Smokers Protest in Brussels

H/T Reinhold. Unreported in the European media, on 23 January more than 3,500 tobacco retailers and tobacco smokers from all over Europe protested in Brussels against the destruction of their tobacco culture.

Brüssel101

With whistles, horns, rattles, firecrackers, posters and banners the protesters gathered at Square Frère Orban (at the seat of the CEDT).

After a long wait, the rally finally moved through the EU Parliament quarters towards Rond point Schuman. At the base of the European Commission’s building all the participants gathered to take part in the rallies and the conversation exchange. French, Italians, Spaniards, Poles, Portuguese, Germans and Luxembourg – only to name a few – stood together in this protest.

They were protesting against proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive, which deal with: Regulation of products like electronic-and herbal cigarettes. Labelling and packaging of tobacco products. Additives, such as flavourings, used in tobacco products. Internet sales of tobacco products and tracking and tracing of these products.

A statement was read out (in German):

With this Tobacco-Product Directive, the Brussels eurocrats have pushed open a door to an unprecedented health dictatorship – [under the unsympathetic Maltese influence of people like Dalli and Borg] the Commission is turning all of Europe into a huge paternalistic state.

We state what is obvious to anyone in his right mind: Even if one assumes the measures for discrimination against, and systematic exclusion of, a third of the population was actually due to concerns about health – the health of adult, responsible citizens, mind you –, the effect will be by no means the allegedly desired improvement of that health, but social division, systemic violence, poverty, disease, and death – in fact of smokers as well as of non-smokers.

Those who wilfully deface and uglify the world with nauseating pictures, those who importune even bystanders with the sight of images which wouldn’t be shown in a film released to youth under 18, those are not in the slightest bit interested in the citizens’ well-being

Those who try to cause diseases that you would not wish on your worst enemy using shocking images, while pretending to want to prevent exactly that, those are acting criminally – you can not call it anything else.

Those who criminalize a centuries-old cultural product that a third of the Europeans wish to consume are certainly not acting on their behalf. A democratically illegitimate clique is doing this, uncontrolled by the people and impossible for them to vote out, and following their own obscure interests and from a viewpoint accountable to nobody, least of all to those directly affected.

Those who carry the image of the free market like a monstrance in front of them, while simultaneously dispossessing an entire industry, those really are not in the least bit interested in free trade.

Those who dish out tax money for job creation schemes and simultaneously and knowingly destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, those act in a deeply antisocial manner.

We urge the Commission to prevent any regulation of the legal product of tobacco.

Leave the decision to adult, responsible consumers and citizens. They know much better what they want and what they do not want than a little group of overpaid and unnecessary bureaucrats whose opinion we don’t want to know.

Leave us alone and go and regulate the traffic on the next junction instead, if you can’t steer clear of regulating people!

Meanwhile in Bulgaria on 1 February smokers were also protesting:

Sofia. A protest against the full smoking ban in public places in Bulgaria has taken place outside the parliament in Sofia, FOCUS News Agency reported.

About 300 [more like 2000 according to Desislava Petrova in the comments] people in total gathered at the protest. They were blowing whistles and smoking. People from the southern cities of Haskovo and Plovdiv joined the protest, too.

40% of Bulgarians are smokers, and there have been several protests:

The protest was organised by Andrei Slabakov, who has made overturning the smoking ban the signature issue of his political party, Free Choice. Slabakov has been photographed in public wearing a yellow Star of David, in the style of the Nazi era, but with the word “smoker” imposed on it.

Slabakov

In the first few months of the ban, opposition to the ban was led by Bulgaria’s hotel and restaurant industry, which protested against huge losses of revenue as smokers stayed away. The February 1 protest was organised by Slabakov, apparently in the hope that a cross-party consensus among Bulgaria’s high percentage of smokers would propel him and his newly-formed party into Parliament.

Bulgaria’s full ban on smoking in public places came into effect in June 2012, outlawing smoking in restaurants, bars and other enclosed public places. Attempts towards the end of the year to amend the law to revert to the previous version, which allowed separate smoking areas in bars and restaurants, came to nothing.

Previous post on Bulgaria.

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36 Responses to Smokers Protest in Brussels

  1. harleyrider1978 says:

    Rise up,be counted,its revolution time!

  2. beobrigitte says:

    Unreported in the European media, on 23 January more than 3,500 tobacco retailers and tobacco smokers from all over Europe protested in Brussels against the destruction of their tobacco culture.

    This number sounds about right and corresponds to what I’ve seen.

    However, I do believe the Press got the figure of the protesters in Sofia wrong:

    About 300 people in total gathered at the protest. They were blowing whistles and smoking. People from the southern cities of Haskovo and Plovdiv joined the protest, too.

    Is a protest march consisting of 300 people really attracting media attention?

  3. harleyrider1978 says:

    I saw one picture on the novina web story and it was way more than any 300 with the local news there and a boom camera off the tv truck televising it all across Bulgaria.

  4. legiron says:

    There’s your army, Frank. Unorganised and with no generals to take down. No heirarchy, no system, no real structure.

    The Righteous can’t fight this. They’ll keep trying to blame it on some backing group (big tobacco) and insist it’s all being run by shadowy figures. All the while it’ll get bigger and bigger, made up of individuals who take no orders and hear no instructions. This is inconceivable to the Righteous. They’ll keep looking for the organisation and the structure and the control centre.

    That none of those things exist will simply not occur to them.

  5. That’s an excellent statement! All power to them. :)

  6. Cheers from Bulgaria! Our protest was not with 300 but over 2000 people. Of course many journalists prefer to report smaller numbers. Since November, after another mass protest we are in the shadow. Few media “dare” to cover the topic. It is well known that over 80% of the Bulgarian media is owned or controlled by the govt. Here’s our official press release, with the help of BING: http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=bg&to=en&a=http://svobodenizbor.org/bg/%D0%BD%D0%B5-%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8F%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%B5-%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0

    • margo says:

      Brilliant!

    • nisakiman says:

      A good showing! I’m glad so many people joined your protest. Now you will need to keep the pressure on the government. They will be hoping that you will go quiet now and that they can carry on as if nothing happened. You must not allow that. Another protest, and then another, and then another. If you can keep it going, they won’t be able to ignore you. And if people around Europe see you succeeding, perhaps they will take your example and start to protest also. That’s what we need.

      Maybe Bulgaria can lead the way to freedom! Good luck!

    • Frank Davis says:

      Greetings!:-)

      I’ve added a remark to the post above correcting the 300 figure. And a link in my blogroll to Svobodenizbor.

    • beobrigitte says:

      Thank you very much for the link (and translation!) of your official press release!

      There was not much about your protest published over here. We appear to have a similar problem.

      Only a few says ago Frank wrote:

      “Who works for Who?

      I woke up this morning with a question for the British government: Do you work for these zealots, or do they work for you?

      The zealots I was thinking of were the antismoking zealots, and the environmentalist global warming zealots, and the Eurozealots. And I wasn’t sure what the answer to the question might be.

  7. Rose says:

    A excellent statement!

    What saddens me is all this could have been avoided when the dreadful mistake anti-tobacco had made was pointed out to them in 1993.

    The Nicotine Content of Common Vegetables
    August 5, 1993

    “To the Editor: The presence of nicotine and its metabolite cotinine in the body fluids of nonsmokers is usually taken as evidence of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 800 people, both smokers and nonsmokers, all of whom tested positive for urinary continine.

    There is considerable evidence that nicotine is present in certain human foods, especially plants from the family Solanaceae (such as potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant). Castro and Monji;` Sheen,-‘ ” and Davis et al. have reported on the nicotine content of foods and drinks’: We have been able to confirm some of their findings in our laboratory. Gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy-5 were used to determine the nicotine and cotinine content of common vegetables and black tea available from a local supermarket. The vegetables analyzed were tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflower, and green peppers. They were thoroughly washed with tap water, as is done for human consumption. All the vegetables were treated in a similar manner so that any contamination from the tap water would be equally applicable. The vegetables (including their skins) were diced, pureed in a blender, prepared,” and assayed-. Cotinine could not be detected in any of the samples. Measurable amounts of nicotine were found in some of the vegetables (Table 1)”
    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199308053290619

    Correspondence
    More on the Nicotine Content of Vegetables
    November 18, 1993
    Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D.

    “Determining the amount of vegetable consumption suggestive of exposure to cigarette smoke is also more complicated and physiologically difficult than implied by Domino et al. First, it would take an approximately 500-fold increase in the amount of vegetables estimated by Domino et al. to produce exposure equivalent to half a cigarette a day — e.g., more than 100 kg of tomatoes would have to be consumed in one day. Second, as acknowledged by Domino et al., nicotine exposure would be greatly reduced if vegetable skins, which contain most of the nicotine, were not eaten or if they were cooked in water, thereby extracting the nicotine. Third, ingesting nicotine is not equivalent to inhaling it, since absorption from the stomach is poor and 70 percent of the nicotine entering the circulation is metabolized during its first pass through the liver. Finally, it has been well confirmed that the exposure to tobacco smoke indicated by a plasma concentration of 5 to 10 ng of cotinine per milliliter is of clear toxicologic importance,3 whereas there is no evidence that daily exposure to the equivalent of 1 percent of the smoke from one puff of a cigarette would be of toxicologic importance or could possibly confound assessment of environmental exposure.”

    Author/Editor Response

    Dr. Domino replies:

    To the Editor: Eating vegetables does not make you an addict to nicotine. Since the publication of our letter, I have been overwhelmed by dozens of inquiries and commentaries from all over the world, ranging from the appropriate to the curious and bizarre.

    The purpose of our letter was to point out that small amounts of nicotine in some vegetables may be one possible explanation for the presence of nicotine and its metabolite cotinine in the body fluids, especially urine, of nonsmokers. The amount of nicotine in certain vegetables is obviously too small to produce any pharmacologic or toxicologic effects. The difference between the small amount of nicotine in certain vegetables and the large amount in one average tobacco cigarette offers a marvelous lesson, both pharmacologic and toxicologic, on the importance of dose-effect relations. We never intended to suggest that vegetarians could become nicotine addicts, or that children who hate vegetables have a legitimate reason for refusing to eat them.

    Dr. Henningfield apparently agrees with us that nicotine can be found in certain vegetables. Certainly, 1 μg of nicotine inhaled from tobacco smoke or eaten in certain vegetables will not cause any detectable physiologic changes, and its level in blood cannot be measured with most chemical assays, including ours. Urinary cotinine levels are a far better measure of nicotine exposure than plasma levels. The statement that it takes 500 μg of injected or inhaled nicotine to produce a cotinine level of 5 ng per milliliter refers to plasma, not urine. Urinary cotinine levels would surely be measurable in persons eating less than 100 kg of tomatoes a day.”
    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199311183292118

    Relevance of Nicotine Content of Common Vegetables to the Identification of Passive Tobacco Smokers

    Click to access nicotine_relevance.pdf

    Society for Risk Analysis 1995
    Dietary Contributions to Nicotine Body Burden
    “Recent USDA food intake surveys are used to perform a probabilistic analysis of dietary intake of nicotine. Using limited data on nicotine content of foodstuffs (tea, tomato, potato, green pepper, and eggplant) and the 198991 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSDII), the absorbed dose of nicotine is shown to be significant compared to present day environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) nicotine exposures.

    CSDII contains 3day dietary intake data for 11,912 individuals and weighting factors for extrapolation to the entire US population. Using tea as an example, the tea consumption cumulative distribution function for adults (>18 years) shows an average tea consumption of 142 g/d, noting that 62.7% of the US population has no tea intake.
    The average for those who drink tea is about 1.6 cup/day (using 250 g/cup).

    Using the available data for nicotine in 10 brands of brewed tea (2 instant and 8 leaves) tea nicotine concentration is modeled as a lognormal distribution (with a mean of 68.9 ng of nicotine per gram of brewed tea and a standard deviation of 75 ng/g). Oral nicotine bioavailability is modeled as a triangular distribution. Using a study of the oral nicotine bioavailability for a group of 10 male subjects, the most likely absorption factor was 44% with a range of 24% to 59%.
    The dietary tea dose was calculated using the daily tea intake, the concentration of nicotine in tea, and the absorption factor. Using @RISK simulation for 25,000 trials the average absorbed nicotine dose for those who drink tea is 12.5 mg/d. The median is about 5 mg/d. The 95th percentile for the entire US population aged 18 years and older is 22 mg/d.

    The dietary contributions of absorbed nicotine dose are significant when compared to present ETS exposures. A recent study of workplace ETS exposure results in mean and median absorbed nicotine doses of 11 and 3 mg/d, respectively. Thus, ETS exposure analysis based on total nicotine absorption needs to consider dietary intake. This includes the use of cotinine (a major metabolite of nicotine) which has been a widely used biomarker”
    http: //www.riskworld.com/abstract/1995/SRAam95/ab5aa174.htm

    Instead they continued to let the public believe that nicotine was unique to tobacco.

    Exposure to Second-Hand Smoke Widespread – 1996
    “Nearly 9 out of 10 non-smoking Americans are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, or second-hand smoke), as measured by the levels of cotinine in their blood, according to a study conducted by HHS’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

    “The presence of cotinine, a chemical the body metabolizes from nicotine, is documentation that a person has been exposed to tobacco smoke.”
    http: //www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/96news/nrsmoke.htm

  8. Messalina says:

    Brilliant! Great to see so many people protesting against this totalitarian health dictatorship. It’s also interesting to note that none of this – the protests and the details of the EU Tobacco Directive are reported in the mainstream media. I only found out about the Tobacco Directive by reading the alternative news on the internet and by reading blogs. Thank God for the internet – the last bastion of free speech.

  9. Steve Kelly says:

    It’s heartening that Antism isn’t getting swallowed whole everywhere in the world. There’s either political action and protest or lots of plain defiance in many countries. Why have people in the English-speaking countries been so willing to sieg heil to Anti? That’s got to change. Bravo to the Resistance worldwide. It’s got to grow, and grow, and grow a lot more, particularly in horrifically oppressive nations such as the UK and US. If my ship ever comes in I’m moving to Holland. Maybe, just maybe, the US might be a half decent place to live again someday. I don’t suspect I’ll live long enough to see that, but maybe, just maybe.

    • Frank Davis says:

      Why have people in the English-speaking countries been so willing to sieg heil to Anti?

      Probably because we’ve been brainwashed for 60+ years about the perils of smoking, and because we believe ‘experts’. We’ve been far too trusting of ‘authorities’.

      I suspect that in places like Bulgaria, there’s a far greater suspicion of ‘experts’ and ‘authorities’, for historical reasons.

      • Rose says:

        Frank, I think it may be partly because we were caught unawares, not quite understanding what was happening to us and where it had come from.

        It took me ages to find out.

        16 Dec 2004

        “On the same day as these statistics were published, the UK ratified the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
        http://gov-news.org/gov/uk/news/more_than_a_million_fewer_smokers_since_1998/77507.html

        • harleyrider1978 says:

          Precisely Rose and when I found this I was really blown away!

          An outright admission they never had any proof at all even after stating as much for 60 years plus!

          JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS”
          7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
          November 2004.

          http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/cotstatementtobacco0409

          “5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”

    • beobrigitte says:

      This question is not difficult to answer
      Why have people in the English-speaking countries been so willing to sieg heil to Anti?

      Which English speaking country has lived under a dictatorship? You have to experience a dictatorship first in order to really appreciate freedom.

      Until the smoking ban was an issue in Bavaria, I was convinced that the anti propaganda could not succeed in Germany. Perhaps the collective guilt has pushed the “delete button” and/or living in allied-occupied zones rather comfortably for quite a number of years has induced this lack of questioning? I don’t know. But I do know the anti-smoker’s insults to smokers are something else.
      Nevertheless, there is a war ongoing there; those who promise an (almost) eternal life and HEALTH (!) if you quit smoking, and rational people who question this.

      Here just a thought: We do offer childless couples IVF treatment; the chiiiiildren we already have, according to the anti-smokers and healthists will live longer if they follow what is dictated to them, all adding to an already overcrowded planet….

      With the healthists and the climateworriers there seems to be the problem that one hand does not know what the other does….

  10. gimper30 says:

    I’m an old classic movie nut . CASABLANCA is probably my favorite. One of the most quotable lines is from a young Bulgarian girl who says of her homeland, “The Devil has the people by the throat.” Frank—there’s your “historical context”!!!! She was referring to the NAZI occupation.

    • Frank Davis says:

      Casablanca is probably my favourite too. But I don’t remember that quote.

      • John Watson says:

        Cassablanca, yes best movie ever made, Le Marseilles v the Wacht am Rhein has to be the most iconic display of patriotism and of free people standing against tyrrany ever made. It is an icon for all who stand against bullies and tyrants be they from the Third Reich as in the film or from organisations like ASH.

        • smokervoter says:

          I’m a classic movie nut myself. I love the way Lauren Bacall looks and smokes. Ladies, bring back those clothes and hairstyles – and the smoking. Absolute knee-bending femininity.

          I watched three 1961 dance craze movies last night on a station I love here that specializes in old movies. I had a weird thought while watching. Get Stanton Glantz, Richard Proctor, Simon Chapman, Sheila Duffy and Dreadful Arnott together to perform the “Health and Safety Twist”.

          One good flash-in-the-pan hit record/movie, and the health and safety craze will be mercifully over.

    • Margo says:

      That link is worth a look – and there’s a subsidiary link there about Nigel Farage having a go at Bulgaria (scared of an invasion). I hope he reads it. It looks as if we NEED some smoker-Bulgarians over here to motivate us into action.

      • smokervoter says:

        I hope this formats out okay.

        Margo, thanks so much for that Farage/Griffin/Immigration debate link. I learned a lot by reading it.

        Immigration and abortion are two of the thorniest political issues there are. I’d always thought that Farage adroitly navigates his way through on immigration, veering between the reefs of xenophobia and economics.

        Illegal immigration is a huge issue in my state. Unhindered immigration from south of the border has devastated the construction industry in California. Nationally, Comprehensive Immigration Reform stands to permanently cement the Nanny State in place through the formation of a virtual one-party state of affairs (spelled Democrat) in American politics.

        The most militant nanny coalition in the California state legislature is Latino/Democrat based – always proposing more cigarette and soda taxes. This is something I’ll never understand; I’ve lived in Mexico and the people there are natural born libertarians. There are several sayings you’ll always encounter there: first there’s No Hay Pedo – there are no farts – which means – Eh, who cares – none of my business. And there’s Agua que no has de beber, déjala correr, which translates to ‘Water you are not going to drink, let it run’, which means Mind Your Own Business.

        This is coming from a guy who learned to speak Spanish, had a business importing from Mexico, and has been in more Mexican states than American ones.

        Bulgarians do sound like natural born libertarians to me, but what would I know? Absolutely nothing.

      • beobrigitte says:

        Thanks Margo, for pointing this link out!!!
        2 or 3 years ago Farage addressed – quite rightly – the issue of collective guilt in Berlin. He did have some good points!!

        With respect to motivation: we have 2 options:
        1. get anti brainwashing using the same lies over and over again on a daily basis
        2. being repulsed enough by 1.

        2. is a great motivator!!! And continuously gaining new friends in/from different countries is prizeless!!!!!!!!!!

  11. garyk30 says:

    Smokers should be angry.
    Bans are based on the harm to never-smokers caused by SHS exposure.

    Such harm is not plausible.
    The numbers below are for lung cancer; but, the concept is the same for heart attack deaths.

    SHS, Lung Cancer, and Probabilities.

    Anti-smokers claim that SHS exposure ’causes’ lung cancer in never-smokers.
    They claim there are, in America, 3,400 such lung cancer deaths per year.

    Probability tells us that such a statement is almost completely going to be false.

    In America, never-smokers exposed to SHS have 5 lung cancer deaths per 20,000 exposed never-smokers per year.
    Of those 5, one is claimed to be caused by the SHS exposure.

    However, since there is no difference in the lung cancers, there is no way of knowing which one is the one that can be said to be caused by SHS exposure.

    Each of the lung cancers has a 1 in 5 probability of being the one caused by SHS. That is a 1/5 chance.

    Flipping a coin gives you a 1 in 2 chance of getting a ‘Heads”. That is 1/2 chance.

    Flipping two coins gives you a 1 in 4 probability of both coming up ‘Heads”.
    There are 4 possible combinations; of which, two ‘Heads’ is 1.
    Math : 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4.

    If you have two never-smoker lung cancer deaths that are claimed to be caused by SHS, the probability that both are caused by SHS looks like this:
    1/5 x 1/5 = 1/25.

    There is a 1 in 25 probability of both having been caused by SHS exposure.

    5 x 5 =25
    25 = 5 squared; or, 5 to the second power.

    For all 3,400 lung cancer deaths, you would have 5 to the 3,400th power.

    The probability that all 3,400 are caused by SHS looks like this:
    1/ 5 to the 3,400th power

    That is a seriously large number.

    The total number of elementary particles in the known universe is about 10 to the power of 80.

    That looks like this:
    10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 00.

  12. garyk30 says:

    13 such lung cancer deaths gives you a 1/1.22 billion chance that all 13 were caused
    by SHS exposure.
    The odds are 1.22 billion to 1 against all 13 being caused by SHS exposure!!!

  13. garyk30 says:

    Many ban pushing anti-smokers will claim that they hate smoking because of something like this, their Dad smoked and their Mother died of lung cancer that they KNOW was caused by SHS exposure.

    However, there is an 80% probability/chance that they are WRONG!!!!

  14. smokervoter says:

    This is great news. The right place and the right time (the present).

    So far not any press coverage by the MHz network (UK, Japan, Germany, France, RT etc.) where I normally get my daily fill of extra-Yankee Doodle news. And most certainly and predictably not a peep from our Big Three megaphone media either.

    Over 3,000 people in Brussels and 2,000 in Sofia and an issue that concerns between one-quarter to one-third of humanity, and it’s not newsworthy. Yet you get Michael Bloomberg surrounded by ten assorted health and safety thugs, and it’s the lead story. And it’s repeated ad nauseam until you’re ready to throw your TV set out the window.

  15. garyk30 says:

    In America, never-smokers exposed to SHS have 5 lung cancer deaths per 20,000 exposed never-smokers per year.
    Of those 5, one is claimed to be caused by the SHS exposure.

    However, since there is no difference in the lung cancers, there is no way of knowing which one is the one that can be said to be caused by SHS exposure.

    Each of the lung cancers has a 1 in 5 probability of being the one caused by SHS. That is a 1/5 chance.

    Not so, say the antis.

    The 1/20,000 is an excess death above and beyond the 4 to be expected.

    The 1 death is 100% caused by SHS and the other 4 are 100% not caused by SHS.

    If this is the way things are allotted; then, only about 70% of current smokers’ lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking.

    Using American CDC data, we find that the lung cancer death rate for never-smokers is 2/10,000 and the rate for current smokers is 7/10,000.

    2 is about 30% of 7.

    Soooo; according to the antis, about 30% of the current smokers’ lung cancers are 100% not caused by smoking.

    After adjusting for the fact that 70% of the ex-smokers have the same risk for lung cancer as never-smokers, we find these rates.

    55% of the smokers lung cancers are 100% not caused by smoking and only 45% are caused by smoking.

    Do you hear that big sucking in of air?

    That is the antis getting ready to scream bloody Hell!!!!

  16. beobrigitte says:

    Initially the turnout for the Brussels demonstration seems to be low, considering the number of European countries affected by the smoking ban. But then, as Frank quite rightly points out, unlike the anti-smokers, we have no “Fuehrer” and no dictated programme to follow.
    Next time there will be more people there!!

    Perhaps the Bulgarians have taken notice of the damage smoking bans cause in our countries and therefore their turnout was immediately around 2500 people. Well done, Bulgarians, you have been very encouraging!

    Incidentally, has anybody noticed that the antis are (ab)using whingeing and whining women to campaign for smoking bans? In Germany they do and I see, the health minister in Bulgaria is also a what’s-her-name in NRW (latest Bundesland invaded by the antis).
    Aren’t we supposed to live in times of TOTAL Equality? In which case the gender is no protection any more. Let’s line up and treat them EQUAL and going for (Verbal) Feuer frei!!!!!

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