I’ve been invited three times now to join the Right to Smoke Facebook cause, and each time I’ve declined to join. Here’s the invitation:
[ … ] has invited you to join their cause on Facebook:
The Right to Smoke
1,176 members
ensure that smoking remains legal and that people have the right to do whatever they desire to their own bodies. Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. No one denies that anymore. But what is even worse are public policies that restrict a person’s right to consume substances, however harmful, as they please. A person’s body is their own dominion, and the government does not have a right to keep a person from poisoning themselves if they so desire. These policies, good-intentioned though they may be, present a tremendous threat to the liberty of those, smoker or not, who oppose government intervention into personal lifestyle, and as such, they should be abolished. I’m not advocating that anti-smoking groups should not be allowed to express their opinion, nor do I think that an establishment owner should be forced to allow people to smoke if they don’t want to, but in the case that someone DOES want to allow smoking in their own private establishment, it is their choice and their responsibility, not the government’s. This group is for smokers and non-smokers alike who believe in the aforementioned libertarian values. All donations go to the American Lung Association. 1. People should have the right to govern their own body 2. Establishment owners should be able to decide whether or not smoking is permissable 3. The sale and production of tobacco substances should not be subject to the results of its health risks.
There are a number of things in this passage that brought me to a halt. Leaving aside the first sentence for now, what about the second one?
Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you.
Do they? I’m always worried by sentences that start off: “Everybody knows.” Well, I don’t know any such thing. I’ve been smoking for 40 years, and I’m still alive. There hasn’t been any decline in my health that I can ascribe to smoking. So what’s bad about it? What have I missed?
No one denies that anymore.
Well, actually, I do. I deny it. And what’s more, I think that most antismoking research is utter garbage, and has been garbage from its Nazi origins right up to today. I’m very near the point of saying that it’s all utter garbage. Why should I believe any of it? And I’m very far from the only one who feels this way. So this statement is simply untrue.
A person’s body is their own dominion, and the government does not have a right to keep a person from poisoning themselves if they so desire.
Sorry, but I don’t think I’m poisoning myself when I smoke. Just like I don’t think I’m poisoning myself when I drink a beer. Or eat a cream cake. And I did all three of these things today, and I’m still alive.
And maybe, if people really were killing themselves using universally recognised poisons -like arsenic, in large doses – governments actually should intervene? The Reverend Jim Jones got most of his followers to drink kool-aid laced with poison. Would anyone have objected if, warned in advance, the US Marines had parachuted in and prevented it from happening? Or would people have said: No, they’ve got a perfect right to kill themselves if they want to, so don’t you dare send in the Marines and trample on their rights!
My problem with the antismoking zealots (actually I have a whole bunch of problems with them) is that they regard tobacco as a poison, and I don’t. And I don’t think that beer or whisky is a poison either. It’s the dose that makes the poison. Even water in sufficient quantities is a poison. Anything can become a poison.
These policies, good-intentioned though they may be, present a tremendous threat to the liberty of those, smoker or not, who oppose government intervention into personal lifestyle, and as such, they should be abolished.
Are they well-intentioned? I don’t think the antismoking campaign is in the least bit well-intentioned. I don’t think that policies that expel millions of people from society, making pariahs of them, are the teensiest bit well-intentioned.
I’m not advocating that anti-smoking groups should not be allowed to express their opinion, nor do I think that an establishment owner should be forced to allow people to smoke if they don’t want to, but in the case that someone DOES want to allow smoking in their own private establishment, it is their choice and their responsibility, not the government’s.
Well, I want to completely suppress antismoking organisations. They are AntiSmoking Hate groups, and they are utterly vicious. They are a band of thieves, robbing smokers of their good name, and of their money.
This isn’t a simply a matter of freedom of speech. It’s much bigger than that. These antismoking campaigners aren’t just saying things, but doing lots of things as well.
This group is for smokers and non-smokers alike who believe in the aforementioned libertarian values.
That’s libertarianism, is it?
All donations go to the American Lung Association.
I don’t know for sure, but I have a horrible suspicion that ALA is as antismoking as they get. I wouldn’t want to hand them even more money.
But now let me go back to the first sentence, that I skipped over.
ensure that smoking remains legal and that people have the right to do whatever they desire to their own bodies.
It may just be me, but I have a real problem with the whole idea of rights. When were these rights conferred on people? And when were they revoked? The way I see it, it’s not that I have the right to do whatever I like to myself, but that I actually have the ability to do whatever I like to myself. I could, if I so wanted, saw one of my legs off right this minute. And if someone confiscated my saw, I could do it some other way. With a penknife. Or a pair of scissors. And this ability of mine is inherent in my nature. I’m always deciding to do things to myself. I went for a walk today, and had a beer and a cigarette, and then I walked back home again. And that’s something I did to myself. And when I got home, I warmed up some Chinese roast pork with fried rice and ate it. And that was something else I did to myself. The ability to decide to do things which have some effect upon myself is part of the whole package of being alive. So I really don’t need these rights things. Particularly if, shortly after they have been conferred on me, they’re promptly taken away.
So you’ll almost never find me arguing that people have a right to do this or that. I feel much happier saying that people have no right to do this or that to me. And by this I really mean that it’s not right to do this to me. I don’t think I have a right to life and liberty and free speech. I instead think that nobody has any right (i.e. it’s not right) to take my life, or my liberty, or my freedom of speech. I don’t think I have a right to smoke: I just think nobody’s got any right to try to stop me. Their right doesn’t exist. And it never did exist.
And in part this is because they can’t stop me anyway. I’m always going to be able to get a little bit of some herb, and stick it in my pipe, and smoke it.
Anyway… , perhaps I’ve made it a tiny bit clearer why I haven’t signed up for this particular Facebook cause. I just wish they’d stop inviting me. Or write something that I don’t find myself disagreeing with almost every sentence in. They’ve got enough members anyway.
Frank Davis 
That I agree with everything you said to the side, the fingernails-on-blackboard grammar of this sentence, let alone its pretension would also turn me off: ” A person’s body is their own dominion, and the government does not have a right to keep a person from poisoning themselves if they so desire.” I’m pretty sure a sentence like that causes cancer and shouldn’t be used indoors.
The US government is pretty much predicated on the notion that Rights –life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and all that entails– are implicit in our existence, and that government, which isn’t the source of them, can’t impose the end of them. Then, too, we’ve got the nifty 9th and 10th amendments, which unfortunately only apply to the feds, not the states, and which, in any case, seem to be routinely ignored. (It was nice while it lasted.)
Ph ya our govmnt really believes in freedom and rights,in fact OWEbummers at the lead of it all!
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/federal-government-continues-progress-to-prevent-tobacco-caused-disease-while-states-fall-tragically-short-137655658.html
Federal Government Continues Progress to Prevent Tobacco-Caused Disease While States Fall Tragically Short
“President Obama’s administration has confronted the tobacco epidemic head-on,” said Charles D. Connor, American Lung Association president and CEO.
Frank it sounds like an anti-smoking site not a pro-smoking site!
Like they want ya to concede all their points, before ya can join like taking the teetotalers pledge and going on the wagon!
Exactly that thought crossed my mind too, Harley.
And mine, too.
It very much reminded me of this.
“Recognize that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability, and that there is a time lag between exposure to smoking and the other uses of tobacco products and the onset of tobacco-related diseases.”
When the pdf didn’t open as my computer is playing up after being fixed , I looked up the statement and my heart sank.
http://www.who.int/tobacco/framework/final_text/en/index2.html
I can cope with this in bits but not all at once.
Come to think of it, rather than reading it, it feels like it should be chanted in a monotone by people wearing robes.
thank you for the warning about these antis frank they may start bothering me to join i will tell them ‘take a hike’ thanks again frank
Frank could be we are the 2 hardest cases tobacco control ever ran across!
hey dont forget me harley rider i was confronted by an anti last yr. i was sitting waiting for my bus to go home from church any this little bitch and her rotten brat started on me for no reason i was waiting with my freind for bus i just came out of church i lit up and all of a sudden this little bitch starts in i told her and her snotheaded brat to mind their own business or else i said ‘screw you little masshole libtard take a hike you dont like it move ‘that is basically what i said thank you for listening i hate antis
You shoulda bounced a quarter off her head and said thanks for your 2 bits! Ya I did that to one old nany biotch myself! I have no doubt her hubby was chief of police of gallatin tn……Seems to be how my luck always turns out. But wtf Id do it again
Your views in this blog are damn spot on Frank – I believe there was a similar debate when the yanks came up with their Bill of Rilghts – some people back then said “what are these rights? We always could do these things, we don’t need a bloody Bill mate!” or something like that. Over here in NZ the budget just came out and who did they hit in the wallet … again …. bleeding smokers of course. I’m getting fed up but haven’t got to the stage of tearing the social fabric just yet – must be close though! I’m getting to the end of tolerance with everyone trying to make me live to 250 years … that’s not the point for me. I wish every do gooder would just sod off.
Nice to see another NZ bloke here; yeah, on top of the most recent 10%/yr, was it, the last 2 1/2 yrs, plus an extra 14% in the first round for RYO (including innocuous pipe tobacco!) – and before they’ve even *measured* the “results” of that, in terms of decreasing prevalence of smokers/population (the previous major increase surely didn’t decrease it:- http://www.data-yard.net/10a/nz2.htm) – the unexamining thoughtless suborned National Party govt – who used to oppose Labour’s tobacco taxes & Smokefree Environments moves, quite correctly, has now jettisoned all that moral presence, on getting into bed with the Maori Party, suborned by ASH et al, for the sake of one majority vote in parliament – never mind that nearly a million didn’t vote last time round, 750,000 of whom could have been adult tobacco lovers, er, smokers; – which if whom they’d stood up for as they used to; property rights, individual rights and so on, might have gained a large majority and even more voting – have acceded totally to ASH SFC & etc. urgings for MORE TAX!
Their “evidence”, that their propaganda references, is actually extremely flimsy…
A real case of who and when is going to be able to successfully point out that the Emperor has no clothes… or perhaps that the Emperor’s cloak is fabricated from a tissue of lies…
In my view, Tobakko Kontrol is a trojan horse for imposed totalitarian communism…
We need some way of grouping – being “atomised” into individuals as we are – and the NZ Herald is very selective about where it allows comments, otherwise rubber-stamping
Would you two New Zealanders like each other’s email addresses?
They shoot themselves in both feet, don’t they?
The point is they should be focussed on the myth. If there there were no smoking bans (based on SHS) there would be no obvious need for this group.
Indeed, I have problems with campaigns to get separate smoking rooms in the UK as well. Most of these make little of the fraudulence of the ban. It’s almost as if ‘yes, we accept that exposure to SHS is potentially harmful but…..’. Doh!
I would prefer choice for non smokers based purely on comfort at the discretion of the property owner. The best we could hope for in the current circumstances. But still a long shot until the myth is seriously challenged.
Spot on, Frank, and yes, the American Lung Association is a true blue anti-smoker Nazi organization, even worse than the American Cancer Society or the American Heart Association, difficult as it is to be worse than those. Whoever’s running this “smokers’ rights” group is just another nauseatingly sheepish smoker and a fool. There’s lots of those about. They dutifully sieg heil to the Nazis and then plead, in pathetic tones, for a few scraps of Nazi mercy. This guy even wants to donate to the Nazi cause via ALA. I imagine he’s already donating daily and bountifully by buying Big Tobacco brands for whatever those cost today (about US $1,000 per pack I suppose.) I’ll join this group just as soon as I feel an urge to start sawing myself into pieces.
When David Nuttall put a ten minute motion before parliament a couple of years ago Mps were voting against smoking rooms because and I remember this being reported, they did not want to see smoking back in pubs. Smoking in an effectively ventilated smoking room would put no non smoker at risk even in the same room. Modern ventilations systems work and Mps know this. Where there is no conceivable affect from shs on anyone else (in a modern ventilated smoking room) what rights do they then have to make smoking illegal ? Their vote then, seemed to be about keeping smoking denormalised and smokers out in the cold, it had nothing to do with shs. This is what we are really up against.
Should they infact have the right to vote at all, on the issue of ventilated smoking rooms in adult only venues ?
As I’ve said on several other occasions, one of these days the headline will be that Tobacco is responsible for NOTHING.
Interesting. As terribly misguided as these people are, at least they are on the right side and have thier eyes open a little bit.
Maybe your membership of thier club would do them the world of good.
Yes, they are on the right side. But only just.
If this site is genuine, then the invitation text may well be just a matter of bad writing. But the ‘donations to the ALA’ is bothersome – why, when there are myriad genuinely worthy charities, choose one which has clearly been infiltrated big time by the Holy Zealots? If that person is genuine, then he is very mixed up.
But it is common for pro-choice organisations to give ground unnecessarily. We see it often. Forest, for example, seem to be happy to concede that smoking is harmful and concentrate only on the ‘legal product’ angle. We should never concede anything. For example, far too many smokers do not get lung cancer for smoking to be a primary cause of lung cancer. Also, Forest concedes that it is not a good thing to smoke around children. Who says so? How many billions of children have grown up in smoking households with no ill-effects whatsoever? .
Without more clarity, I would not be happy to join this group.
Another right on post Frank! And much like Junican, the biggest problem I have with it is the donations to the ALA. They get plenty from Big Pharma which much is spent on advocating rather than educating.
The OLA is not the same as the ALA, but they’re made from the same of fabric (or is it fabrications?) LOL
http://cagecanada.blogspot.ca/2011/05/ontario-lung-association-charity.html
”of fabric” should read just ”fabric”. Too early to write properly :-)
These wimps make me want to vomit. I think these gullible fools need a wake up call. And why stop at smoking back in pubs? Fuck that. I want nicotine back in cigarettes, dosage ratings on packs – without the bullshit lies slandering tobacco as causing disease. Put advertising back on TV. Just a single fact might help, but the gullible prefer the easy lie. I was once there too, so I do have sympathy – I thought the propaganda was true until I started looking. The best material (as so many of you seem to have discovered yourselves) is the wowser research itself. Not their statistics of course. Their science is often good, but they can’t see past their confirmation bias to interpret the results. Their impoverished nicotinic-acetylcholine receptors lead to the cognitive impairment that puts the “anal” and “lies” into analysis. I say “often good”, but you will still have to wade through knee-deep swill to find research that isn’t fundamentally flawed in its design or hopelessly mired in confirmation bias.
This time when the cycle swings and sanity asserts itself we need to recognise that robust anti-wowser legislation is needed. Time for prison sentences. They defraud taxpayers every time they have government money shoveled in their direction based on their fraudulent statistics. Take their houses, their assets and throw their spouses out on the street. When the SWAT teams kick their doors in at 5am their kids can be given to responsible people to raise instead of being poisoned by hate. Will no-one think of the children? (that line ALWAYS gets them, its one of the cornerstones of Hitler’s Big Lie). Turn the tax laws against them and see they never rise again. Carve the history of their crimes in stone and build lasting monuments so following generations never forget.
The strategy of the “New Atheists” has been spectacularly successful. The sheeple that swallow the anti-smoking lies need to be metaphorically slapped in the face to snap them out of their mouth-foaming hysteria. Insist on evidence and throw their fantasy-based statistics back at them. Their policies have increased the rate of infant (and to a lesser extent, maternal) deaths through pre-eclampsia (smoking through the 2nd trimester virtually eliminates the problem). Anti-smokers are baby killers – make sure you let them know, and everyone that supports them. Do not use violence but be exceedingly rude and in their face. Never ever use violence or threaten it. Call the police and file assault charges if they strike you. Reality of course is never black and white. I will concede that smoking for health may stain my teeth, but so does coffee and that keeps us healthy too. And cigarettes cost a lot. But that’s almost all tax. What governments would lose in taxes they would save many-fold in healthcare costs. And a small fortune can be banked when the parasite class are deprived of their ill-gotten gains.
Compare New Atheists to these “libertarian” suck-ups and their pandering to the fiction of smoking being like taking poison and you can see why meekly adopting some accomodationist stance, grovelling for “permission” to smoke is not only destined to fail, but makes them look like the fools they are. Take a page from the New Atheists and pile scorn on these beggars.
Frank, your clarity of thought takes the win again. Exactly how you should have responded to the invite.
This pre-eclampsia “stuff” is fascinating and another example of the mass media missing the boat completely. I’d never heard of this before. Some journalist should have been all over this.
I had looked at this site at some point in the past and had mixed feelings about it. I think I eventually decided to hold off and see if it developed a more definite direction. My “mixed feelings” came at least partly from the possibility that the site author might have been trying for some tongue-in-cheek pointy satire in places. Sort of like “Hi! I’m here with a site against Antismokers. I’m not collecting any money so if you’re here and want to give money, give it to the Antis instead: they’re the money grubbers.”
As noted, I ended up deciding to be undecided. If the author was going for satire they went a bit too far to be clear.
– MJM
I’d be willing to put money on the fact that this is an anti tactic. Quite apart from all the dodgy first sentences which you highlight, Frank (which could conceivably just be the result of gullibility and lack of any research), the donations to the ALA is, for me, the giveaway. I just can’t think that anyone, no matter how stupid, could possibly believe that donating funds to “the other side” is in any way going to assist in their stated aims. It’s a bit like an anti animal cruelty campaign suggesting that any donations will be passed on to the local dog-fighting ring, and it can surely only be a trick, albeit a rather clumsy one.
I’m more inclined to believe that this and some of the other slightly more softly-softly approaches being made these days (the lack of extensive coverage of smoking and smoking-related issues by the BBC and the MSM in recent months is, I think, a bit suspicious of some kind of deliberate decision rather than a steady waning in interest). Maybe the whole anti-smoking movement has recognised the fact that they’ve gone in too hard, too strong and too much with such a draconian smoking ban and that they’ve put themselves in real danger of revealing their true nature to the public, so that a more “reasonable” stance now needs to be taken by their workers and drones in an attempt to regain their “concerned” and “kindly” image.
The other thing that always concerns me with these types of “join us” groups where it isn’t clear where they started from, or why, is that they always bring out the tinfoil-hat wearer in me and I wonder sometimes whether now that no-one with an ounce of sense ever admits to pollsters/doctors/heath professionals/in surveys that they are smokers, they’ve decided that in order to keep track of who we all are, they’ve got to get someone to pose as “one of us” and get as many smokers to join their campaign/group/movement/club as possible, so that they can slowly build up a neat little database as to who we all are, where we live, where we work etc etc.
… so that they can round us all up, and take us to the gas chambers?
I agree jaxthefirst…
either that or a split is emerging and this is the face of the “moderate” wing.
After-all a split emerged in the Nazi movement in Germany, between the SA (working class) and the SS (middle class) Nazis.
That was “resolved” with the night of the long knives, so the anti-smoking “moderates” should be watching their backs. IMO.
If a split is emerging, that is definately good news for us, we can watch them self destruct.
The ‘Right to smoke’ or the ‘Right to breathe smoke-free air’?
But then, what is considered a ‘right’.
Most people seem to think that a ‘right’ is determined by whether or not they wish to do something. And other people MUST provide them with the means to do what they wish to do.
To my knowledge, there is NO list anywhere of all the things/actions that people are allowed(have the right) to do.
There are only lists of things that we can not do, everything else is OK.
There is no such thing as a ‘God given’ or ‘Constitutional’ RIGHT to do anything.
That is the difference between a free society and a socialist society.
Free = unless prohibited, any action is permitted
Socialist = unless permitted, any action is prohibited
Gary K.
Funny thing about those smoking ’caused’ diseases.
84% of the never-smokers will die from those smoking ’caused’ diseases!!
Whether current smokers or never-smokers, about the same percentage will die from the diseases ’caused’ by smoking.
Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years observations on male British doctors
Doll et al
Click to access bmj.38142.554479.AE.full.pdf
Table 1, page 3
This table lists the deaths from the 8 disease groups that are said to be caused by smoking and the total deaths.
Non-smokers have 16.3 deaths from the smoking caused diseases out of a total of 19.38 deaths.
That is 84%!!!!
Current smokers have 30.41 deaths from the smoking caused diseases out of a total of 35.4
That is 86%!!!!
Gary K.
I wonder if there are any non-smoking-caused diseases? i.e. diseases you’re more likely to get if you don’t smoke.
Wellllll; it seems to me, antis seem to suffer from a lot of dead brain cells. :)
Actually, from the table:
All other neoplasms
never-smokers = 17%
current smokers = 13%
Other medical conditions
never-smokers = 12%
current-smokers = 10%
I believe there are very few ongoing smokers who suffer from MCSS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome). And I would further guess that if you looked at a time graph of MCSS vs. smoking bans (as an indicator of antismoking propganda/brainwashing) that you’d see a pretty robust correlation: well over the 95% level.
The list of non-smoking diseases is huge. They are especially common in the auto-immune diseases which makes sense when we know that smoking moderates the immune system. The flu kills 20 million worldwide each year, mostly non-smokers. The “cytokine storm” the body launches to defend itself is what kills, not the flu infection. The emerging number one disease of non-smokers is diabetes type 1. It used to be called juvenile diabetes but since the smoking bans it now hits people of all ages, not just non-smoking kids. Coeliac disease is a non-smokers disease and has spread to plague proportions in Australia. Lupus and to some extent MS are non-smoker’s auto-immune diseases. Then there is of course Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimers. Persistent mouth ulcers is another. Pre-eclampsia lets non-smokers kill their unborn children.
But let’s not forget the secondary effects of wowserism – the massive rise in inflammation induced cancers – the most prominent of which is bowel cancer. Previously this was concentrated in non-smoking men in their 40s and 50s but now is hitting both genders at younger and younger ages – often killing their victims in their 20s. Asthma and anaphalactic shock are diseases of non-smokers’ children. Smoking around children is known to be protective against Asthma, but the lies of the anti-smoking mafia claim the opposite.
This is just the obvious list, but anything that hits the IgE component of our immune systems can be traced back to non-smoking. Hydroquinone is what suppresses these severe immune reactions – one of those “4,000 chemicals in cigarettes” – just like there are 4,000 chemicals in blood.
Anti-smoking nutjobs are genocidal maniacs.
“The flu kills 20 million worldwide each year, mostly non-smokers.”
Evidence please.
Whereas they constantly remind us that mentally ill people are more likely to be smokers (perhaps implying that smoking can cause mental illness), they consistently ignore the blindingly obvious fact that smoking can calm the nerves and that it is actually pleasurable, i.e. a means of relaxation. Of course the same can be said of many things we drink or eat. It really does make one wonder what state the national psychy (?) would be in if the so called healthists managed to prevent us from partaking in all those things they disapprove of.
Agreed.
? I left a comment to say “agreed” but it disappeared. Damn all this logging on faff. Try again.
There’s no need to log in any more here. Your comments got tossed in the spam folder, and I have no idea why.
No dodgy outfit will invite me to join any slick chatterbox set up ,because I believe in kicking
ass for liberty and freedom and choice.No waffling ,gibbering,twittering ,chuddering and bleating
If we cant have fun in a bar then its our duty to make sure no one else can.
Time to recruit the misfits,the Chavs,the dysfunctional,the low life ,the idiots and assorted
civic dropouts,
The nice guys and gentlemen and correct chappies have got us nowhere, in fact their
pathetic weaknesses give strength and encouragement to the spineless Puritanical Freaks
and Faceless Killjoys.
Bow of Burning Gold
Frank, I agree with you about the term “right”, and in fact think that anything referring to the “right to smoke” is immediately suspicious. This was a subtle straw man introduced by the tobacco control industry a while back and which is constantly parroted in online comments e.g. “Selfish smokers go on about their right to smoke. What about my right to clean air?”
I don’t think that most of us believe that we have a “right to smoke”. We just object strongly to draconian legislation that forbids us from enjoying a smoke in comfort anywhere outside our own homes or cars (and probably in them before very long), even if nobody around us is remotely bothered.
I’ve heard people like Stanton Glantz talk about “smokers’ rights groups”. I don’t know any smokers’ rights groups (except maybe the one highlighted above). It’s the first one I’ve ever come across.
Funny,but yesterday I popped into this
http://smokersrightscanada.org/
Totally trolling website!
I smoke a pipe and live in Salem Oregon. We have what some would call a “busy” downtown with a large volume of traffic. I am amazed at the number of people who will give me the stink eye and go on about their right to clean; smoke free air and think nothing of spending the day inhaling exhaust fumes.
”Sorry, but I don’t think I’m poisoning myself when I smoke. Just like I don’t think I’m poisoning myself when I drink a beer. Or eat a cream cake. And I did all three of these things today, and I’m still alive.
And maybe, if people really were killing themselves using universally recognised poisons -like arsenic, in large doses – governments actually should intervene? The Reverend Jim Jones got most of his followers to drink kool-aid laced with poison. Would anyone have objected if, warned in advance, the US Marines had parachuted in and prevented it from happening? Or would people have said: No, they’ve got a perfect right to kill themselves if they want to, so don’t you dare send in the Marines and trample on their rights!
My problem with the antismoking zealots (actually I have a whole bunch of problems with them) is that they regard tobacco as a poison, and I don’t. And I don’t think that beer or whisky is a poison either. It’s the dose that makes the poison. Even water in sufficient quantities is a poison. Anything can become a poison.”
Frank what can I say ,you are ALIVE AND KICKING!!!Amazing counterblast!!!
What I really want to empasize here is the sneaky denormalisation process that the antis try to run THROUGH our lives.
Look the perception of anti smokers on this phrase: ‘Smoking Kills,you will die because of it’ .An absolute sentence,no point to discuss furthermore,no buts,no ifs.Hey,even some smokers declare that they are ashamed to smoke,but they can’t quit!!!
I believe Hitler was doing something similar with the Jews;”Hey Germans,all Jews are Bad.There is no good Jew,or somehow good Jew,even a Saint Jew is a Bad Jew!!
if a smoker dies,they say: ahh smoking killed him.If a non smoker dies,they don’t say anything at all!!Why? Because they learned to do so!!!
The dose makes the poison.A golden rule on Science.But not for smoking!!Albeit implicitly ,the antitobacco movement declares that one cigarette is doomed to send you to death!But anything else is fine in moderation…Long gone the days in the 60’s where the officials were telling you to smoke 5 -10 ciggies only per day.Now you try one ,and you greet your ancestors !!
Also reminds me of a chat I had about this with an ex smoker; I was telling him that it’s unhealthy to eat 20 oranges per day for a month; He was telling me that he took the equivalent in vitamins pills and didn’t have any problem whatsoever!!!
The worst antismoking stereotype is the one that concerns children;
”Ahh After my son/daughter was born,I quit smoking for them!!!”
Why,because you consider that parents who smoke are pariahs,a bad example to their kid,or they care less about their child?
Ofcourse all the rest ,drinking,eating unhealthy,not exercising, mostly remain!!!Why should they after all? The equivalent of Tobacco Control propaganda doesn’t exist for them
Never,but never heard someone say,”I quit junk food for my kid’.But for smoking…
Dear Dimi,
Drinking and ‘junk food’ are being attacked and their antis are using the same tactics as the TC antis.
I agree on that,but in terms of the size of propaganda,social manipulations and restrictions, the attack on drinking and junk food is where tobacco was in the 90’s; It needs time and money to change social norms.
Don’t forget that even with tobacco they had a big push from Big Pharma ,hence the results they had
wait and see what is going to happen the next 20-30 years….
http://www.blogster.com/anacoana/rip-disco-legendrobin-gibb-donna-summer
[Donna] Summer died from lung cancer but wasn’t a smoker, her relatives said in response to reports speculating on the cause of death. Find out about the singer’s funeral.
MSN.com · 2 days ago
US magazine:
She may have been the Queen of Disco, but Donna Summer wasn’t one to light up a cigarette.
On Friday, one day after the Grammy-winning singer’s death at age 63, her family confirmed to Us Weekly that she succumbed to lung cancer, as was rumored. But, defying common misconceptions about the disease, her loved ones explain that the “Last Dance” singer’s cancer “was not related to smoking.”
PHOTOS: Stars we’ve lost
“Ms. Summer was a non-smoker,” the new family statement says of the chart-topping “Last Dance” crooner. “Obviously, numerous factors can be attributed to the cause of cancer in general, but any details regarding the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of Ms. Summer’s case remain between her family and team of doctors.”
I read somewhere that Robin Gibb, who died of colon cancer a couple of days back, was a vegan. I suspect he wasn’t a smoker.
And my suspicion proved correct:
The late Robin Gibb had famously avoided alcohol, drugs, smoking and unhealthy foods throughout life, so many are wondering how this all could have happened to him.
Frank, the orchestrated propaganda on smoking begins with the media!
When it comes to celebrities who smoke, the comments below are: ‘please quit,we don’t want you to die! Like it’s an absolute fact!Even when a Celebrity is doing illegal drugs, they don’t tell him to quit!!!!
But even if someone is a smoker and dies from cancer,so what? Is that proof that smoking killed him?
Take a look on this example;
Patrick Swayze died 57 years old from cancer and was a smoker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_swayze#Illness_and_death
Meanwhile his father had died 57 years from heart attack,and he also had drinking issues.But what does the notorious Professor Chapman declares on Guardian in his response to Hockney? That only smoking killed him!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/31/david-hockney-stick-to-painting
And eventually everyone believes that smoking killed Swayze…
Here is a funny story . Sad really. I sent it last night to share with you all but it didn’t seem to make it as a post.
I was working on a project in Afghanistan in February this year. In Kabul, where I was, it got to -17C in the nights that month. I stayed in a guest house in which were many foreign workers. I had a smoking buddy who is a doctor from India helping out the health system in Afghanistan. One evening we decided to eat out at a modest place around the corner, ‘Luckies’ I think it was called in Share-now, with another friend of ours from Pakistan who also was a lodger at the guest house. My friends have great survivability skills in Kabul and they spoke pretty good Dari too which was handy.
It was a Thursday evening that we walked out together for a meal. Snow fell only lightly. The street was framed by a knee-high bank of blue ice harder than cold steel. The walk was treacherous. It was dark as pure pitch as we set off. I had fallen over in that ice a few times before. A hundred metres up the street, under the dim halo of a flickering lamp-post, we passed a woman covered head to toe in a ragged and stained blue burqa . In her arms was a baby and she had her hand out begging. The temperature then would have been around -5C. There is a camp of homeless kids not far from where we were. I thought about them that night too. Life isn’t just hard there. It’s insane. Life hangs on a thread. A walk in Kabul was always sad for me. Anyway, we got to the small eating house owned by an Afghan family. The room was slightly smaller than a tennis court. It had about 12 tables in it. There was no one else there so we parked ourselves at a table by the pot-belly furnace burning at one end of the room. Furnaces are common there. They can burn all kinds of matter in them. The flue meanders its way through the nearest wall to guide the fumes outside. After our meal my friend, the doctor, spoke with the owner in Dari and lit a cigarette. The owner had told him it was okay to smoke. That was normal in the few eating places I had visited there. We then heard a loud ‘ahhh- hum’ and turned to see a group of 4 men about 3 tables away from us in the very far corner. Above them was an old small faded sign hanging at an angle like a forgotten sore. It read ‘No Smoking’. 3 of the men at that table were locals and the other was English. The 3 locals were staring down at the table. Possibly embarrassed, I don’t know. The English guy pointed at the sign and said, in a cockney accent, “Can’t anyone read in this place?”. He was in his 50’s and his lips bent hard downwards as if he had dumbbells implanted at the corners of his mouth. He looked drawn and depressed. I had actually noticed him before and wondered what he was doing there as he looked so damned sad. I said to my friends, “Look, we’re really upsetting this guy, maybe we should smoke at the other end of the room.” The doctor went one better and took us outside to finish our cigs, it was about -10C by then. We did not return inside and walked home. My friends’ spirits were dampened that night by the English guy’s reaction. My friends’ views of western culture took a dive that evening. I was horrified that the guy didn’t see how ridiculous his reaction was. The context for his admonition was just plain wrong. I discussed with my friends on the way back to our guest house how westerners like myself are becoming so obnoxious with our inflated sense of ‘self’ and our nauseous belief we own so many ‘rights’. For crying out loud, we were in Kabul! A place where so many people die every day of starvation, disease, and war! I will never forget that man. For me, he represents an insidious evil in our society.
Oh dear, what a sad story.
Thank you for telling it nevertheless!
It was the American Lung Foundation who were the main sponsor of the infamous Enstrom/Kabbatt study. It was also ALF who withdrew sponsorship when the results were wrong…well, not right for them. Without BT, the results would never have been published.
Once again Frank, your analytical mind has made a clear point. You also touched on something which is a bit of a niggle for me as well. We are not born with ‘rights’. ‘Rights’ are created by an ordered society.
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Frank look at this trash in Kentucky
We hope you can join us for the 2012 KCSP Spring Conference, “Smoke-free: Mission Possible,” on April 11, 2012 at Doubletree Suites in Lexington. Conference registration is available online and the registration deadline has been extended to April 6, 2012.
Conference topics include: Effective No/Low Cost Media, State and Local Policy, Latest Science and Emerging Products, Addressing Tobacco Treatment in Special Populations, Voluntary Smoke-free Policy, and Local Smoke-free Campaigns.
Note the: Effective No/Low Cost Media statement,these folks ran out of media dollars in february from obamas stimulus…….I just love seeing it in print! They even cashed out there free media minutes in a push for a statewide ban back in november thru February! How do I know,the head nazi in charge at the state health dept told me so!!! Bankrupt is as bankrupt does.
http://www.mc.uky.edu/tobaccopolicy/KCSP/2012KCSPSpringConference.htm
Gosh, cousin, you nearly gave me a (smoking-induced) heart attack! I noticed in your link that one of the sponsors was ‘UK Health Care’. Oh My God! I thought. The UK Health Dept Holy Zealots have reached Kentucky! But no………..it seems that UK Health Care is some outfit in Kentucky touting for business.