Smoking Brouhaha a Scam...by BOTH Sides

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Wednesday July 23, 2003 01:17 by Watchdog jejonik at juno dot com

Corporatocracy wants another Prohibition

Anti-smoking groups protect the cigarette industry from the most serious indictments, revelations, charges and liabiliies. "Smokers' Rights" groups do the same. Big Oil (tobacco pesticides), for one, is ignored even as we oppose its oily invasion of Iraq.

Though this is about an event in New York, it applies to Ireland's "smoking" situation. Copy and deliver to a local pub proprietor...or his/her attorney.
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On Thursday, July 24, there is to be a protest demo at New York City Hall (1:00 pm) against the Smoking Bans in bars/restaurants etc.
Generally, this is pushed by "smokers' rights" groups affiliated with Big Cig, and by others who say they are "independent" but MAY be, instead, linked to cig-investing insurance firms, pharmaceuticals that hope to keep their tobacco pesticides, cigarette additives and chlorine/dioxin in general out of the smoking inquiry, PR firms that work for any of the cigarette ingredients/adulterants suppliers, or etc.

Just one outrage of this "wholesome" campaign is that it now purports to be "protecting workers". Really? Where else in this establishment do we see this "concern" for workers' health or ANYTHING? Workers are being denied jobs, having jobs shipped overseas, denied protection from work safety violators, denied rights to organize, having their pensions stolen, getting their health benefits cut, denied air time on public airwaves, denied overtime pay, and are being killed, injured or poisoned by job-site violations across the board.
Ah, but they will now be "protected" from "smoke", even from their own cigarettes...smoke that has not yet been even ANALYZED or described for content! Workers will be fined, fired or arrested for failing to protect themselves from a product that they think (and are told) is tobacco. Far, far from it. No one involved with SPIKING the products, to use John le Carre's term, will face any difficulties. And not one previously-harmed worker will get a cent in compensation for effects of the non-tobacco toxins in most cigs. Big Cig, however, will be protected from having to pay. Irony, eh? To be "anti-smoking", generally speaking, is to support the cigarette cartel.

Smoking bans, said to be for protecting workers or cutting expenses for public health programs, are "Fly Swatter" scam approaches to a problem that COULD be solved simply, at the source, by being absolutely clear, especially in areas of science, medicine and law, about what is IN a typical cigarette. THEN the snowball effect will take over. The costs must be borne NOT by the public Or by "sin-taxed" smokers (the victims) but by the perpetrators...including those in public office (like NYC Mayor Bloomberg?) who paved the way, profitably, for the whole disaster.

Here is a rap just on the Rights issue...with a few links for back-up.
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The day may come, soon, that any home with maids, butlers or baby sitters will have to be "smoke free". We can fully expect pregnant mothers or mothers with children to have children taken from them if they smoke. Homes with under-18 year old kids...smoke free too? (Pesticides, toxic household chems etc to be ok though.) Why not ALL homes "smoke free" in that there's that "fire risk"? How about No Cigs Allowed, period, in National Parks?...with this pretense used to search and check papers of all vehicles and hikers.

Regarding Rights:

Smokers DO have a Right to maximally safe cigarettes.

They have a right to KNOW what's in the products.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/profiles/additives/

They have a right to life and health and to NOT be secretly exposed to some of the worst industrial toxins ever developed.

They have rights to PROTECTION from this stuff since, after all, they paid taxes to implement consumer protections from EXACTLY such things.

They have rights to COMPENSATION...from all complicit parties.

They have a right to use organic tobacco which, after all, has not yet been STUDIED for the harms said to be "smoking related".

They have rights to clear wording in laws..so that "tobacco" and "smoke" and all the currently vague, meaningless words are qualified for content.

They have a right to know if their gov't representatives are working for interests that cause harm in such products.

They have a right to know their accusers...namely, those in the "anti-smoking" community who may actually be part of the broad cigarette cartel seeking to limit liabilities to only tobacco...while ignoring the dioxins and rads and burn accelerants, at nauseam.

They have a right to judges and jurors who are NOT somehow economically linked to the broad cartel (insurers, chlorine, pesticides, oil, ETC.). And, they have a right to judges/jurors with no religious or other prejudice against certain uses of natural plants.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2000/march/insurers_are_major_i.php

They have a right to INFORMED CONSENT...to know about and choose to accept or reject veritable experiments on themselves with many hundreds of untested cigarette additives...not to mention the almost infinite combination effects.

"Secondhand smokers" (incl. bar/restaurant workers) have a right to protection from whatever harmful non-tobacco substances are in the smoke because of cigarette makers' PUTTING it there, in secret, with full permission of gov't officials. If the primary smokers have no CHANCE of knowing this and are being unwittingly harmed themselves in ways that plain tobacco cannot do, how dare any "anti smoker" put blame on them just because they are near at hand (and relatively powerless) while utterly ignoring the root causes, the powerful ones, in industry and gov't?

On the Other Hand....
The Cig Cartel has NO right to put or allow known deadly industrial ingredients into products of mass consumption;

Cig cartel has NO right to include any secret ingredients.

Cig cartel has NO right to include untested non-tobacco ingredients;

It has NO right to maximize chance of fires via added Burn Accelerants.
http://www.ameriburn.org/advocacy/fireSafeCig.htm

It has NO right to maximize addictive levels through use of Addiction-enhancing additives.

It has No right to trick people into smoking fake tobacco that may constitute part or all of some brands.

It has NO right to lure kids to the products with many added flavorings, sweeteners, aromas and soothing additives.

It has NO right to add menthol which so numbs a person's defense against irritation that this protective tool is made useless.

It has NO right to evade scrutiny, compensatory payments and penalties.

It has no right to corrupt our very medical and science establishments in order to protect chlorine, pesticides, etc...and all the suppliers, insurers and investors.

It has no right to itself blame the tobacco plant after the industry itself contaminated the end products to a degree unprecedented in any other product.

It has no right to lie, poison and kill...or to retain profits from doing so for generations...since about when chemicals entered the picture in the 1930s or so.

To test the legitimacy of any Anti Or Pro Smoking entity...simply ask if they'll sign onto this statement.
If you are not a smoker or couldn't care less about this issue...remember, it's NOT really about "smoking"...it's about enormous evasion of industrial liability, and the industrial corruption of our ENTIRE consumer protection system.
It's about perhaps YOUR "health" insurer being PART of the health damaging industries via investments in, and/or insurance business with, such industries. It's about the continuing War on Nature and natural plants...done most horrifically with Reefer Madness.
Shall it happen again with the tobacco plant?...with benefit to the same toxic, environmentally destructive industries that cooked up the pot/hemp prohibition?

This trick WORKS because the mainstream may not like "smoking" or "smoke" and so...all injustices can work, with few complaints. Injustice is injustice...even if it happens to those people, or those things, we don't like.

BAN SECRET, TOXIC, CARCINOGENIC, BURN-ACCELERATING, ADDICTION-ENHANCING NON-TOBACCO CIGARETTE ADULTERANTS....NOW !