Sound Bites

Comments on their sound bites

Tobacco is the largest avoidable cause of mortality in the world

To the excellent analysis Lies, Damned Lies and 400 000 Smoking-related Deaths, explaining the methodological flaws in the computer estimates of smoking related morbidity and mortality, we need to add that the definition of smokers as determined by the CDC (Center For Disease Control, USA) is very broad and calculates the risk factors of anyone who has smoked at least 100 cigarettes in his lifetime and either quit – irrespective of how long ago and how much one smoked – or still smokes either regularly or occasionally – irrespective of how long ago one started and how much and often one smokes – thus ignoring the linear dose response model that if applied properly would produce more realistic and credible conclusions.

The WHO lists the following as the top 10 causes of death:

1. Ischaemic heart disease
2. Stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases
3. Lower respiratory infections
4. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
5. Diarrhoeal diseases
6. HIV/AIDS
7. Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers
8. Tuberculosis
9. Diabetes mellitus
10. Road traffic accidents

Of these causes, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, some lower respiratory infections, COPD, trachea, bronchus and lung cancers are labeled as smoking related by the medical establishment.

See:

Smoking related disease	Current	Former	Never
Any smoking-related chronic disease	36.9%	26.0%	37.1%
Lung	20.9%	61.2%	17.9%
Other cancers	38.8%	33.2%	28.0%
Coronary heart disease	29.3%	31.8%	38.9%
Stroke	30.1%	23.0%	47.0%
Emphysema	49.1%	28.6%	22.3%
Chronic bronchitis	41.1%	20.0%	38.9%
Other chronic disease	23.0%	23.5%	53.5%
No chronic disease	19.3%	16.4%	64.3%

However, since there is no disease proper to smoking because they're all multi-factorial diseases, anyone – current, former or never smoker – can get a smoking related disease . As it pertains to smokers, despite the best anti-tobacco experts, including Sir Richard Doll, who testified in the Scottish landmark legal case MRS MARGARET McTEAR vs. IMPERIAL TOBACCO LIMITED, it could not be proven that had it not been for an individual's cigarette smoking, he would not have contracted lung cancer. This applies to any of the diseases labeled as smoking related.

When one looks at how smoking related diseases are distributed within the USA population for example (see chart on the right), one can draw complete different conclusions from the sound-bite Tobacco is the first avoidable cause of mortality in the world. Indeed according to this chart based on real people with real diseases giving real answers as opposed to computer estimates using cherry picked risk factors as their base model, not one smoking related disease is more prevalent in current smokers than former or never smokers. Not that we are implying that smoking is risk free but interestingly, these figures (and especially as they pertain to lung cancer) tend to indicate that former and never smokers are generally at a greater risk of contracting smoking related diseases than smokers. Remember that these figures (and others drafted with the same methodology) did not adjust for how long ago former smokers have quit or how much they smoked, or for how long ago current smokers have started and how much they currently smoke. They can and do include anyone who started smoking 6 months ago providing he has smoked at least 100 cigarettes, an 80 year old person that smoked 5 packs of cigarettes at age 16 and never touched a cigarette since and a person that has been smoking two packs a day for the last 40 years. Without adjusting for pack/year history, how can any conclusions be drawn one way or the other?

Additionally, not all tobacco is the same. Manufactured tobacco products, biological, roll your own, home grown, native etc. are substantially different. Various filters including biological green ones, how deep a person inhales, how much of the cigarette is smoked as opposed to burning in the ashtray can also make a difference.

For all these reasons it can reasonably be stated that any generalized statement on tobacco related mortality is not only inaccurate and unsubstantiated, but it can certainly qualify as inflammatory propaganda.

There is no safe level of exposure for ETS, secondhand smoke is in the same category of carcinogens as asbestos and benzene.

The no safe level of exposure for ETS sound bite originated with Surgeon General Richard Carmona's statement that he made during the press conference of his 2006 report: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General. but is not included in the report itself. The closest resemblance to this statement is on page 65, which reads:

The evidence for underlying mechanisms of respiratory injury from exposure to secondhand smoke suggests that a safe level of exposure may not exist, thus implying that any exposure carries some risk. For infants, children, and adults with asthma or with more sensitive respiratory systems, even very brief exposures to secondhand smoke can trigger intense bronchopulmonary responses that could be life threatening in the most susceptible individuals.

This is clearly speculative ("suggests ... may") and it only applies to people who are extremely susceptible. Specifically, he seems to be referring to chronic asthmatics but there is no definition of what "very brief exposures" are. Ultimately, 'no safe level' means that no safe level has been detected with accuracy; it does not mean that exposure at any level is dangerous. Although the more accurate phrase that is used by some tobacco control groups doesn't necessarily spell that out, it tends to be more honest by at least hinting as much: there are no known safe levels of second hand smoke -- 'known' being the operative word here. Much like potatoes, another nightshade plant that contains potentially harmful glycoalkaloids, it would take great effort to determine such levels. In the case of second hand smoke, the ends justify the means anti-tobacco philosophy will never allow such efforts to be undertaken. Similar to the conclusions about harm from potatoes, it's safe to say that common sense, decades of real life experience and epidemiological studies, dictate that there should be no reason for concern.

The Committee considered that, despite the long history of human consumption of plants containing glycoalkaloids, the available epidemiological and experimental data from human and laboratory animal studies did not permit the determination of a safe level of intake. The Committee recognized that the development of empirical data to support such a level would require considerable effort. Nevertheless, it felt that the large body of experience with the consumption of potatoes, frequently on a daily basis, indicated that normal glycoalkaloid levels (20–100 mg/kg) found in properly grown and handled tubers were not of concern.

70% of smokers want to quit

Providing their surveys can even be trusted for their integrity, it is obvious that the anti-tobacco industry is confusing people feeling that they should quit because of social pressure and fear for their health, with people wanting to quit. Stop the de-normalization process and the outrageously exaggerated scare tactics , bring back some measure and conduct the same surveys all over and let's see how many smokers really want to quit. And no, as much as they want to blame the addictive properties of tobacco for people not giving up , smoking is as pleasurable to a smoker as eating candy is pleasurable to an obese person. Both feel that they shouldn't be doing it because this is what they have been conditioned to believe, but in no way does this make it less pleasurable.

After decades of incessant inflammatory propaganda and de-normalization techniques supported and even encouraged by governments ( see Markers of the denormalisation of smoking and the tobacco industry ) portraying

Smokers as malodourous – Smokers as litterers – Smokers as selfish and thoughtless – Smokers as unattractive and undesirable housemates – Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass – Smokers as addicts – Smokers as excessive users of public health services – Smokers as employer liabilities.

And (from the same link )

routinely “exiled” from others, obliged to smoke in often unpleasant surroundings such as parking lots, city alleyways and the delivery entrances to buildings, sometimes in inclement weather.

Is it any wonder many smokers feel they should quit? Many pretend to want to quit simply to avoid lectures, harassment and even outright bullying from the authorities and their peers.

Smokers represent at least one quarter of the adult world population. If 70% of those remaining smokers truly wanted to stop smoking not only most of them would put the necessary effort to accomplish it like millions have done it cold turkey before them, but it is reasonable to believe that there would be more grassroots political pressure from them for governments to make it as difficult, inconvenient, costly and even illegal to smoke. There isn't, or at least there aren't any loud or publicized organized groups of smokers pushing for such measures. The only pressure governments are getting are from the professional anti-smokers, from corporate vested interests – mainly the pharmaceutical industry – and from some ordinary citizens emotional over having lost someone to a disease suspected to have been caused by smoking.

The Environmental Protection Agency has identified secondhand smoke as a Class A carcinogen.

The 1992 EPA report, which the fanatical anti-smoker James Repace helped considerably to inspire, was a particularly shoddy piece of work. The tobacco industry sued against it and in 1998 a US federal judge officially vacated the EPA’s findings on ETS (environmental tobacco smoke/secondhand smoke/passive smoking) and lung cancer.

The court’s finding against the EPA was based, for the most part, on the EPA’s doing meta-analysis on only some of the ETS/lung cancer studies it compiled, rather than on all of them, which the court likened to “cherry-picking", and on the EPA’s extraordinary move of switching from a conventionally used 95% “statistical significance” confidence level for its preliminary reports, to a rarely used 90% level for its final report.

The switch was necessary, in the biased eyes of the study’s authors, because the final report’s "relative risk" (RR) result came out as “statistically insignificant” under conventional computation. The 90% confidence level produces a tighter “confidence interval”, so on that unusual basis, the EPA result could be called “statistically significant". In fact, "statistical significance" is not, at any rate, any test of practical significance. It is the most base of standards and one which the EPA result did not meet by conventional calculation.

The EPA appealed, and won in 2002, on the issue that the court which had ruled against it did not technically have proper jurisdiction for the case. The finding of the appeals court was based only on the jurisdictional issue and not on the substance of the original judge’s finding.

Despite the EPA report’s especially abominable methodology, and its reputation as a slapstick blunder and a grotesque farce amongst knowledgeable persons, the public are largely unaware of these things, and tend to be impressed by big agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Thus, and despite all, the 1992 EPA finding, which was RR 1.19 within 90% confidence interval 1.04–1.35, has been, ever since its first publication in December of 1992, and still remains a favorite amongst the tobacco control crowd, for its usefulness in inspiring fear and hatred of smokers across the world.

In 1992 the EPA decreed, based on its virtually insignificant 1.19 relative risk finding with the jiggered confidence interval, that ETS merited classification as a Class A Carcinogen, or “known cause” of lung cancer, the highest risk classification in the EPA’s armament. Also in the early nineteen-nineties the EPA had declined to classify electromagnetic radiation as a known (Class A) or even as a suspected (Class B) cause of cancer. Its rationale for that decision? That RR results from studies did not consistently exceed the whole number 3.

With like caprice, the EPA has more recently classified sunlight as a known carcinogen. So should we all then live in caves? In plain, there is no reason to believe, and there is no rational evidence to support the idea, that ETS presents a risk of any ailment whatsoever. If we feared the common air, with all of its constituents, including cooking, heating, automobile, industrial, and myriad other sources of smoke, we would have to ban breathing itself. ETS is not a carcinogen. Combustion has always existed, and we can all live and breathe, above ground and under the sun, without hysterical fear. Fear of ETS is madness.

Exposure to secondhand smoke increases a child’s risk for asthma attacks, pneumonia, ear infections and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Asthma

If a child already has asthma, and if one of the active triggers for that child's asthma is tobacco smoke, then exposure to situations with a sufficient concentration of smoke can increase the risk of that child having an asthma episode. There are no exact figures on what proportion of children would be likely to experience this sort of thing at normal levels of social, public smoke exposure, even in indoor areas without special ventilation, but it seems likely that the proportion is quite small.

Three important points to note in this area:

1. There has been significant research indicating that exposure to secondhand smoke as a child may actually REDUCE the development of particular forms of asthma: the "Bubble Boy" effect coming from over-protection of children from environmental challenges may very well outweigh the more extreme concerns about "protecting" children from ordinary exposures to reasonable levels of smoke in the air. [1]
2. Secondhand smoke is just one of many asthma "triggers" and is by no means the major threat to asthmatic children. For many children a walk in the park or a visit to a home with a cat may be more "dangerous" in terms of setting off an asthma attack than hanging out in the corner Free Choice tavern kicking back a few brewskies with mum 'n' dad. (Not that we'd particularly recommend such outings ...)
3. Asthma has psychogenic triggers as well as physical triggers. To the best of our knowledge, no study has ever been done on the frequency of such things, but it is almost a certainty that many asthmatic attacks among children exposed to tobacco smoke are not so much a reaction to the smoke itself as they are a product of an emotional reaction that has been "taught" to the child by an overprotective parent.

Consider a child whose mother goes into "panic attacks" any time a cat walks into a room because of her worries about the child's asthma. That child may very well experience a full blown, and quite real, psychogenic asthma attack upon the sight of a sterile, fake "robot cat" walking into a room where he or she is alone – despite the utter absence of any real physical trigger. The same sort of trained psychogenic reaction can also hold true for the sight of someone smoking. Unfortunately it is difficult to study this without stepping over the line in terms of experimental ethics, but "thought modeling," as above, would indicate such reactions would be likely. Such reactions could go a long way toward explaining the unexpected increase in asthmatic and similar reactions to tobacco smoke – particularly among children – in the last decade or two.

Pneumonia and bronchial infections

A number of studies have indicated that children who live with smokers experience higher rates of respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia and bronchitis. Antismokers commonly ascribe this correlation to the higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) such children commonly experience in the home. There are several robust alternative explanations however: socioeconomic status confounding and dietary differences between families with parents who smoke and families with parents who don't are often brought up for consideration in this regard. Better done studies attempt to correct for such "confounders" but whether such corrections are accurate and adequate is questionable.

Additionally, an obvious confounding factor that seems to be very rarely considered is the respiratory health status of the smoking parents themselves. Antismokers will usually claim, with fairly strong evidence, that smokers experience more respiratory illnesses than nonsmokers. If we accept that as true, then it is logical that smoking parents will pass such illnesses on to their children more often than nonsmoking parents. Without adequately correcting for such a confounder it is literally impossible to say whether any increase in such illnesses among children of smokers has any relation at all to their smoke exposure: while it may seem unlikely to many researchers, it is indeed quite possible that the entirety of any such observed increase is due to such disease transmission rather than to secondhand smoke exposure.

In more detail:

• IF we accept the reasonable claim that smokers get some degree of extra respiratory infections due to either the extra "challenge" smoking presents to the lungs or to cross-correlation with smokers' health being poorer due to their average lower economic status or being poorer due to cross-correlation with higher alcohol and drug-use rates...

• THEN it becomes reasonable to assume that their children will pick up some of those infections purely due to germ transmission and therefore have a somewhat higher rate of respiratory infections themselves -- even if their parents only smoked on the dark side of the moon.

Ear infections

Ear infections are more common in children under 6 years old. Because their Eustachian tubes are not fully developed mucus builds up in the middle ear more easily. If the tubes become blocked due to an infection such as a cold or an allergy, they are no longer able to drain the fluid and this may lead to ear infections. Stuffy noses can be caused by allergies to irritants. Second hand smoke is only one of many irritants that can lead to ear infections in children more prone to allergic reactions. Household cleaners, pollen, environmental pollution, essential oils, pet dander, wood burning fireplaces etc. can cause the same effect. Putting the emphasis on second hand smoke while neglecting to mention the underlying mechanism of ear infections as it pertains to all irritants, is just one more Tobacco Control tactic aimed at labeling smoking parents as evil and irresponsible caregivers of their children.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is defined as the sudden death of an infant less than 1 year of age that cannot be explained after a thorough investigation is conducted, including a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history. [2]

The above "official" definition of SIDS comes direct from the CDC website. Despite the definition clearly specifying that the cause of death cannot be explained the Tobacco Control Industry shows no hesitation in spreading the notion that an unknown attribute of diluted tobacco smoke produces an unknown condition through an unknown biological mechanism that causes death at the hands of irresponsible parents. They even go as far as giving an exact number of deaths caused by smoking that were extrapolated from such abstract notions.

While the medical establishment treads very carefully when dealing with parents who have lost a child to SIDS in order to protect them from further grief by imposing undeserved feelings of guilt over possible or suspected causes that may have had nothing to do with the death, the anti-smokers have no problem labeling these parents as child killers.

Excerpts from a letter that tells the whole story from the SIDS Alliance to ASH US [3]

We, at the SIDS Alliance applaud your efforts to bring to the attention of the American public the hazards associated with smoking and smoke exposure; we must, however, object to your organization's use of misleading data and terminology when linking Sudden Infant Death Syndrome to your cause.

Statistically, passive smoke exposure is a recognized, significant factor for SIDS. To date, no direct causal relationship has been established. In fact, the vast majority of infants born to smoking parents do not die of SIDS. And, since many SIDS deaths occur in a smoke-free environment, we must refrain from making smoke exposure appear to be linked to all SIDS deaths.

The sensational heading for one of your recent Internet reports [07/30] "Smoking Parents Are Killing Their Infants" has gone too far. The fact is, researchers still do not know what causes SIDS. Avoiding known risk factors for SIDS may reduce its incidence for some babies, but offers no guarantee for every baby. Risk factors alone do not cause SIDS.

(...)

It is also important to realize that SIDS can claim any baby, in spite of parents doing "everything right." Insensitive generalizations about SIDS broadcast through print or the electronic media serve only to perpetuate the public's misconceptions. The last thing we need to do to parents who suffer this tragedy is stigmatize or marginalize them. The simple truth is that many SIDS victims have no known risk factors; and, most babies with one or more risk factors will survive.

Your literature states that smoking "kills more than 2,000 infants each year from SIDS." Any published figures are sheer speculation, or guesses, not grounded in actual experimentation. The best we can do at this juncture is talk in terms of attributable risk--and there is no consensus on what that might be.

So where does current scientific understanding leave us? It leaves us with a stronger than previously thought link between passive smoke exposure and SIDS. It adds weight to the recommendation that parents refrain from smoking during pregnancy and the critical first year of life. But it also leaves us still searching for the mechanisms behind SIDS, and a means of early detection and prevention.

(...) we respectfully request that you adjust your message as far as SIDS is concerned. While we support your cause, we can not do so at the expense of the tens of thousands of families we represent.

Studies indicate that secondhand smoke can cause cancer, emphysema, heart attacks and strokes in adult nonsmokers

Smokers who quit before smoking the equivalent of a pack per day for twenty years reduce their risks of cancer, emphysema, heart attacks and strokes to the levels enjoyed by those who never smoked. (This of course doesn't stop the propagandists from including former smokers in their fear mongering statistics of deaths caused by smoking; see Tobacco is the largest avoidable cause of mortality in the world on this page).

Suggestions that secondhand smoke causes ailments in nonsmokers is nonsense on its face. The allegations are nothing more than fear-mongering propagated by a health establishment which has become dedicated to abolition of smoking. The “scientific research” utilized by the abolitionists is junk science, primarily statistical blather, produced to serve ideology.

Nonsmokers are exposed to trivial levels of tobacco smoke. TC advocates point to “about 4,000 chemicals” in tobacco smoke, but as noted by Allen Blackman in Chemistry Magazine (8 October 2001):

Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms!

Secondhand smoke regulations are about respecting the rights of ALL people, smokers and nonsmokers, to breathe smoke-free air.

Business owners were always free to disallow smoking, in any workplace, including hospitality venues such as bars and restaurants. They generally chose not to, just as most folks generally chose not to, in their homes.

That is why TC campaigned for forced bans, which now are extending outdoors and into private homes. Despite ridiculous TC propaganda there is no basis for these bans. Because of the bans the people cannot any longer choose for themselves whether to allow or disallow smoking.

Smoking bans respect the right of anti-smoking tyrants to deny freedom to everyone.

Picture of an anti-smoking ad from French anti-smokers, above right, is an example of the type of respect smokers are getting.

No ventilation system can remove all the harmful elements of secondhand smoke—even if the room doesn’t smell like smoke the toxins are still there and are still a threat to the health of the people breathing in that air.

(Also see No safe level of ETS)

Filtration/ventilation systems can and did reduce secondhand smoke components to levels up to 500 times SAFER than workplace air quality regulations require as per OSHA standards CFR 29

Multiple AQ test results from around the globe confirms secondhand smoke is NOT a workplace health hazard:

• This University of Washington study tested 20 Missouri smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels in ALL 20 bars & restaurants tested ranged from 110 to 877 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.

• This Johns Hopkins University study tested Baltimore smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels in ALL of the bars & restaurants tested ranged from 30 to 238 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.

• This British Medical Journal published study tested European smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels in ALL of the bars & restaurants tested ranged from 4,000 to 5,000 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.

• This American Cancer Society sponsored study tested Western New York smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels in ALL of the bars & restaurants tested ranged from 532 to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.

• This St. Louis Park, MN. Environmental Health Dept study tested 19 Minnesota smoking establishments and found that secondhand smoke levels in ALL 19 of the bars & restaurants tested ranged from 15 to 500 times SAFER than OSHA workplace air quality standards require.

• In Switzerland top hotels are installing high-tech (and fashionable) smoking lounges to cater for both smoking and non-smoking clientele.

“Today’s smoking lounges don’t have anything to do with the old smoky rooms for Havana cigar connoisseurs, or worse yet, the smoking areas in airports,” says Antoine Wasserfallen, a professor at the Hotel School in Lausanne. “They are the result of careful research in design and new technologies.”

The technology comes from Swiss ventilation company Airkel, and could well usher in a new era of comfortable smoking lounges.

Short-term exposure to tobacco smoke has a measurable effect on the heart in nonsmokers. Just 30 minutes of exposure is risky.

The anti-smoking establishment has produced bizarre “scientific research” such as measuring smoke constituents in a room, which really require no measurement as they could be seen, and then defining the presence of smoke in the air as potentially fatal to humans, based on nothing more than the researchers’ own deluded and panicked belief system.

The “scientists” have likewise measured blood pressure or heart action of persons in smoky rooms, and defined minute fluctuations over short periods, these being consistent with rising and sitting, or laughing, or drinking a glass of water, as “caused by” ETS, and as signalling potential for a heart attack. The editors of medical journals, having typically the same neurotic belief system as do the fanatical researchers, publish such utter nonsense from time to time.

Occasionally, when challenged, even rabid TC advocates back off from their bogus suggestions. As reported in the 10 November 2007 New Scientist article “Science behind smoking ban called into question”:

Others feel that while there is no proof 30 minutes of passive smoking raises the risk of heart attack for a non-smoker it is not unreasonable to highlight the effect smoke has on the heart. "When you take the science and put it in the public domain you can't include all the caveats," says Stanton Glantz, a tobacco researcher at the University of California in San Francisco. The messages have to be simplified so people can understand them. ...

John Banzhaf, executive director of ASH (US), says their statement was lifted from a report by the US Centers for Disease Control, and though he admits the risk to the heart is transitory, he does not believe you have to spell this out explicitly. "It is such an obvious thing," he says.

The “science” on long-term exposure to ETS/secondhand smoke/passive smoking is statistical blather. The “science” on short-term exposure is simply a representation of the inability of compulsive blatherers to stop themselves from blathering on to infinity.

Recommended reading

Dr. Michael Siegel about Cardiovascular Effects of Secondhand Smoke:

• Anti-Smoking Advocate Claims that Seconds of Tobacco Smoke Exposure Can Cause Heart Attacks in Nonsmokers
• Letter Informing Anti-Smoking Groups of Their Misleading Claims About Secondhand Smoke Widely Disseminated; Now It's Time for Action
• No Evidence for Substantial Heart Attack Risk from Brief Secondhand Smoke Exposure; Cardiovascular Effects Appear to be Transient and Reversible
• Conflating Coronary Blood Flow and Coronary Flow Velocity Reserve: The Basis for Anti-Smoking Groups' Misleading Health Claims

Random TC Quotes

TC operatives have revealed plain daftness, along with intolerant, hateful, and ultimately prohibitionist views, with astoundingly arrogant frankness both in their actions and in public statements. Some random samples below.

• "The issue has arrived. We've gone from being 'those weird people' to technical experts," said TC favorite Stanton Glantz in 1986.

• Stanton Glantz in 1990 at the Seventh World Conference on Tobacco and Health: "the main thing the science has done on the issue of ETS, in addition to help(ing) people like me pay mortgages, is it has legitimized the concerns that people have that they don't like cigarette smoke. And that needs to be harnessed and used ... we are all on a roll and the bastards are on the run and I urge you to keep chasing them."

• Glantz in 1992: "and that's the question that I have applied to my research relating to tobacco. If this comes out the way I think, will it make a difference? And if the answer is yes, then we do it, and if the answer is I don't know then we don't bother. Okay? And that's the criteria."

• ETS/passive smoking "lifestyle epidemiology" studies began appearing in 1981. The stated aim of socially ostracizing smokers dated back nearly a decade from this. In 1971 US Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld wrote: "Nonsmokers have as much right to clean air and wholesome air as smokers have to their so-called right to smoke, which I would redefine as a ‘right to pollute.' It is high time to ban smoking from all confined public spaces such as restaurants, theatres, airplanes, trains and buses. It is time that we reinterpret the Bill of Rights for the nonsmokers as well as the smoker."

• The trouble with implementing smoking bans back in the nineteen-seventies was that smokers and nonsmokers got along well and did not want smoking banned. So few bans went into place. The thorny problems of general amity and social cohesion, operating under a widely sane perspective amongst the public, were addressed at the 1975 World Conference on Smoking and Health of the World Health Organization, held in New York city, under Chairman Sir George Godber, a British physician and health official.

A policy of “fostering the perception that secondhand smoke is unhealthy for nonsmokers” (as described by Doctor Gary L. Huber et al., in Consumers’ Research, July 1991) was initiated by Godber at the conference, with a specific aim “to emphasize that active cigarette smokers injure those around them, including their families and, especially, any infants that might be exposed involuntarily to ETS."

There was virtually no dissent amongst attendees at the 1975 conference as to the advisability of total dedication to smoking eradication, by any means necessary, or as to the utter worthlessness of persons who smoked. As Doctor Godber said:

I imagine that most of us here know full well that our target must be, in the long-term, the elimination of cigarette smoking. ... We may not have eliminated cigarette smoking completely by the end of this century, but we ought to have reached a position where a relatively few addicts still use cigarettes, but only in private at most in the company of consenting adults.

... First, I think we must ask ourselves whether our society is one in which the major influences exercised on public opinion are such as would convey the impression that smoking is a dirty, anti-social practice, spoiling the enjoyment of youth and accelerating the onset of the deterioration of age.

... Need there really be any difficulty about prohibiting smoking in more public places? The nicotine addicts would be petulant for a while, but why should we accord them any right to make the innocent suffer?

• The TC industry promotes social division generally, and specifically, between neighbors in apartment and condominium projects. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) avers: "The law is clear that there is no constitutional or other legal right to smoke, even in one's own dwelling."

• You can't smoke in your own apartment or condominium in Belmont, California. In response to an elderly resident who has protested the law, a health fanatic who sits on the Belmont City Council opined: "I don't know what to do, I mean, maybe she'll move." Move where? To your town? Where bans encroach more and more year by year? Where from there? Someplace you get to in a paddy wagon or a cattle car?

• Smoking bans are particularly cruel when imposed on the elderly, yet total smoking bans in assisted living and nursing homes are now common, forcing elders out into the elements. Baptist Terrace, a senior living facility in Orlando, Florida, for instance, banned smoking not only indoors but outside as well, even in the parking lot. Smokers at the facility were told in a newsletter they would have three choices: (1) stop smoking; (2) smoke away from Baptist Terrace property, and [sic] (3) leave and live somewhere else."

• Lady Elaine Murphy, British anti-smoker, cheerfully reiterated the “de-normalisation” (smoker vilification) policy as a continuingly vital tactic of the smoker pogrom, in response to a 2006 protest of the policy addressed to her by author Michael McFadden:

Dear Mr McFadden,
You and many others have completely missed the point about smoking and health. The aim is reduce the public acceptability of smoking and the culture which surrounds it. We know that legislation which discourages all public smoking will have the better impact on public understanding and perception of smoking as an unacceptable habit. Hence fewer people will smoke, hence health overall will improve.

• Many may not be aware that workplace smoking bans, unjustified in themselves, have metastasized into increasingly common absolute bans on employment of anyone who uses tobacco on or off his job. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), lawyer John Banzhaf's organization, espouses that "an employer enjoys the right to require a smoke-free workforce ... A nonsmoker workforce will clearly become the norm of the future. ... Any employer who encounters problems by refusing to hire smokers should consult a local labor law attorney for advice on federal and state law."

• The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a policy of job discrimination against anyone who uses tobacco on or off the job in 2005. As Professor Leonard Glantz of Boston University (by no means to be confused with the execrable Stanton Glantz) commented: "With the hanging of the 'No Smokers Need Apply' sign on its door, WHO has joined a long line of bigots who would not hire people of color, members of religious minorities, or disabled or gay people because of who they are or what they lawfully do. ... Other than the very rich, people must work, and WHO's position is that smokers should not be allowed to work."

• The aim of complete humiliation and criminalization of smokers was underscored by Action on Smoking and Health founder John Banzhaf in 2006: "Here we are literally reaching into the last frontier – right into the home. No longer can you argue, 'My home is my castle. I've got the right to smoke'."

• Common sense be damned; human nature begone; Action on Smoking and Health editor Joy Townsend said on BBC radio in 2012: “Well, it's very interesting because ... the tobacco companies always say that. If the tax goes up, this is going to increase smuggling. And they say it, it's one of their many deceits as it's not true.”

• TC junk scientist James Repace predicted violence against smokers in 1980: "People aren’t going to stand for this. Now that the facts are clear, you’re going to start seeing nonsmokers becoming a lot more violent. You’re going to see fights breaking out all over."

• Repace verbally assaults his critics (e.g. – forgive us for reporting accurately here – “I'm tired of your bullshit”, “get lost asshole”, “Fuck you, Dave.”)

• Hateful TC advocates virtually admit, in public, that they would like to see all smokers drop dead yesterday. A local resident wrote in protest to the press in 2005 after attending a Harvard School of Public Health meeting at which the Massachusetts Health Commissioner characterized smokers as “the scum of the earth.”

• “How punitive should public health get: smokers don’t deserve health care” (School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2012).
• In a manual on how to effectively implement outdoor bans published in September 2010 by Physicians For A Smoke-Free Canada (PSFC). Here are a few of their recommendations:

Whether they are funded by the industry or not, to stay on top of any organized opposition sign up for their mailing lists, preferably using an alias. You can also search online for organizations that oppose your campaign and sign up to receive email alerts, preferably at a home email address or some other location that doesn't link you to your position in the coalition. Be sure to share these communications with your key coalition members so that everyone is in the loop and you can collectively decide how to counter the industry most effectively.

... write (or sign ghost written) letters to the editor, etc. (pages 31 & 33)

... submit at least two letters to the editor each month during the campaign, under the names of different authors. (page 33)

For the next few months, strive to ensure there are positive media stories, letters to the editor, etc., that tout how well the bylaw changes are working.(...)Your job is to make politicians continue to believe that they did the right thing. It is not unheard of for councillors to backtrack on their decision and water down legislation. (page 48)

Plant stories in the media about non-smokers politely asking smokers to move to a designated smoking area or outside the smoke-free area and smokers complying. Create the impression that the bylaw is working and it will! (page 48)

• The more you do to embarrass people, the better: Dr. Susan Blatt, who was involved in the Utica, NY COMMIT antismoking program.

• They'll Just Have To Die: Reply from Jane DeVille-Almond, who advocates for smokers to pay for their own healthcare if they refuse to bow to public health tyranny, when asked what would happen to smokers who can't pay for their operation. DeVille-Almond is a nurse who runs training courses for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals throughout the UK and has also worked in Europe and the Far East.

• Smokers urged to keep taking Champix even if it can lead to suicide: Alisa Rutter, director of Fresh – the campaign for a Smoke Free North East in the UK – said: “We are talking about a fairly unhealthy section of the population anyway ... one in two will die because of smoking.''

• Philippe Boucher, long time Tobacco Control Industry advocate and reporter, has no problem interfering with independence in journalism suggesting that journalists should be paid to write tobacco control articles: From: Supporting African Journalists Who Report About Tobacco Control? How about giving it a try? The rate? $100 per story (would have to include at least one picture) and a $100 monthly bonus for the best segment. The rythm? one story per month with a precise deadline.