You have no doubt been inundated with slick, professional propaganda and anti-smoking rhetoric. Anti-smoking activists are better funded than even Big Tobacco, probably second only to the government itself. They fly in "professional anti-smoking consultants" from around the world whenever the smoking issue is being debated. Stanton Glantz, James Repace, Joseph Cherner, Richard Daynard, John Banzhaf and hundreds of others are always available--for a price--to speak out against smokers. They will supply you with extensive "credentials," and list their scholarly work, and they will imply that those of us without that curriculum vitae do not deserve to be heard.

We may not have the degrees flaunted by the anti-smoker activists, but we have made it our business to seek out those dissenting scientists and researchers instead of getting our scientific knowledge from the popular press. It doesn't require a degree in the scientific or medical field to research, investigate, and learn about the methods employed by those fields. The opposing views we offer come directly from those in those scientific and medical fields who disagree with the fear mongering special interests. Because they are not here does not mean they do not exist or that their opinions are not just as valid as those who speak before you. Among those eminent scientists are epidemiologist Dimitrios Trichopoulus of Harvard's School of Public Health, Alvan Feinstein of Yale Medical School, Dr. Philippe Shubik, editor in chief of "Teratogenesis Carcinogenesis and Metagenesis,"  and Robert Nilsson, a senior toxicologist at the Swedish National Chemicals Inspect- orate and professor of toxicology at Stockholm University, who dismissed Stanton Glantz's "study" on shs and heart disease as a "statistical trick." Also of interest are Charles Edgley (a professor of sociology at Oklahoma State) and Dennis Brissett (a professor of behavioral science at the University at Minnesota Medical school), who believe the anti-smoker movement today is evidence of "A Nation of Meddlers." They define meddlers as "true believers who confuse the frequent validity of their derived views with a proprietary right to impose their generalizations full bloom on others."

We do not have the funding necessary to fly in experts or have slick journals and propaganda printed for your perusal, but we do have the facts and the knowledge YOU need to make an intelligent decision. Please extend us the courtesy of reading it.

Thank you for your time and consideration.