Anti-Smoking Campaign Is Anti-Freedom

Toogood ^ | 11/9/03 | Alan Caruba

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

I am a smoker. I literally start my workday by lighting up one of the two or three cigars I puff my way through every day. I could quit if I wanted to, but I don´t. I like smoking cigars. My father smoked a pipe for as long as I knew him. My Mother never smoked, but was around his so-called "second-hand smoke" her entire life. She died at age 98. He died at age 93.

I was moved to think about this by an intriguing book by Michael J. McFadden, "Dissecting Antismoker's Brains" ($21.95, Aethna Press, visit www.AntiBrains.com). Its ultimate concern is yet another United Nations´ plan to control everyone´s life; a ban on all tobacco use initiated in 1975 and being pursued by its World Health Organization. Its immediate concern is the way Americans in particular have been lied to and manipulated by a diabolical campaign to deprive us of the choice to smoke or not. This campaign is essentially about taking away a freedom we thought we had.

Two organizations, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and Group Against Smoker´s Pollution (GASP) have been around a long time spewing out enough lies about smoking to fill a library or two. McFadden points out their tactic was to make non-smokers feel separated from smokers as "a distinctly important group." The threat smokers were said to represent never existed. Going all the way back to the 1979 Surgeon General´s report, the science then and now demonstrates that "Evidence that tobacco smoke is antigenic in man, however, is meager and controversial…"

A leading epidemiologist, Michael Thun, was quoted in the Washington Post earlier this year saying, "There´s no definitive way of establishing the cause of a cancer in an individual. Are there people that develop lung cancer without exposures (to any of the known cancer-causing agents)? No one knows." While logic suggests that smokers are more likely to develop lung cancer, the fact is, "no one knows" if this is the trigger or whether a genetic or other factor played a role. However, on the basis that smoking automatically leads to lung cancer, the American Lung Association is the third organization, along with ASH and GASP, to work endlessly to restrict the right to smoke anywhere and everywhere.

So, if you eliminate the argument that smoking in the workplace, in restaurants and other public places poses no scientifically verifiable threat to anyone, it is simply astounding to contemplate that, by the middle of 2001, the American Medical Association reported that states were spending more than $880 million on antismoking activities. This is such an appalling waste of money that could be allocated to the real social problems, one would expect some public outrage, but as McFadden points out, we´ve been effectively brainwashed to think that a real health threat exists, smokers are less deserving of their Constitutional rights as others, and that anti-smoking programs are working.

Columnist George Will wrote in May that "tobacco policy radiates contempt for law. Cynical lawmaking produced the $246 billion settlement of an extortionate suit by 46 state governments against major tobacco companies, purportedly as recompense for smoking-related health care costs. Never mind that governments probably profit from smoking in two ways. Cigarettes are the most heavily taxes consumer product, but are not usually not taxed so heavily that too many smokers give up the lucrative (for governments) habit. Furthermore, governments reap savings in the form of reduced spending for Social Security, pensions and nursing home care for persons who die prematurely from smoking-related illnesses." The hypocrisy, if not outright criminality, i.e., extortion, involved in the punitive lawsuits against the tobacco companies, is yet another cause for outrage, but it´s just not there.

Discriminating against smokers has become an acceptable prejudice in America thanks to the way they have been identified as a threat to everyone around them. As McFadden points out though, "If by some chance they (the anti-smoking campaigners) succeeded in eliminating smoking from the face of the earth there would be virtually no time lapse before they sank their fangs into Big Auto, Big Meat, Big Soda, or whatever supposedly idealistic cause was out there that would promise them Big Money and Big Power."

The fact is, there are groups already engaged in activities designed to exploit or destroy these industries and we see this in the work of the "food police" advocates, the "animal rights" propagandists, and the incessant hatred directed against SUVs by environmentalists.

In America, the power to control your life and everyone else´s presumably is based on the "consent of the governed", but the restrictions on smoking were generated primarily from the courts. Legislators went along because it promised a new source of funding for their endless schemes. The problem is that everyone lost and everyone loses when the lifestyle choice to smoke or not is denied.

It is a pure fiction that people are safer in so-called "smoke-free" facilities. The science concerning the amount of measurable compounds to which they are exposed demonstrates it is so infinitesimal as to pose no threat whatever. In 1989, the report of the Surgeon General noted that close to 90% of the weight of tobacco smoke is composed of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and plain water. These are natural and necessary components of the environment. Scare campaigns, however, have succeeded in creating fears about smoking that have ultimately deprived everyone of the freedom to smoke anywhere.

Giving up just one freedom is giving up one freedom too many. Everyone pays a price for the loss of any freedom to anyone or any group. That is why, in America, we defend the right of people with whom we disagree to express themselves. You may or may not be a smoker, but you should have a very real concern about the anti-smoking politicians and others who continue to trample on freedom.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

This is one of the reasons I won't nominate the Reagans for sainthood. They inflicted this assault on us via their health czar, C Edgar Koop.

[Age of Reason]

I haven't smoked in more than a decade.

But I l-o-v-e tobacco still: cigars to me are like chocolate.

[Quix]

Depends on one's definitions, I suppose.

I think it's anti-freedom to insist that I breathe smokers smoke AT ALL.

I think it's anti-freedom to require me to give a portion of my hard earned money to support lung cancer and heart failure treatments because of a willfully chosen rebellion against health and common sense.

I have also observed that most smokers tend more than a little to hold their cigarettes somewhat akin to folks who enjoy showing their middle finger in a certain posture.

This observation has led me to realize, finally--in my 56th year . . . DUH! . . . that there's more than a little chronic rebellion running around loose in most smokers, if not all.

And you want require me to aid and abet your life destroying, assaultive, addiction against my will?

And you think that's FREEDOM?

[JennysCool]

there's more than a little chronic rebellion running around loose in most smokers

Good Lord! That might indicate they're ... Shudder ... AMERICANS!

[Doctor Stochastic]

While logic suggests that smokers are more likely to develop lung cancer, the fact is, "no one knows" if this is the trigger or whether a genetic or other factor played a role.

The incidence of lung cancer is about 10 times higher in smokers than in non-smokers. Possible this is only a coincidence.

.PDF here

[tbird5]

I think it's anti-freedom to insist that I sit next to fat people, ugly or stupid people AT ALL.

I think it's anti-freedom to require me to give a portion of my hard earned money to support heart failure in the obese,free education for the masses, and food stamps to the obese poor because of a willfully chosen rebellion against health and common sense.

I have also observed that most fat and stupid people tend more than a little to hold their lifestyle somewhat akin to folks who enjoy showing their middle finger in a certain posture.

This observation has led me to realize, finally--in my 50th year . . . DUH! . . . that there's more than a little chronic rebellion running around loose in most fat and dumb folks, if not all.

And you want require me to aid and abet your life destroying, assaultive, addiction against my will?

And you think that's FREEDOM?

[185JHP]

Smokers yapping, filled with the rebel's pride, remind me of a PSA I'd like to see - (it's a paraphrase of an old PSA about drunks) "If they're sick, let's help them! But first, let's get 'em out of our air!" A big problem for them - we nonsmokers know about patches and gum...

[supercat]

I think it's anti-freedom to insist that I breathe smokers smoke AT ALL.

Then stay out of places where smokers congregate.

If a business owner decides that he prefers the business of smokers to the business of people like you, what right have you to complain? If you don't like the policies of a business, go to a business whose policies are more to your liking. Generally, the marketplace will ensure that when different people have different contradictory desires in how they are served, different businesses will emerge that serve people differently. At least when government allows that to happen.

[Quix]

I have some sympathy for your perspective.

Though there are some places where it's hard to avoid and hard to find substitute businesses. Thankfully, it's tons better than it used to be.

[Quix]

Agreed.

[Quix]

Well done.

I don't know of anyone allergic to fat people, though.

And though my school has a great smoking policy, there are some who violate the "not within 50 feet of doorways" rule and one has to walk through a cloud.

Yeah, obese people have a problem, too that is costly to all of us. And, there's a lot of 'us' who have a lot of that problem. But I find a lot more overweight people earnestly trying to deal with their habits than I do smokers.

[Quix]

Or, humans.

[gcruse]

I quit smoking in 1980. Not because the government was cracking down on me, but for my own health. Now I hear about smokers losing liberty while pot, which is less bad than tobacco remains illegal. Somehow, I just can't bring much sympathy to bear. Kill yourselves if you must. Just shut up about it.

[philetus]

Your a ,gov. take care of me ,idiot.

[185JHP]

Good evening, QUIX, how are ya? You're doing yeoman service against the "Stench now! Stench forever!" gang. It's mildly amusing that they try the lame old canard about "rights", when their high from 'tine isn't being limited - just their "right" to defile other people's air. "Patch. Gum. Repeat as necessary."

[Quix]

ACTUALLY,

I'm closer to a libertarian.

But the cry "What I'm doing is OK as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else."

Quickly turns into '** yours' when their comfort, pleasure, selfishness zones are even slightly annoyed.

And when selfishness insists on inflicting disease on others, it seems a fitting time for the group to put a stop to it through more or less whatever group forces it takes.

[philetus]

When they take your freedom come back and tell me how good it was to use the gov. to keep you from having to smell cigarette smoke.
I know damn well you vote for the crap.

[philetus]

Was this for me or for QUIX?

[Quix]

Actually, I don't recall voting for any such at all.

I might consider it if it came up in my turf.

Hasn't. I've been in Taiwan and China for 15 years.

BTW, the 'government' using the term loosely, will take a LOT more freedoms away than that.

Such as the freedom to worship, read The Bible, pray at all anywhere if they can catch you, teach your own children your own values . . . etc.

Dark times are coming.

Not being able to blow smoke in anyone else's face will be the least of your concerns.