged so belatedly that their intransigence became a joke. The question is whether we should now consider it an outrage.  At the heart of the government's lawsuit is the claim that 33 million Americans were tricked into smoking because they didn't understand the health risks, even though these have been a matter of common knowledge for decades, and/or didn't realize it might be difficult to quit, even though people have been remarking on the difficulty of breaking the tobacco habit for centuries. Because all these smokers were defrauded, the government demands the "disgorgement" of $280 billion in "ill-gotten gains." Indeed, the Justice Department says this enormous sum -- the proceeds, with interest, from cigarette sales to "youth-addicted" smokers from 1971 to 2001 -- is a conservative estimate. "All of Defendants' sales to all consumers from 1954 to 2001 were inextricably intertwined with this massive scheme to defraud the public," it says, so "the United States would be justified in seeking disgorgement of the proceeds from all sales to people of all ages from 1954 into the future."   The implication is that no one knew smoking was dangerous until the tobacco companies admitted it. Not only that, but given the industry's history of dishonesty, continuing to sell cigarettes amounts to "racketeering." In this light, Philip Morris's strategy of urging the public not to buy its products makes even more sense.

 

Feeding a Risk Factor Frenzy Tech Central Station -  Jon Robison, PhD, MS - August 25, 2004

An article in the August 25th issue of the Journal of The American Medical Association, "Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, Weight Gain, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Young and Middle-Aged Women," adds yet another chapter to the feeding frenzy that drives our nation's love affair with epidemiological risk factorology. This article is a textbook case study in the misuse of epidemiological research for the development of health recommendations for the public. The article is strewn with misleading and sometimes inaccurate statements and enough statistical hocus pocus to make all but the most adept junk-science sleuth dizzy. Perhaps the most glaring problem with this article, however, is the blatant blurring of the distinction between correlation (or association) and causation. A correlation describes the strength of a relationship between two factors. It turns out, for instance, that there is a correlation between baldness in men and heart disease. This simply means that there is some relationship between baldness and heart disease. If we observe a large group of men over a period of years, those who are bald are statistically more likely to have a heart attack than are those with a full head of hair. We say that the correlation or association between these two variables is positive, and that baldness is a risk factor for heart disease in men. 1 Despite the evidence that bald men have an increased risk of heart disease, however, certainly no one would claim that giving a bald man a toupee would decrease his risk! This is because baldness does not have any influence on heart health, but is simply a factor that happens to be found more often in men with heart disease. Therefore, when we say that any two factors such as baldness and heart disease are positively correlated, we are saying nothing about whether one causes or even affects the other. Here's how the same problem occurs, as it does in this article, with nutrition research. In a certain population being studied, a particular disease is found to be positively correlated with eating a specific food. This means that people who ate this food were more likely to develop the disease in question than people who didn't eat the food. It is then reported that eating this food increased the risk of getting this disease.  If the report garners enough attention health professionals may well begin to make recommendations for changes in people's eating habits based on the reported findings.  In this particular article, the diseases in question are obesity and diabetes and the food involved is the much-maligned sugar in sweetened beverages. The problem is that the identification of this food as a risk factor in this study may or may not mean there is a causal link with the diseases in question. It is entirely possible that subsequent studies will not find an association between this food and these diseases. In fact, previous studies have actually suggested the opposite association between sugar consumption and obesity,2,3  and after reviewing the relevant research, The American Diabetes Association concluded in a recent Position Statement that "intake of sucrose and sucrose containing foods does not need to be restricted because of concern about aggravating hyperglycemia." 4  In a discussion on the limitations of epidemiological research in the journal Science, Leading UCLA epidemiologist Sander Greenland summed up the complexities involved with obscuring the differences between correlation and causation by saying, "There is nothing sinful about going out and getting evidence…nothing sinful about seeing if that evidence correlates…the sin comes in believing a causal hypothesis is true because your study came up with a positive result…" 5 Unfortunately, this "sin" is committed numerous times in this article, as the critical distinction between correlation and causation falls by the wayside. In setting up their argument in the very first paragraph, the authors state "recent evidence suggests an association between the intake of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and the risk of obesity in children."  In the very next sentence they make the unwarranted jump to causation saying, "besides contributing to obesity, sugar-sweetened drinks might…." So, in fact, they have already concluded that half of their hypothesis is correct, before even presenting the evidence.  Even more blatantly, in their closing comments the authors conclude, "because of the observational nature of the study, we cannot prove that the observed associations are causal." Yet this does not stop them from making the jump to causation in the next paragraph by recommending that, "Public Health Strategies to prevent diabetes and type 2 diabetes should focus on reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption." Interestingly, a closer look at the findings shows that even the proposed associations between the variables are questionably weak at best. After correcting for confounding factors, the relative risk of developing diabetes in women drinking the greatest vs. the least amount of sugar-sweetened beverages was 1.32. Epidemiologists generally agree that relative risks less than 2 should be ignored or at least viewed with extreme skepticism, particularly when there is conflicting research available. 5 Applying epidemiological research in this fashion is simply bad science. It tends to scare and confuse people and it greatly oversimplifies the complicated etiology of the types of chronic conditions in question. A number of leading scientists involved in conducting this type of research have acknowledged the significance of this problem. Perhaps those who have not should heed the warning of Dimitrios Trichopoulos, head of the epidemiology department at Harvard School of Public Health: "We are fast becoming a nuisance to society…People don't take us seriously anymore, and when they do take us seriously, we may unintentionally do more harm than good." 5     References 1.         Lotutu PA, Chae CU, Ajani VA, Hennekens CH, Manson JE. Male Pattern Baldness and Coronary Heart Disease. Arch Intern Med 2000:160:165-171. 2.         Gibney, M., Siman-Grant, M., Stanton, J., Keast, D. Consumption of Sugars.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62(1 suppl):178S-193S. 3.         Ruxton, C., Garceau, F., Cottrell R. Guidelines for Sugar Consumption in Europe: Is a quantitative approach justified? European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1999;53(7):503-513. 4.         American Diabetes Association Position Statement. Evidence-Based Nutrition Principles and Recommendations for the Treatment and Prevention of Diabetes and Related Complications. Diabetes Care 2002;25(1):202-212. 5.         Taubes G. Epidemiology Faces It's Limits. Science 1995;269:164-169.

 

Smoking clouds the issue PittsburghLive.com - Dimitri Vassilaros - July 30, 2004

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, is so concerned about secondhand smoke that he will introduce a bill to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars in Pennsylvania. Greenleaf is convinced that secondhand smoke kills more than 50,000 Americans every year, including "a good many" in the commonwealth.  He also believes it is more deadly than firsthand smoke.  And yet Greenleaf cannot name one person -- not one -- who was killed by it. Not even his mom, a nonsmoker who died of lung cancer.  Sometimes facts get in the way of good intentions.  How do social conservatives rationalize their love of the nanny state?  "Government has one function that even a conservative should agree with: Government should be limited, but responsible for health and safety," he said. Which means it can stick its nose into any area of your life.  So much for limited government.  Anti-smoking do-gooders have been demonizing smokers for years. Now smokers are being blamed for killing innocent bystanders.  Secondhand smoke supposedly is such a threat that restaurants and bars must build special cigarette ghettos ("cighettos") for smoking customers. And the government mandates that all employers should make life miserable for those who enjoy nicotine-laced weed.  Big Government now is protecting us from the supposed harmful effects of Big Tobacco, once removed.  Greenleaf could not name one person whose death certificate even mentioned secondhand smoke, but surely others could.  "I do not think you can clearly implicate secondhand smoke," said Dr. Bruce Dixon, director of the Allegheny County Health Department.  "I think it's more a conjectural argument. If somebody is exposed, you can conjecture some possibility of likelihood, but you cannot show cause and effect. I cannot point you to a case where someone has died from secondhand smoke."  Allegheny County, with more than 1 million people, must have had some deaths attributed to it.  "As far as I know, there is no death certificate that has mentioned secondhand smoke as the immediate or contributing cause of death," said Dr. Steven A. Koehler, a forensic epidemiologist in the Allegheny County Coroner's Office who has worked there for 15 years.  Pennsylvania, with a population of 12.5 million, does not even have a category for death from secondhand smoke, according to a spokesman in the Department of Health, Bureau of Health Statistics and Research.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cannot name even one American whose death was attributed to secondhand smoke. But the CDC has done the math.  Its mathematical formula is based on the "attributable fractions" of a study in Oregon that supposedly proves it kills 38,000 to 60,000 annually.  "There is a wide range for the margin of error," according to Terry Pechacek, associate director for science at the center. Well, what about Pennsylvania?  "There are many variables that require more research to be able to identify accurate numbers at a local level," said Joel London a CDC spokesman. "At this point we have only national numbers." But still no names.  The fuzzy math suggests many victims, but it still adds up to zero.  If secondhand smoke were a real threat, your so-called public servants would have at least one smoking gun.

 

Secondhand freedom Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Editorial - July 29, 2004

Secondhand smoke is not as dangerous as secondhand freedom. State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, is looking for co-sponsors for a bill to ban smoking in all bars and restaurants in Pennsylvania. If it becomes law, it would close the loophole of freedom that allows some establishments the liberty of welcoming customers who smoke.  The bill is based on the controversial premise that secondhand smoke kills innocent bystanders -- such as restaurant and bar servers who do not smoke and other nonsmokers in other businesses.  However, the premise that it should be outlawed for the public good is based on a much more controversial one, that adults should be prevented from exercising free will.  Deciding how to live, including where to eat, drink, shop or work, is the essence of freedom.  Allowing others to decide for you is the very definition of secondhand freedom.  If the Legislature passes the bill and the governor then signs Greenleaf's expansion of the nanny state, homes could be next.  His bill does not prohibit smoking in home businesses, but that inevitably would be the next target for tobacco prohibitionists.  And then, surely a smoking ban for households with children.  After the state protects your progeny, you eventually will become aware of the next prohibition.  But you will learn about it secondhand.

 

Fascism in a Stetson Edward Cline - July 27, 2004

One of the most enduring clichés of modern times is that of Nazism, whose malign icon is a clean-shaven, blue-eyed man in a gray or black uniform, jackboots, high-peaked cap, sporting a swastika armband and wearing an icy, nearly prissy expression. But, what does the icon represent? There were plenty of Nazis in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark; even Harrison Ford donned a Nazi officer’s uniform as a ruse, and looked credibly menacing in it.  Even though the actors playing the stock Nazis in the film were convincingly repellent, neither Steven Spielberg, the director, nor George Lucas, the writer, bothered much to say why they were so repellent. They were, prima facie, “self-evident” icons, evil incarnate (Spielberg did a better job of it in Schindler’s List). There was no indication of a regimented, nationalized German economy, no hint of concentration camps, no explanation at all of why Nazis were evil. They were portrayed as villains without a philosophy, who somehow popped into existence, took over a country, and proceeded with plans to conquer the world.  Nazism, of course, means “national socialism.” That term did not occur once in Raiders, nor has it ever been pronounced in any Hollywood film that has dealt with Nazi Germany. Nazism is nearly synonymous with fascism; in practice, the distinctions between the two totalitarian systems are minor. However, it is no accident that Iraqi “insurgents” and Islamic terrorists are referred to, when news writers dare to employ the term, as “Islamo-fascists.” The sight of hundreds or thousands of mindless manqués stabbing the air in massed, clenched fist salutes to their Moslem führers has clicked in some columnists’ minds, as well, and light is dawning.  Add a new icon to the menu of fascism: The Marlboro Man. And he’s wearing a swastika armband. He’s been tapped to ride herd over his fellow cowboys and corral them into the nanny state, at the point of a gun. The symbol of independence and hard work is about to morph into one of a storm trooper in Western mufti. A July 20th Wall Street Journal editorial, “Congress’s Marlboro Men,” did not conclude its excoriation of the new tobacco “settlement” that was cooked in the Senate -- rife as it is with venal logrolling by special interests and corruptible politicians -- with the obvious observation, by calling what it fundamentally is: fascism.  What is fascism? One dictionary defines it as “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation, emphasizing an aggressive nationalism.” (The American College Dictionary, 1957) Another defines it as a “centralized autocratic national regime…exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1956) The violation of the tobacco industry’s First Amendment rights to free speech --in the realm of advertising, designated by courts as a second-class application of speech not worthy of protection -- followed over thirty years later by the old tobacco “settlement” of 1998, prepared the way for the new tobacco “settlement.” But, both settlements fit the definitions in every particular. In practice, the new deal approved by the Senate is a proposed government/industry “partnership,” the government allowing the industry to produce in exchange for an extortionate cut of the industry’s revenues among other statist fringe benefits. Boil down all the fancy language, discard all the irrelevant issues -- and the medical, health and social issues are indeed irrelevant -- and that is what one will see at the bottom of the pot.  The Wall Street Journal did understand that particular issue. “…The tobacco giant knows that Food and Drug Administration regulators would severely restrict marketing, which gives it (Philip Morris) an advantage over lesser-known rivals and lower-priced competitors. Put another way, the federal government would become not only a partner of tobacco but a partner of tobacco monopolists.” Just as Krupp, Grundig and many other corporate giants were “partners” with the government when the Nazis ruled Germany. Not to mention the German tobacco industry, which also filled the Nazi war chests in cowardly, pragmatic submission to the state. Yet, the WSJ would not take that last, crucial step, and identify the phenomenon. Perhaps it was too frightening a realization. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand called such a refusal “blanking out.” But, blanking out a fact will neither change its identity nor cause it to go away. Of course, the simplest solution would be to abolish the controversial Depression Era subsidies, as well as federal taxes on cigarettes, and repeal the law that prohibits tobacco companies from advertising its products. But, there is loot to be had, and victims willing to be looted, such as Philip Morris, the tobacco giant probably the guiltiest of all the tobacco companies of its hasty submission to collectivism and of the scope of its own self-immolation. Liberty? Property rights? Freedom of speech? All sacrificed or surrendered to the Janus-faced god of the “public good.” The “new” settlement would also give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco according to its skewed lights in exchange for a $13 billion buyout of tobacco farmers. Not to be left out of this stealthy parade of crypto-fascists, many state governments, having squandered their cut of the 1998 settlement and facing massive budget deficits, are rushing to don their own armbands by raising sales and other taxes on smaller tobacco manufacturers, even though, according to the WSJ, they will this year receive about $11.4 billion as part of the old settlement. Leading the campaign against the smaller manufacturers in these smoke-free legislative chambers is Philip Morris.  The tobacco industry was de facto nationalized by the 1998 settlement. It exists by permission of the federal government. The settlement recently brokered in the Senate is the formal nationalization of the industry. Its point man is Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky. There is soft-pedaled socialism -- see the incremental nationalization of medical care for details -- and there is national socialism, its more aggressively virulent brother. It can’t happen here? Think again. It is. Sieg heil, Uber Tabak Fabrikant! But, be warned: This writer has bought his last carton of Marlboros. It would be justice if every other smoker followed suit in protest of Philip Morris’s betrayal, and found a rival brand.

 

Straw nanny Spiked Online - Dr Michael Fitzpatrick - July 19, 2004

'The government is at pains to avoid being accused of "nanny statism" - the current code for unwelcome interference in personal freedom. I have not heard a single speech by a health minister in recent months without this terrifying prospect being wheeled out.' So wrote Anna Coote under the headline 'Nanny madness' in the UK Guardian on 26 May (1). But who is accusing the government of 'nanny statism'? It may be possible to hear such criticisms from retired colonels in gentlemen's clubs in London or read them in the letters pages of the Daily Mail or Telegraph, but they are, like the Conservative Party, of marginal public influence. The only significant pressure on health ministers is urging them to pursue more interventionist policies. This indeed is the point of the article by Anna Coote, health policy director of the King's Fund thinktank, who asks 'what's so terrible about the nanny state, anyway?' In its response to the government's public health consultation paper Choosing Health?, the British Medical Association echoes Coote's view, arguing that 'in relation to certain areas, a greater danger than nannyism is abdication and a failure to act - the Pontius Pilate approach' (2). Given the BMA's apparent conversion to the gospel according to Mel Gibson, it may be worth recalling that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a few years after Pilate's controversial hand-washing incident suggests that the Roman state was not entirely averse to coercive interventions. The BMA's contribution varies between the silly ('the only difference between smoking and Russian roulette is the delayed effect'; 'smoking is so dangerous, on a par with heroin or duelling') and the incomprehensible ('to some extent, "joined-up" policy that is cognisant is the holy grail of public health'). If an organisation as cautious and conservative as the BMA can dismiss the danger of the nanny state, this is a sure sign that the danger is non-existent. The term 'nanny state' is a misnomer for the current form of authoritarian government. The concept of the 'therapeutic state' better captures the distinctive character of public health under New Labour. The target of government measures aimed at changing a wide range of behaviours deemed to be unhealthy is the individual citizen who has internalised a sense of personal inadequacy and responsibility for health. Though government intervention is more coercive and intrusive than in the past, it is mediated through a range of 'caring' professionals and its authoritarian character is obscured. Nanny is a straw person, the counsellor is the personification of the therapeutic state. A nanny state is one that is authoritarian but paternalistic, bossy but benevolent. Nanny forces the children to eat their greens and to take their medicine, but it is only for their own good. In some respects, the British government during the Second World War behaved in this way, imposing food rationing, media censorship, restrictions on travel, blackouts, etc. Emergency measures to contain epidemics, from smallpox and cholera in the nineteenth century to SARS in the twenty-first, involve restrictions on civil liberties, such as quarantines, to limit the wider threat to society. Regulations to reduce death and injury on the roads - speed limits, breathalyser tests, seat belts, motor cycle helmets - are more familiar examples of 'nanny state' initiatives. Nanny state measures tend to be imposed collectively and temporarily, justified by exceptional circumstances, such as war or pestilence. If, like driving regulations, they are introduced with long-term effect, this requires convincing evidence that they achieve the desired benefits (which was rapidly produced). It is worth noting that, even when these conditions have been fulfilled, there has often been considerable popular resistance to such measures. Though the nanny state has generally been able to rely on support from doctors and other professionals for its policies, it has also had to resort to coercive powers to enforce compliance with regulations introduced to enhance public welfare. The most striking contrast between today's therapeutic state and the nanny state of the past is the absence of popular opposition. On the contrary, opinion polls reveal substantial majorities in favour of measures currently under discussion, such as bans on smoking in public places and restrictions on advertising of 'junk food'. Where is the campaign to uphold the rights of smokers in pubs and restaurants? Have we seen demonstrations demanding the right to eat junk food or indulge in binge drinking? The tobacco, food and drink industries have become so demonised in the eyes of public opinion that they are reduced to defensive rearguard actions to limit the damage to their trade that is likely to result from further government restrictions. The success of the new ideology of public health can be measured by the fact that government ministers can indulge in (wholly disingenuous) postures that, in introducing further curbs on unhealthy lifestyles, they are merely responding to the clamour of public opinion. The transformation in popular attitudes to interventionist public health policies is all the more remarkable given the dramatic expansion in the scale of such initiatives. The government is currently considering drastic measures to curtail smoking, to curb the consumption of 'unhealthy' foods, to increase levels of exercise and to restrict the consumption of alcohol. Given that, according to official statistics promoted with varying degrees of hysteria, around a quarter of the population smokes, more than one in three are overweight, 25 per cent are obese, most take insufficient exercise and many, particularly young people, drink too much alcohol, the achievement of government targets in these areas demands dramatic changes in lifestyle for a substantial proportion of the population. It is also striking that whereas the health benefits of quarantine or seat belts are clearly evident - even to those who defy them - those associated with current policies are dubious and contentious. For example, the dangers of passive smoking have been the subject of academic debate for more than 20 years. (3) The current consensus that banning public smoking will save up to 1,000 lives a year is a triumph of propaganda over science. At least there is some evidence in this area: in relation to the health benefits of advertising bans and food-labelling regulations there is none at all. The apparently unstoppable momentum of the campaign for a ban on public smoking reveals the key dynamics of the therapeutic state. Not only is it supported by non-smokers, but a majority of smokers also approve of a measure which will prevent them from pursuing this traditionally convivial activity in pubs, clubs and restaurants. This reflects the fact that many smokers have internalised the way in which smoking has been re-conceptualised in the public health campaigns of recent years. Up to the 1990s, smoking was generally regarded as a bad habit, if one that provided some respite from the cares of work and family life. This view of smoking was confirmed by the fact that, in response to mounting publicity about the link between cigarettes and lung cancer from the early 1960s onwards, several million people abandoned the habit. Furthermore, most did this without the benefit of any professional intervention. In the 1990s however, the focus shifted from the activity of smoking to the personality of the smoker, who was now found to be an addict in the grip of a chemical dependency (on nicotine) and the dupe of cigarette advisers ('a consumer inveigled into smoking by sophisticated and misleading marketing', as the recent BMA report puts it). The smoker is not only a pathetic loser, but is also to blame for polluting the atmosphere and for damaging the health of a lengthening list of innocent victims. A man who smokes is guilty of poisoning his family (reducing his own fertility, giving his spouse an increased risk of cancer, his children an increased risk of cot death, asthma and other respiratory disorders); he is also a menace to his workmates, and even to the non-smoking staff in public places that continue to tolerate this evil practice. The female smoker is guilty of all these crimes and worst of all, of damaging her unborn baby by continuing to smoke during pregnancy. Recent television adverts reinforce smokers' guilt with children's accounts of their parents' deaths from smoking-related illnesses. The smoker - addicted and duped, defiling and corrupting, morally defective and socially irresponsible - needs professional intervention. He or she needs medical treatment (in the form of nicotine replacement therapy or other medication to help overcome addiction), psychological and spiritual treatment (counselling or 'support', often combined with complementary therapies, help through the processes of withdrawal and rehabilitation). The morose atmosphere in the smokers' huddles that formed outside many workplaces in the 1990s confirmed the impact of the denigration of the smoker on smokers themselves. Far from being united in defiance of petty regulations, they were, like members of a therapy group, united only in their existential suffering, in their self-loathing, in becoming pariahs in a society dedicated to clean and virtuous living. The proposal for a ban on smoking in public places in Britain was first made in 1988. Why has it taken more than 15 years for this measure to become a serious policy prospect? The growing popularity of the measure cannot be attributed to the growing strength of scientific evidence in support of it - this is just as weak now as it was then. Nor can it be attributed to any significant change in the enthusiasm of government for interventionist public health policies: Margaret Thatcher and John Major were just as keen on authorita