Disagreement with Tobacco Control Now Punishable By Law

What century or what country are we living in?

In the 17th century Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for holding beliefs that contradicted the church, forced to recant and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life.

These days in Russia, you can be fined for exposing children to homosexuality because it promotes social acceptability in defiance of the government’s position.

Surely not the American way, right? 

Yet when the issue is tied to smoking, New York City emulates both in time and place.

Leaning heavily on one of the soviet-style anti-smoker tenets that even the sight of smoking or appearance thereof sends a message that undermines their attempt to relegate it to a “socially unacceptable” and “deviant” behavior, Ex-Mayor Bloomberg, the city council and his health commissioner demonstrated that the truth is only what they say it is when it came to banning the use (vaping) of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) wherever traditional smoking is banned.

On the local level, government determination of what the truth will be to advance its legislative agenda is bad enough. But when at the same time a U.S. District Court judge, by court order, makes that established truth mandatory of others – dissent punishable by law -- at the urging of the U.S. Department of Justice, the breath of the Inquisition is on our national necks.

In regard to NYC, when former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona writes a formal letter to all council members urging them to reject the proposal to ban e-cigs because there was no valid social or scientific reason to do so, he’s dismissed and suddenly a disagreeing city health commissioner is more the expert than he is.  

Dr. Carmona served as the SG between 2002 and 2006.  It was he who spun gold for the rejoicing anti-smoker movement with the release of his 2006 Surgeon General’s Report, “The Health Effects of Secondhand Smoke,” from which emerged two press conference bullets intended to be the coup de grace to the head of all dissent:  “The debate is over,” and “no safe level.”  He was worshiped. To this day, those (his) words are considered unassailable by many.  

Today Carmona serves on the board of directors for NJOY Inc., a large electronic cigarette company.  

At first blush, it’s understandable that the council could find Carmona’s motive suspect – that he was serving the interests of the company for which he now works. But that suspicion can only be raised if one also entertains the idea that he is a man of questionable character who will say what benefits him at the moment. 

People can change jobs but a person’s nature is innate and achieved intellect fixed.  Carmona’s views can’t, at one’s pleasure, be scholarly gospel, and the next moment unreliable or dishonest. 

No matter.  Whether his press conference words in 2006 were, as many have charged, nothing but political because no support for them can be found in the actual Report or he’s dead right about e-cigs falling short of “unsafe,” he’s a man who was once revered for delivering the goods but who wasn’t even given the time of day now. (Perhaps a victim of his own doing – “no safe level” no matter what -- coming back to bite him in the ass?)  Buck the state dogma and it’s “Carmona who?”

On the federal level, in a racketeering (RICO) case brought against the tobacco industry by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled in 2006 that the industry had lied and ordered “corrective statements” as part of the punishment.  But it took until now for an agreement to be reached on the content and placement (top newspapers and on major TV networks).

No issue is taken with the prescribed statements about primary smoking.  That ship has sailed.  What’s at stake here are the ordered statements about secondhand smoke. 

They begin with the major tobacco companies having to state that they “deliberately deceived the public about the health effects of secondhand smoke,” followed by a “The truth is…” list of effects that end with Carmona Who?’s words, “There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.”   

That the tobacco companies have filed an appeal over the wording is irrelevant at the moment. Two branches of government acting in concert have just directed that not only will they not hear of disagreement but that one must be forced to speak the government line.  No less than a state religion has been established right under your “smoke-free” noses.  The gospel is only what the government’s Anti-Smoker Church says it is and you have no choice but to adhere to it.

What’s remarkable is the anti-smoker crusaders’ triumphant wave of this decision -- rendered single-handedly -- as the absolute “truth” (the tobacco companies had lied) when seven years later a jury of one’s peers in Charleston, W. Va., decided that five major tobacco companies, in a case brought against them by hundreds of smokers, “didn't intentionally conceal evidence regarding the dangers of smoking.”

Arguing who might be right or wrong is beside the point.  The point is that a bonafide difference of opinion does exist. Though the scales of justice could easily tip further in favor of a diverse collection of eight regular folk versus one possibly biased judge (more on that later).  

Nevertheless, in the world of Judge Kessler and her champions, how soon until these eight people will be ordered to retract their verdict and replace it with a government mandated corrective statement?

Despite the stranglehold our modern day Prohibitionists’ have on the flow of information, effectively blacking or drowning out opposing views in the news, claims of effects on health by so-called secondhand smoke remains controversial. The science is not settled.  In fact, the “undeniable” has crystal clearly been denied.

For instance, it was only a few months ago that an article on a soon-to-be published study was printed. Headlined “No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer” in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the available abstract says, "A large prospective cohort study of more than 76,000 women... found no link between [lung cancer] and secondhand smoke."  

Buy the full paper and there you’ll find Dr. Gerard Silvestri adding, "We've gotten smoking out of bars and restaurants on the basis of the fact that you don't want to die. The reality is, we probably won't."

So how is holding a position that is apparently supported by contrary material a lie? If anyone is deliberately deceived it’s we the people from whom this latest study was kept.  Find it reported by mainstream news.  I dare you.

There’s more.

In 2003 Drs. James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat had their study on secondhand smoke published in the British Medical Journal that concluded there was “no significant relationship between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and tobacco-related mortality.”  

Just this past July Dr. Ronald Bayer from NYC’s Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health emerged with his analysis about smoking bans in outdoor spaces like beaches and parks. “Far from definitive and in some cases weak” was what he concluded in response to claims that it causes harm to health, extraordinary litter, and influences young minds (promotes acceptability).

In an extensive NPR interview Dr. Bayer emphasized, “The evidence of harm to non-smokers on the beach or in a park from someone smoking is virtually non-existent.”

Criticism of these papers doesn't absolve any who force a confession of sin from a defendant who can provide tangible reason for honestly believing differently. 

That’s not to say they haven’t tried to essentially airbrush the counter evidence out of existence (the same way the anti-smokers have airbrushed cigarettes out of photos) to create a synthetic “no alibi” environment.

Kessler, in agreement with a DOJ argument as part of the RICO case, goes as far as indicting the Enstrom and Kabat paper as a lie itself.  That tacitly implicates all such studies as fabrications simply for its guilt-by-association subject matter.

Their work and reputations dragged into this case, these researchers’ honesty and integrity were put on co-trial without any representation.  Their part was what the behind-the-scenes leaders in the anti-smoker movement told the DOJ it was and cemented by the testimony of one.

Having already gone to great lengths to defend his paper when it was first released from a vicious attack by those with an “ideological and political agenda,” Dr. Enstrom’s response to this further injustice was to write, “The Judge repeated in her opinion a number of the misleading and inaccurate statements about my study[…] However, the Judge identified no specific errors in the study and identified no scientific misconduct by me. At no time was I ever given an opportunity to challenge or refute the statements made about me and my research in the USDOJ Findings of Fact, in the trial itself, or in the Kessler opinion.” 

The previous charge of bias in and by this court doesn’t appear so far-fetched.

“Deliberately deceived”?  

Considering that the aforementioned evidence to the contrary regarding secondhand smoke is but the tip of the iceberg, that’s as grotesque a charge as if a court ruled (as if it was its place to even do so) believers of human evolution are willful liars rather than leaving them alone to lean on a scientifically based difference of opinion no matter how hotly contested by others.  Would we not be aghast at the very idea that the debate was a matter of permission by a court at the urging of a government agency?

But in light of NYC’s behavior and especially the actions of Judge Kessler and the DOJ  how soon until Silvestri, Enstrom, Kabat, Bayer and the many other researchers who have reached similar conclusions or any one individual will be hauled into court and tried for the act of entertaining unacceptable thoughts, punishable by law?  If the crime is going against government doctrine why stop at industry?

Unless they want to admit persecution (“Big Tobacco is evil”) as the grounds for prosecution, the court is clear; it’s ultimately what was said, not who said it.  Galileo went down for asserting the earth revolved around the sun, not because he was Galileo. 

Let it also be clear none of this is to defend the tobacco companies that are but a red flag exhibit, but to denounce the elimination of dissent.

Despising the tobacco industry is no refuge for what the secondhand smoke portion of those “correctives” portend for everyone’s freedom to dissent when one is refused their honest belief, based on multitudes of material, that something remains genuinely open to debate.  

The NYC Council is Way Out of Bounds on Anti-Smoking Measures

The NYC Council has gone loophole closing crazy. 

Do you know, that if they pass the two latest bills in their relentless war on smokers that everyone in New York City becomes a potential smoker?  Not only that but a potential target of the cigarette police!

They've taken to redefining what constitutes a “cigarette.”  Here it is as it appears in Intro 1021-2013 – Sale of Cigarettes and Tobacco Products:

"Any roll for smoking made wholly or in part of tobacco or any other substance, irrespective of size or shape and whether or not such tobacco or substance is flavored, adulterated or mixed with any other ingredient, the wrapper or cover of which is made of paper or any other substance or material but is not made in whole or in part of tobacco."

Anything can be a "cigarette"! 

Anything can be conceivably "smoked." Just look to prison inmates who reportedly roll many things into "cigarettes" such as tea leaves wrapped in bible pages.

So too can anyone try to "light" anything in order to draw from it by mouth.  However, I point out also that "Any roll for smoking..." doesn't necessarily mean it must be lit, only that there be an intention (or consideration) of "smoking."

Whereby even a taco can be a "cigarette."  It's made of "any other substance, irrespective of size or shape," "the wrapper or cover of which is made of... any other substance or material..."

An ice cream cone, a leaf from a tree with bark in it...  all a "cigarette," according to this, if someone says or thinks it "for smoking."  I presume if someone puts a match to the end of it then it really is all over -- no question at all then it's a "cigarette."

(“You with the pixie stick!  I know what you plan to do with that.  Up against the wall!”)

In the council’s over-zealousness to make sure they've got “cigarette” covered (no doubt instructed by the anti-smoker organizations that provide them with the language for such proposals) so that no one gets away from their smoker-hating clutches they've proven themselves ridiculous.

And that’s not the end of their non-stop crusade to get every last smoker or anyone who even thinks about it.

In the same proposal there's this (all underscores mine):

"Retail dealer." Any person other than a wholesale dealer engaged in selling cigarettes.  For the purposes of this chapter, the possession or transportation at any one time of more than four hundred cigarettes by any person other than a manufacturer, an agent, a licensed wholesale dealer or a person delivering cigarettes in the regular course of business for a manufacturer, an agent or a licensed wholesale or retail dealer, shall be presumptive evidence that such a person is a retail dealer.
"Person" means any natural person, corporation, partnership, firm, organization or other legal entity.
Whenever a police officer... or a peace officer employed by the department of finance, including but not limited to the sheriff, undersheriff or deputy sheriffs  of the city of New York designated as peace officers..., shall discover (1) any cigarettes subject to any tax provided by chapter thirteen of this title, and upon which the tax has been paid and the stamps affixed as required by such chapter, but such cigarettes are sold, offered for sale or possessed by a person in violation of section 11-1303, 17-703 or 20-202 [all license related] of this code,... he or she is hereby authorized and empowered forthwith to seize and take possession of such cigarettes...

Got that? "More than four hundred cigarettes."  Four hundred cigarettes are equal to a measly two cartons.  So if you’re going to stay with friends for a while or heading out of town and want to bring enough cigarettes to cover the time you’ll be away, you cannot carry two cartons plus one more cigarette or more lest you find yourself presumptively guilty of being a dealer (thus needing a license) and your personal smokes confiscated and subjected to a fine. Note that the language is for otherwise perfectly legal (tax stamp and taxes paid) cigarettes.

Finally there’s their smoking gun (wait, that’s a “cigarette” now) – a tacit confession that all along smoking bans weren’t about the alleged need to protect nonsmokers from cigarette smoke.  It’s in this new legislative intent’s language.

All bills open with the sponsor(s) rationale for the proposal.  All three current anti-smoker proposals (one having been dropped just this week) contain the following:

"In 2002, the City launched a comprehensive program to reduce and prevent tobacco use.  By implementing multiple strategies -- including legislation restricting the use and sale of cigarettes and tobacco products..."  (emphasis mine)

As you recall, it was during 2002 that Bloomberg proposed and then signed into law the indoor smoking ban law that ended all exemptions and added bars, pool and bingo halls, etc.  This is what they refer to when said "In 2002..."

Go back to the city documents from that time (specifically from the Dept. of Health) and what they advanced as the rationale then was "protection from secondhand smoke."  For instance see these:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh//downloads/pdf/smoke/shsmoke.pdf

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh//downloads/pdf/smoke/sfaa-brief-book.pdf

From those, it wasn't about a way to coerce smokers themselves.

From the DOH's FAQ sheet on the matter: 

Q: This is America. Don’t citizens have a right to smoke, even if it hurts them? 

A: Yes, smokers are free to continue to smoke—as long as they don’t expose others involuntarily to cancer-causing chemicals. American democracy has always created laws to protect society from threats to our health and safety. Sometimes limits must be imposed on the right of one individual to engage in behavior that, while acceptable if it affects the individual only, is harmful to others. (emphasis mine)

Only as a "by the way" do you find a stray mention about "also helping smokers to quit" in those documents.  Over 99% of their documents' texts are dedicated to "secondhand smoke" reasoning. By and large it was sold, and all we ever heard, as a "protection" law for non-smokers.

Yet in today's bills the "secondhand smoke" ruse is dropped and the intent of the smoking ban is described the way opponents always countered its intent really was:  "[T]o reduce and prevent tobacco use...[by]... restricting the use... of cigarettes..."   There is absolutely no mention of "secondhand smoke" in any of them.

Just like you’ll find no mention (as of this writing just one day prior) of what exactly is on the agenda for this Wednesday’s full council meeting on their web site’s calendar.  The meeting is noted, the details section is blank. Dirty deeds never get advertised and the perpetrators hide like cowards.

NYC Marathon: Bloomberg's Finish(ed) Line

Please. Stop the diplomacy!  The NYC Marathon might have finally been rightly cancelled but Michael Bloomberg deserves no “did the right thing” back pat -- like a reward you’d give a cab driver who found something valuable left in his cab and turned it in.   No, this is more like the hostage taker who “did the right thing” by letting the hostage go only because the villagers were beating him into a bloody mess.

 

The New York Post was the first to touch the raw nerve that many were already feeling about the party atmosphere of the race. Reporting on the misplaced resources exposed it further. Good for them! 

 

But don’t, in the follow-up editorial on its cancellation, calm it down to a conciliatory, “Bloomberg did the right thing yesterday.”   Or write, “But he had no choice,” after he said, “We would not want a black cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we've decided to cancel it.” 

 

There is no redemption for Bloomberg here.  There is righteousness in holding a grudge.  While it was the right thing to do I have little doubt it was for the wrong reasons.  Bloomberg didn’t try to do what’s best for the city; he did what’s best for him – for his legacy.  (And standing there without race sponsors is just one more way to look bad.)  Point the direction of hostility at who he will but anyone who’s had a finger on the pulse of this man all these years surely could agree that “the race” and “its participants” were mere stand-ins in that statement.  Rather, he didn’t want the black cloud to hang over him.

 

To offer “But he had no choice” is to credit him with eventually responding to the outcry of needs from the public when instead he was caring for his own needs.  His motivation was not burning shame.  It was cold calculation.

 

Maybe those who don't get the swell of outrage over the original choice to proceed with the marathon either don't live in the severely affected areas or very close by, or have friends/family who do, or who feel connected just because they used to live there. Or simply aren’t born and bred New Yorkers who played stickball and punchball in the streets and bled blacktop.  Be close to it in that way -- not just hearing about it on the news or as a transplant -- and Bloomberg's decision was a grotesque one. 

 

The hard hit victims of Hurricane Sandy are still –- post marathon Sunday -- dealing with its misery in too many forms to list but beginning with the loss of family and friends, entire homes and even whole neighborhoods and ending with no electricity, heat, hot water, food and gas. It’s an insult to portray the storm anywhere near as behind us.  No one would suggest that this overshadows 9/11 but in this case it’s like the planes are still flying into the buildings a week later and beyond.   

 

In a situation like this you don't act like a host of an event that has gala written all over it. It screams "yeah, yeah, whatever." 

 

A lot of one’s opinion on this controversy might ride on the impression Bloomberg has already left on them.

 

In the eyes of many, this interloper from Boston, who immediately perched himself at the top of an ivory tower, has treated NYC as a product. Something to sell. All about people from the outside like him. As if no one lives here. That the occupants are nothing but window dressing for all to come see like animals in their habitat at the zoo while they sight-see, shop, eat out and go to shows. This race is just one more tour Bloomberg has put on his travel brochure.

 

Bloomberg has no “New York” – as a very part of one’s being – running through his veins or in his heart.  That is the yardstick by which many measure him in decisions like this.  The New York City “yo!” stops with him. The mayor is supposed to project the very essence of the city on all’s behalf.

 

The point of blame rests at his self-centered feet, not the individual runners (done wrong too with short notice) nor really even the organization behind it.  Bloomberg is supposed to inherently know, as the representative of the local citizenry, how something like this would make them feel and relay it as policy.  Listen to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talk  about the devastation in his state and it might as well be a resident of Seaside Heights speaking.  He’s totally connected.  He’s a New Jersyan. Listen to Bloomberg and he’s totally detached. He’s not a New Yorker. By Wednesday the latest he simply should have known that holding this race felt wrong, was wrong, and cancelled.

 

More proof that he’s so full of only himself is that he’d trade the safety and welfare of those crying out for more help for his own agenda. His ideology on gun control has gotten so twisted that he wanted to wave off the National Guard (who arrived anyway), explaining, “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.” 

 

His war on guns extends to "other" law enforcement officers?!? They’re our reserve military for cripes sake! Better that more stores/homes be at risk for looting or fewer hands available to aid in all facets of disaster relief than give the overstretched NYPD a hand (and residents an extra layer of comfort)? Does he even think of the NYPD in terms of humans who might like a chance to go home for a longer while to tend to their own families and personal losses and that more bodies – found in the Guard – will bring them that relief?  Does he even consider how many police officers lost their own cars to the sea while both on and off duty but make sure to get to work come… literally… hell or high water?  How does Bloomberg thank them?  By retreating into his fortress of extremism where insanity resides and everyone else is locked out.

 

And then there's the story about Bloomberg being the one to ring the bell for the reopening of the Stock Exchange. Sure, we all need that to be up and running but to choose that location (in terms of degree of devastation) as a symbolic gesture of might over the storm is the most elitist and cowardly display.  How about ringing a bell at a church in Rockaway, Breezy Point, Gerritsen Beach, Bergen Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Manhattan Beach, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Sea Gate or Staten Island where people with New York in their heart never worried about sliding into the manhole cover that was second base?

 

With the hearing on the proposal to ban big sodas still days away, Bloomberg said then, “Nobody’s going to stop this.”  Never mind that the entire point of a holding a hearing is to give the public a chance to sway the outcome.  Happen, it did, as we all knew it would because if that’s what Bloomberg wants then that’s what Bloomberg gets.  The smoking, trans fat and soda bans and his third term are all testaments to that. Of Mike, By Mike, For Mike.  Remember, we’re just inhabitants in the Bloombergastan Zoo.  So his relenting (for whatever the reason) something he wanted makes Davids of those responsible – biblical in its proportion for doing what no one could ever do before.  Relish in it.

 

While the very concept of the living and breathing NYC is below his comprehension, the concept of our government is over his head.  He has said on more than one occasion, when defending his measures that trample on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that “If the role of government isn’t [to ban these things for your own good] then I don’t know what is.” 

 

This NYC Marathon episode seals it. That’s right, you don’t.