Free Republic

 They had me until the Nazis marched in. Even before a Michigan company called Weyco fired four employees on Feb. 9 because they wouldn’t quit smoking -- the company hoped to save a little money on health insurance -- Smokers Club was sounding the alarm about cigarette bans. “The World Is In A Smoking War,” ran the headline on the notice e-mailed Jan. 10 from Smokers Club national honcho Samantha Phillipe. “Smoking Bans Kill People.” “This failed experiment in modifying human behavior is killing people and it has to stop now,” she wrote. “Death certificates from secondary smoke exposure are zero,...

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 31: Observing rules does not always pay and a youth from Orissa recently learnt it the hard way. Samaresh Panda, 24, an unemployed youth, was allegedly pushed out of the 2802 New Delhi-Puri Purushottam Express on January 26 evening by three men near Bokaro railway station for his protests against smoking inside the compartment. The youth was left with a broken hip and scarred back. The injuries were so severe that pieces of flesh fell off his hip when he landed next to the railway track. Panda, a resident of Chakeisiani in Bhubaneswar, had recently gone to New...

Three passengers threw a 24-year-old man out of a running train on December 26, 2004, after he protested against their smoking in the compartment.Amaresh Panda, who was traveling from Delhi in the Purushottam Express, had asked the three to stop smoking as it inconvenienced the other passengers. When the train left Bokaro railway station in Jharkhand at night, the men pushed Amaresh out of the train, his family said.Amaresh, who suffered serious injuries, was spotted near the tracks the next morning by two men. They got him admitted to the Bokaro Steel General Hospital.His family later shifted him to a...

CHICAGO — Already known as a rural scourge, methamphetamine is becoming a problem in a number of U.S. cities. Meetings of the 12-step group Crystal Meth Anonymous have increased in Chicago from one night a week a few years ago to five a week. In the Atlanta area, methamphetamine users account for the fastest-growing segment of addicts seeking treatment. Rehabilitation centers there are seeing an uptick in the number of women meth addicts, while officials in Minneapolis-St. Paul say they're treating an alarming number of meth users younger than 18. "Most people just think it happens in the farmlands and...

SMOKING in cars should be made illegal, the leader of the Australian Democrats said today. Senator Lyn Allison said the ban would reduce bushfires, littering, accidents and cancer. "Too many avoidable fires are started by butts discarded from cars," she said in a statement today. "The tobacco industry has failed to develop cigarettes that are fire safe or biodegradable. "Aside from the fire and health risks, a car in which the driver is smoking is far more likely to be involved in an accident. "Smoking while driving is as distracting, and therefore dangerous, as using a mobile phone and that...

Hide your smokes and unhealthy contraband. The tyrants of wellbeing are back. Apparently, the Denver City Council is never too busy to intercede with some good old-fashioned social engineering. And soon enough, smoking in restaurants and bars will be banned. It's enough to make a holier-than-thou politician - with pristine pink lungs - shriek with delight. Jeanne Faatz, at this point, is the lone voice of reason on the council. She still believes in trivial things like free enterprise and property rights. She's sort of an outsider. And although she won't admit it on record, I'm certain the other council...

Skokie's smoking ban went into effect in 2003, but the ramifications were felt at Jack's Restaurant in January.Owner George Koretos eliminated the eatery's overnight shift and announced the restaurant is no longer a 24-hour restaurant. The well-known eatery at 5201 Touhy Ave., which opened in 1965, set new hours from 6 a.m. to midnight seven days a week.Koretos said he was forced to cut the overnight shift because business at that time had dramatically declined due to Skokie's smoking banDuring a typical overnight shift before the ban took place, Koretos said, the restaurant had about 200 customers. After the smoking...

I am surprised Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson didn’t refer to the smokers as swine in a pig sty. Isn’t that, after all one of the one of the first images that comes to mind when think of a pen?  Before I am offended by “da mayor” I would have to be offended by the reference to the term smoking pens. In a city and state  that was founded by a group of people so seriously reviled for their own beliefs in years past, you would think they would be among the first to take a “live and let...

Center Conway, NH.  This failed experiment in modifying human behavior is killing people and it has to stop now. Death certificates from secondary smoke exposure are zero, while death certificates from smoking bans and making a legal product politically incorrect are rising.   Located at The United Pro Choice Smokers Rights Newsletter at http://www.smokersclubinc.com are two pages proving this: The Ban Damage Page (Deaths, Injuries, Rape, and more) and the Ban Loss Database (Money and business lost due to bans).  Each week new articles are submitted to the Newsletter and the lists get longer.  Since Anti smoking advocates have convinced the media that...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) intends to provide new coverage allowing certain Medicare beneficiaries who smoke to receive counseling services that will help them quit the habit. "We're building on our efforts to help America's seniors help themselves to quit smoking and live longer," Secretary Thompson said. "This new benefit, focused on treating seniors' smoking related diseases, will go a long way toward reducing their risk of dying prematurely. The combination of lives lost, unnecessarily, and the cost of treating smoking-related diseases makes our...

Tucked away in a quiet corner of this Dutch port city, Senior en pand looks like an ordinary retirement home. Comfortable sofas huddle around a television set in the lounge. Puzzles and tattered paperbacks fill the shelves nearby. Residents chat about the weather over tea and coffee. But this retirement home has a twist. In the bedrooms, the elderly get high on heroin and cocaine.'Ive been using drugs most of my adult life, and I cant stop now,' says Jan Gert, a 62 year old resident. 'Being old doesn't mean your addiction just goes away.'Three other Dutch cities-Amsterdam, The Hague...

Drug addicts sent to Scientologists Norway's government has spent large sums sending drug addicts to a controversial Danish treatment run and supported by Scientologists. The Narconon center in Denmark bases its treatment on the teaching of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, the Newspapers' News Agency (ANB) reports. Astrid Skretting, a researcher at the State Institute for Drug and Alcohol Research (SIRUS), fears that Norwegian addicts end up as converts to Scientology after their stay.The treatment course can cost from NOK 180,000-200,000 (USD 29,300-32,600). An information consultant at Norway's Health West said that their region...

ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - Tucked away in a quiet corner of this Dutch port city, Seniorenpand looks, at first glance, like an ordinary retirement home. Comfortable sofas huddle around a television set in the lounge. Puzzles and tattered paperbacks fill the shelves nearby. Residents chat about the weather over tea. But this is a retirement home with a twist: In the bedrooms, everyone gets high on heroin or cocaine. "I have been using drugs most of my adult life, and I can't stop now," says Gert-Jan, a 62-year-old resident. "Being old doesn't mean your addiction just goes away." Funded by the...

        John Kerry's Crack the Vote Address (Satire)Presidential candidate John Kerry addresses thousands of addicts, many holding signs "WILL VOTE FOR CRACK" at a Crack the Vote rally in Washington D.C. on Saturday.My friends, I have a plan. It's a good plan.  I was talking to Marion Barry (the b*tch set me up) just the other day. He asked me what my drug plan was. I told him that the President's drug plan was the wrong plan at the wrong place at the wrong time.  The president refused to change his policy. The President made drug importation...

Uh-oh, hide the Starbucks.     A single cup of coffee a day can produce "caffeine addiction," according to a study from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, which has declared caffeine the most "behaviorally active drug" on the planet.     Caffeine withdrawal is a genuine "mental disorder," according to the study, which was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.     "Caffeine is the world's most commonly used stimulant, and it's cheap and readily available so people can maintain their use of caffeine quite easily," said Roland Griffiths, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Hopkins, and the study director. Based on...

Australian smokers will soon have to look at the picture of a cancer-ridden lung or a gangrenous foot missing toes each time they light up. Following a trend pioneered by Canada, the government said it wants cigarette companies to put graphic pictures and warnings on 30 percent of the front of each pack and 90 percent of the back. One gruesome photo shows a color cross-section of a diseased lung. Another shows a blackened foot missing a toe and the rest twisted. "Smoking causes peripheral vascular disease," it reads. A third shows a dissected, bloodied brain with the caption, "Smoking...

PORTLAND, Maine -- The latest batch of anti-tobacco television advertisements created by Maine students features a guy with yellow teeth and a giant cigarette butt chasing children around. The Department of Human Services had so much success with the original ads three years ago that Maine youths were tapped again for public service announcements that began airing Monday.

Aer Rianta accused of double standards after lucrative US military flout law SHANNON airport had to be evacuated because US troops set off alarms by flouting the smoking ban. Angry workers have claimed that Aer Rianta is being soft on the offenders because it is afraid of losing lucrative US military contracts. In recent weeks, the airport's automated fire alarm system has been activated several times resulting in fire crews and security personnel rushing to investigate the source of the emergency. On at least six occasions US soldiers have been found packed into airport toilets claiming to be unaware of...

Starbucks offers caffeine superjolt Tests show coffee has 50% more than home brew It isn't just the long lines and high prices that are outsized at Starbucks and other specialty coffeehouses. There's also the caffeine. In pursuit of a bolder taste, coffeehouses typically brew their blends much stronger than a trusty cup of Folgers. But a powerful side effect is unusually high levels of caffeine, according to a national test of ready-made coffee run by a laboratory for The Wall Street Journal. House blends at Starbucks Corp.,Gloria Jean's and other gourmet coffee chains have an average 56 percent more caffeine...