FOLLOW
THE MONEY TRAIL . . .
$
Money is the fuel for the War Against Smokers.
$ In 1964 the Surgeon General's report on smoking and lung cancer was published, followed one year later by the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act which required the Surgeon General's warning be printed on each pack of cigarettes.
$
Twenty years later, in 1984, the Comprehensive Tobacco Education Act
(Public Law 98-474) was passed. This Act created the taxpayer-funded Interagency
Committee on Smoking and Health, a partnership between the federal
government and the biggest of the non-profits, including the American
Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, and later, the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.* Their stated purpose was to
coordinate public and private tobacco research and education
programs. From time to time other well-known anti-tobacco advocates
also sat on the committee.
$ The
ICSH developed various anti-tobacco strategies, including raising
the price of cigarettes through taxation and lawsuits to raise more
funds for the demonization of Big Tobacco and to make smoking
socially unacceptable. A side effect of these strategies was to
contaminate the pool of jurors who would sit on future lawsuits
against the tobacco industry.
$ Of
course, the state and federal treasuries grew fat on tobacco dollars
as well as the largest of the body parts organizations, and lawyers
who were heavy contributors to President Clinton's campaigns. In
1992, the CDC (which houses the ICSH) began hosting meetings of
public and private attorneys who wanted to sue the tobacco industry.
These meetings are held behind closed doors, not available to the
public or the media.
$ These
guidelines for a tobacco control program were published in the NE
Journal of Medicine (3/31/94):
Essential
Components of a Campaign to Prevent Tobacco Use
Increased federal
excise taxes
Comprehensive
restrictions on smoking in the workplace and in public
Bans on
advertising and sponsorship by tobacco companies
Comprehensive and
enforced restrictions on sales to minors
Limitation of
tobacco-crop subsidies
Government support
for conversion of tobacco crops to other crops
Financial support
for tobacco counteradvertising
Enhanced
community-education programs
Divestment of
tobacco-company stocks by universities & public institutions
Support for
personal-injury litigation against the tobacco industry
Physician-supervised
counseling on smoking cessation
$ The anti-tobacco crusaders soon realized that simply telling people their health was at risk was not getting the result they wanted, so they decided to expand the problem--to make secondhand smoke a public policy issue. If a smoker's smoke was harming someone else, they could get the politicians more involved, which would please the pols because they could add more taxes to their coffers. It was just a matter of fitting it into the hot political agenda du jour by tweaking a few parameters here and there, beating the drum loudly, and eureka!- - you've created the perception of a public health emergency.
$ At about this same time, Dickie Scruggs, a southern products liability attorney and brother-in-law of Trent Lott, brought an exciting proposition to his old college roommate, Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore: a new way to sue Big Tobacco and win.
$ Under Scruggs and Moore, the movement became national. Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's top aide after the 1994 elections, helped Scruggs with jury selection. Morris urged Clinton to take up "kids' smoking" as a cause, which other aides thought suicidal until Scruggs financed a poll for Morris that would turn Clinton into the most anti-tobacco President in history.
$ To
further anti-tobacco aims during the current administration, it was
necessary to "prove" that tobacco company executives lied
in testimony before Congress about the addictiveness of nicotine.
Following are the previously accepted criteria for determining
whether or not a substance is addictive:
� (1) The
substance is a reinforcer, i.e., a subject will work for it.
� (2) More
and more of the substance is needed for the same effect.
� (3) Removal
of the substance will cause physical (not mental) symptoms.
$ Tobacco (nicotine) satisfies the first criteria, but most smokers settle on a specific usage and do not increase it, so the second doesn't fit. The third does not apply since physical symptoms such as fever, vomiting, etc., do not accompany withdrawal. By calling smoking an addiction, the definition has been changed to exclude the third criterion and weaken the second. Using this modified criteria to call smoking addictive creates a new definition, without which the tobacco company executives could not be said to have lied and the anti-tobacco agenda would not be nearly as strong.
$ By adding the perjorative label "addiction" to the unapproved habit of smoking, anti-tobacco forces can justify intervention--for the addicts' own good, of course. If an addict doesn't understand what he's doing or can't keep himself from doing it, that addict is a victim so others can intercede on his behalf. With or without his permission. They can take his money and use it against him, for his own good.
$ The well-planned and executed anti-tobacco strategy against the tobacco industry and the extortion of money from the smokers of America was brought about by greedy trial lawyers and federal bureaucrats, and politicians who saw a way to enrich their biggest contributors. Now the World Health Organization has weighed in and the Anti-Tobacco Frenzy will be carried worldwide.
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$ $ *The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
