The current anti-smoking campaign
is not about children or public health ...

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Anti-Smoking Hysteria

Today's Anti-Smoking Hysteria is no haphazard accidental development. In fact, it has been engineered, funded, and very intentionally generated by powerful economic interests that stand to make zillions by making you and other smokers suffer hugely unfair punitive taxation, social ostracism, invasive and humiliating legal bans and social taboos, tax attacks, embarrassment, and psychological distress.

The interests behind the recent hysteria are known today as the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex. They are the most powerful economic force on earth after the Military Industrial Complex and, perhaps, Big Oil. This blindly profit driven force has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into bogus junk science and international anti-smoking campaigns. They're doing this, of course, because they stand to make even larger amounts in the lucrative smoking cessation business. Have we been had by them? You bet we have!

Deception #1: PUBLIC HEALTH.
Central to any socialist movement is the idea that whatever a bureaucracy does is for the "public good." Hence, we have seen the rise of phrases like, "health care crisis," "pediatric crisis," and some of their most persuasive rhetoric, "it's for the children," and "it's the right thing to do." More recently we've seen the rise in popularity and effectiveness of the phrase, "war on terrorism."

It's been said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it. Today, a growing number of uninformed and simple minded Americans have bought into the lies.

There may be a health care crisis, but not the kind these Socialists are wanting you to believe. Rising costs in our health care system and the drain on Medicare is not caused by smokers... it's caused by the explosion of an AIDS epidemic among the homosexual and intravenous drug user community. Insurance rates aren't skyrocketing because of health care costs for smokers... it's caused by out of control health care costs of homosexual domestic partners with AIDS. In the US, AIDS is the number one killer of African American men ages 25 and 44 and the second leading cause of death for black women of that age group. (US Department of Health and Human Services 10/28/98)

Major corporation after corporation has begun extending health care coverage to homosexual couples in the battle against AIDS.

With acontrived crisis as its centerpiece, government and social propagandists have sprung into action with elaborate public relations campaigns whipping the public into a frightened frenzy where they willingly and blindly submit themselves to a money and power hungry cadre of statists. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have passed sham legislation that does nothing for public health, does not address their stated goals of reducing teen smoking, but rather raises taxes on the middle-class and extends the size and authority of government over private lives.

What's been their rationale supporting their grab for money and power? Fear, fear, and more distorted fear! It's the same process the govenment used in an earlier time with their "Reefer Madness" propaganda campaign. Like then, nearly all the recent tobacco legislation has been based on bogus and discredited research.

In the '60's they told us that taking a toke off that marijuana cigarette turned people into sex crazed murderers. Today they tell us that people who light up in public and puff on their cigarettes not only put themselves at risk but also is causing cancer in those non-smokers around them.

Well, the fact is that marijuana smokers were not transformed into sex crazed killers in the 1960's and passive or secondhand smoke is not causing cancer in anybody today.

So, why are we being told these lies?

Read on and I'll try to explain it to you.

The greedy tax-and-spend statists who want to control you and take more of your money are absorbed in convincing you that because of a contrived health problem associated with cigarette smoking and second hand smoke you should willingly give them your money. To bolster their tax-and-spend motives, they fabricated yet another "crisis" in America -- a "health care crisis" and say tax increases are necessary "to protect the children."

What money they don't get from tax increases, they plan to get through litigation.

Anti-smoking liberals have for years siphoned billions of tax dollars, via Federal and State Grant Money, the ASSIST and IMPACT programs are a primary source, and diverted charitable contribution dollars to their coffers under the guise of improving health and saving children. Funding the anti-smoking groups with public funds, or any other social group with "an ax to grind", is nothing more than buying votes and a way to circumvent the laws that prohibit Government employees from using public funds to promote their own social agenda.

Joe Camel made Me Do It!

Socialists throughout the government and society began their assault by creating an atmosphere of hateful distrust and by turning public opinion from the tobacco companies accompanied with an avalanche of misleading PR designed to frighten the public. Controlling public opinion was paramount if they were to succeed in extorting billions of dollars from a legal industry and raising taxes on Americans least able to afford it.

The Washington "spin doctors" have successfully twisted the facts about tobacco and smoking and the news media has fed those lies to the American public. Social engineers manipulating the American media went to great lengths to make tobacco industry executives out to be nothing less than liars.

An early success was redefining the tobacco industry, calling it "Big Tobacco," playing on the public's aversion to "Big Government." Lawyers bringing suits against the tobacco industry developed various theories to show the tobacco industry committed a fraud against the American public. They claimed documents have shown that the tobacco industry lawyers controlled scientific research in an attempt to hide data that was damaging to the industry (not unlike any industry), that the tobacco industry has hidden the dangers of smoking (ignoring the fact that everyone already knew of the dangers), that they manipulated the nicotine content of cigarettes to addict more people, and that they targeted children in their advertising (ah yes, the popular "for the children" theme).

Never mind that Americans have been warned since the 1950s of the dangers associated with smoking. Thomas DiBacco, a retired American University history professor from Palm Beach, testified in the Miami Florida lawsuite that hundreds of articles published in the 1950s and '60s warned the public that heavy smoking causes lung cancer and other debilitating diseases. He cited a 1957 story in the Detroit Free Press, ``Doctors are indicting cigarettes, that smoking cuts your life span by seven years.'' DiBacco said 94.2 percent of 556 smoking-related articles published between 1950 and 1963 stressed the health risks of cigarettes. Only 2.3 percent of those articles emphasized the industry's downplaying of those risks. [Miami Herald, Feb. 8, 2000]

Isn't it ironic that these same lawyers, government officials, and other politicians accusing others of lying have perfected the art of lying (who can forget the long string of lies coming from our highest elected official, Bill Clinton). Basing their arguments on fraudulent and bogus research, these corrupt politicians successfully convinced much of the American public and a few activist judges that more private wealth should be turned over to the government.

Dare I remind you who has a tremendous financial motive to convince you the tobacco companies are at fault? These same lawyers making these wild accusations will earn BILLIONS of dollars after they turn you to their position.

Who's Lying?
Socialist liberals have for years been lying to the American public. The same folks that point accusing fingers at Tobacco industry executives are the ones who participated in Bill Clinton's illicit antics in Arkansas and have for at least the past 10 years covered up the numerous criminal activities of Bill Clinton and lied to the American public about his illegal and immoral activities. Most of those in influential government posts levying complaints against the tobacco industry were put there by the Bill Clinton political machine. Keep in mind also that the vast majority of those in Congress are attorneys with an unspoken affiliation to the same brotherhood of attorneys who will be earning billions of dollars in the coming years. It wouldn't be right for them to spoil the beds they will be sleeping in when they leave public office.

What's the Motivation?
Raising taxes is nothing new to liberal tax-and-spend Democrats. The U.S. Congress rejected the settlement with the tobacco industry that was an attempt to address youth smoking and instead proposed to impose a HALF A TRILLION dollars in new taxes and to create 17 new bureaucracies to control another American industry. That effort, too, was defeated in Congress as the McCain Bill became bloated with extravagant spending that had nothing to do with smoking.

Sadly, many Republicans who were elected with the mandate of no new taxes has joined the effort to steal more of your money. They have been forced to by the successful PR campaign slogan, "Big Tobacco or Kids?" Never mind truth! Liberals would have you believe that anyone opposing their efforts of the government takeover of another American industry and their welfare state caring for your children is necessarily supporting youth smoking. How ridiculous, but effective.

"Most people don't like taxes, but about three-quarters of the people polled in the state of New Jersey feel that an increase in the cigarette tax is good," said state Assemblyman Kip Bateman.

Most states have enacted cigarette-tax increases or other legislation designed to discourage smoking or lessen people's exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington lobbying group. In Alaska smokers pay $1 per pack in taxes. Washington lifts 82.5 cents from smokers pockets for every pack they buy. In New Jersey smokers pockets were picked by their legislators when they doubled their tax on cigarettes. The new 80 cent tax will be used to pay the costs of medical care for indigent people without medical insurance. Some states (notably California and Massachusetts) have a special indignity reserved for smokers: They must pay for their own persecution. In California, an additional 25 cents per pack tax on cigarettes was passed in 1988 to be used for cancer research, 5%; wetlands, 5%; indigent medical care, 40%; and "education" - read anti-smoker campaign - 50%.

Recovering the Cost of treating smoking-related illnesses of those on the Medicaid insurance program
The national litigation, which was settled in 1998, sought to recover money that states spent treating smoking-related illnesses of those on the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and disabled and to prevent future generations from smoking . However, many states plan to use the money for projects unrelated to tobacco. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia, for example, have either decided or are planning to spend nothing or less than 2 percent of their settlement funds on prevention programs. Many others are using their windfalls to reduce taxes or for unrelated programs. National Conference of State Legislatures recently figured that only 8 percent of the money is earmarked for anti-smoking programs. A good portion is slated for "health care," but much is also going into totally unrelated programs like roads, schools and teenage boot camps.

How do the states want to spend the Tobacco Settlement Money?

• Arkansas wants the money to establish health education centers in the Mississippi Delta, bolster minority health programs, increased Medicaid coverage for pregnant women, expanded benefits for the elderly, and eventually extend coverage to everyone who lives at or below the poverty level. In addition, they want the money to fund medical research for Alzheimer's disease. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , Jan. 22, 2000]
• California wants to spend the money on childhood development programs, child care, and to fund programs that would allow health care workers to identify and track children for future services. [Los Angeles Times , Jan. 20, 2000] An initiative that would have required the state and counties to spend their share of the national tobacco settlement entirely on health care was scrapped in favor of the Orange county supervisors' plan to use most of the windfall to pay off its bankruptcy debt and to add jail beds. [Orange County Register , Jan. 29, 2000] The city of Los Angeles wants to use their share of the tobacco money to pay for lawsuits in the Rampart police scandal. [Los Angeles Times , Feb 20, 2000] In the Bay area, they plan to spend the money on capital improvements for the Alameda County Medical Center or renovations for Benicia's police station.
• Colorado has passed legislation to use their share of the booty to subsidize prescription drug costs and pay for primary care to at-risk newborns. [Associated Press, Mar. 9, 2000]
• Connecticut wants to fund education, new roads, and prisons.
• Delaware would like to use their portion of the settlement to add nine staffers in the Department of Health and Social Services, fund the state's "pill bill" prescription- assistance plan, help the un- and underinsured, and buy automatic heart defibrillators. [The News Journal, Mar. 28, 2000]
• Idaho doesn't plan to spend any of the money, rather they want to invest the money and spend only the interest. Governor Kempthorne has said that health advocacy, state building construction and academic scholarships should be priorities for the money.
• Illinois wants to use the money for tax relief. [Chicago Tribune, 4/21/2000]
• Indiana will spend the money on a children's health insurance program and wants to help low income senior citizens pay for prescription drugs. [Associated Press, 1/28/2000]
• Kansas intends to use all $70 million of this year's settlement to fund the state budget rather than health care. [Topeka Capitol Journal, Dec. 30, 1999]
• Maryland proposed tobacco-settlement funds be used for a teacher pay raise. [SunSpot, February 27, 2000]
• Minnesota wants to use a large share for medical student stipends. [Associated Press, Mar. 9, 2000]
• Nevada plans to use their share of the booty to help low-income senior citizens pay for prescription drugs. [Las Vegas Sun, Mar. 28, 2000]
• New Jersey wants the money to provide free or subsidized health care to thousands of low- and moderate-income New Jerseyans [The Record , Jan. 22, 2000], reimburse hospitals for treating uninsured patients, provise mental health services in prisons, programs to care for the elderly, help low-income seniors pay for prescription drugs, and create a fund to bail out health maintenance organizations that go under. A whopping 8% of the money would be used on programs that discourage children from smoking and help others to quit. [The Record , Jan. 27, 2000]
• Ohio plans to use some of the money to help rebuild or replace aging Ohio public school buildings. [Cleveland Live, Oct. 28, 1999]
• Pennsylvania would devote the funds to a number of important health care-related objectives in Pennsylvania, including an expansion of health insurance coverage for the uninsured and disabled, an expansion of smoking cessation and prevention programs, home and community-based health services, health research, and uncompensated care relief to hospitals which provide health services to the uninsured. [PRNewsWire, 1/27/2000]
• Utah suggests using their share for the University of Utah Health Science Center, for a children's health insurance program and for a permanent trust fund for public schools. [The Salt Lake Tribune]
• Virginia's governor is throwing his state's tobacco settlement money into roads[SunSpot, February 27, 2000].

Notice how they are not suggesting spending the money on recovering health care costs for smokers! It's even more rare for them to use the money to reduce smoking. No, they want to fund the socialist programs, especially targeting children. These folks recognize that for their socialist programs to succeed, they need to win over the children.

In my opinion, states spending the money in this fashion is nothing short of criminal. Why the tobacco companies ever agreed to this extortion in the first place is beyond me. I find it ironic too, that the folks who were complaining about all the alleged lying going on by the tobacco industry, don't seem to have a problem with lying when it benefits them. The next time someone says something to you about the "lying tobacco companies," remind them about the lying Attorney's Generals.

I suppose the other side of this issue of the states not using the money for what it was intended for is you can pretty well count on them coming back for more. Once they have discovered the easy money at the trough, it will be next to impossible to wean them from the public/private nipple.

A conspiracy of thieves

One curious backlash of states rushing to spend their tobacco settlement money that is beginning to emerge is a shortfall in the monies being collected. Apparently states are slated to receive less money from the tobacco settlement than initially expected due to an expected nationwide decrease in cigarette shipments. Connecticut, for example, stands to see up to 10 percent less than the $166 million it expected to collect between now and April, said Marc Ryan, the director of the governor's budget office. The situation puts some state budget-crunchers in limbo as they plan to spend money they do not yet have on everything from education and health care to new roads and prisons.

Price increases, alternative cigarette sources, and marketing restrictions have meant an 8.6 percent reduction in the number of cigarettes sold this year by the leading tobacco companies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has estimated. [Nando Times, Nov. 25, 1999]

As predicted, state governments began looking elsewhere to make up their shortfalls. Eyeing more that $1 billion a year in taxes not being collected and paid by Internet retailers, state Attorneys Generals, citing "a direct threat to public health," concocted a back-room deal with the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF) and the nation's major credit card companies to stop processing credit card transactions with web sites selling cigarettes at deep discounts. Did the States and credit card companies go after child pornographers and the HUGE online pornography business? There's no taxes in online smut and therefore no incentive for them.

I wonder what was the incentive for the credit card companies to target online cigarette sales? Again... follow the MONEY.

How about the major bankruptcy law expected to be signed into law in 2005? Who stands to benefit most from this legislation? Could it be the credit card companies? These same credit card companies that are eager to jack up their interest rates to 29 percent or higher on those least able to pay. Can you see the connection?

In exchange for credit card company cooperation in curtailing discount cigarette sources, they get more favorable treatment when it comes to erasing debts under Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Black Market Smokes

Those pushing to steal more of your money told us that higher prices for cigarettes would not create a black market. They attempt to point to the higher prices in Europe has not created a black market there. Well, all I can say is they just simply don't know what they're talking about. When I was in Germany years ago, for example, I found a HUGE black market for both cigarettes and alcohol. In England, one-half of all cigarettes are sold on the black market.The black market is so common throughout Europe, American legislators are simply closing their eyes to the obvious, and lying to the American public about it.

In 1996 the European parliament warned that organised crime is now involved in large scale cigarette smuggling. "The FENEX Dutch distributors association estimate that the EU is losing $US775m in excise taxes from the illicit trade," said a Cape Business News report. "Typically the cigarettes enter ports like Rotterdam destined for countries outside the EU and therefore not subject to duties. Once landed the cigarettes false documentation allows the cigarettes to be distributed within the EU. Some estimates suggest that up to 20% of EU consumed cigarettes are contraband.

In fact, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said there is ALREADY a huge black market for cigarettes in California. It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the cigarettes solf there are sold on the black market.

There is already a lucrative black market for cigarettes in the United States and after Congress adds its $1.10 plus tax, the states add their excise taxes, and the tobacco companies add their share to recover its legal costs, etc., you can expect the price of a pack of cigarettes to be somewhere around $5 per pack/ $50 per carton. And you don't think there will be a huge black market?

In 1994, as part of a property tax reform package known as Proposal A, Michigan boosted the tax on a pack of cigarettes from 25 to 75 cents per pack, creating a huge gap between the price of cigarettes there and nearby states. Not surpringsly, this spawned a Michigan blackmarket.

When Canada steadily increased taxes on cigarettes in the 1980s, a black market sprang up and, at one point, it was estimated that as many as half of all cigarettes consumed there were smuggled in. "There are large profits to be made by smugglers, distributors and retailers," prime minister Jean Chrétien told the Canadian House of Commons in February, 1994. "In 1993 criminal proceeds from tobacco smuggling were upwards of $1 billion." As the smuggling became lucrative, criminal gangs engaged in bloody turf wars to dominate the market. Eventually, the government was forced to cut taxes to reduce the smuggling and crime its actions had nurtured. [Source: Perspective, "Up In Smoke," Investor's Business Daily, July 11, 1997.]

Surely, these legislators who want to increase cigarette taxes know this. They can't all be that stupid. You can bet they know there will be a huge black market and they know when that happens the American public will cry out to them again to clean up their streets from all the organized crime they created. They will eagerly pass more laws to attempt fixing what they broke and of course with it will come even higher taxes for everyone. It's a sort of socialists spin on 'job security'.

Why not Ban Tobacco Outright?

Notice, they are not suggesting a total ban on cigarettes! In fact, no one is suggesting a BAN on cigarettes. The anti-smoking lobby says that smoking is a deadly addiction, responsible for three million deaths each year and that because nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine, using tobacco is not a choice once you're hooked. Further they pull the "children" tactic and says the nicotine industry hooks 60% of its customers before they're even 14 years old.

If tobacco was as dangerous and the killer substance they say it is, wouldn't any reasonable person outlaw it ouright? Why don't the do that?

Because there is too much money to be made from tobacco!

The Federal Government does not want to ban tobacco. The Office on Smoking and Health reports there are 46,824,800 adult smokers in the United States providing an annual net tax revenue from cigarettes of $5,586,000,000. Tobacco will continue to be grown and cigarettes will continue to be sold. The difference, they hope, is that tobacco will be grown only by large corporate growers whom they can control rather than by smaller independent family farms.

Politicians don't want to ban tobacco. Tobacco companies give more money to our politicians than any other industry or special interest in the nation. They gave $30 million to Democratic and Republican parties in 1997, and was also the No. 1 contributor in the 1996 election.

Doctors don't want to ban tobacco. According to a federal database of tobacco quota holders, 300 of Kentucky's 7,000 doctors own the right to grow and sell tobacco while at the same time they are telling their patients they need to quit smoking.

Health Care Industry does not want to ban tobacco. Insurance companies have their eyes on the deep pockets of the tobacco industry to line their pockets with more profits. The argument of "recovering health costs" is nothing more than an outright lie to disguise the transfer of wealth from one industry to another.

Lawyers don't want to ban tobacco. They, more than just about anyone else, stand the greatest opportunity to enrich themselves through anti-tobacco litigation.

If you don't believe
it's about the money ...
keep reading below!

The tobacco industry in general -- and the small family tobacco farmer specifically -- is being targeted by the federal government in this latest grab for money and power. Not content with it's current level of control over the tobacco industry and eying huge repositories of wealth, the long arm of the federal government in cadence with the health care industry and trial lawyers is moving to confiscate and redistribute tobacco fortunes into the hands of government bureaucrats, health care professionals, law firms, and large corporate growers.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., supported for a plan requiring tobacco companies to pay $18 billion to buy out tobacco farmers and phase out the government program that supports their crop. It will be the small tobacco farmer who is hurt most by this federal attack on small business. At present, the government limits who can grow tobacco and how much of it. It sets a minimum price for tobacco and levies assessments on growers and buyers so the program runs at no net cost to the government. The federal government requires tobacco quota holders to either grow their tobacco or lease it to other farmers.

Small farmers in Kentucky and the Carolina's facing the loss of federal tobacco subsidies in the form of allotments will be forced to sell out to the large corporate farmers who can easily assimilate the loss of federal support through increased cost to the consumer and increased exports. Lugar's plan would phase out the tobacco program over three years and then let anyone grow tobacco for whatever price was offered by the market.

The current propaganda campaign being waged against the tobacco industry amounts to extortion by the U.S. government, trial lawyers, insurance companies, and many others in the health related professions. They are simply coercing your money from you through the spreading of fear and in some cases lying to you in exchange for higher taxes, huge legal fees, higher insurance premiums, and higher medical fees.