Posted on 02/15/2005 8:24:48 AM PST by SheLion
Do people who enjoy smoking have any rights? Increasingly, the answer is no. It is essential to keep in mind that smoking cigarettes, cigars, or pipes is an entirely personal choice. No one is required to smoke. Millions voluntarily stop smoking every year. People have been smoking, and enjoying tobacco products for a very long time, but now they have been demonized and ostracized.
Using the power of government, to tax, smokers are being ripped off at every level. Recently, New York City sent letters to 2,300 residents giving them thirty days to pay the taxes on the cartons of cigarettes they had purchased over the Internet. It's the law.
A single pack of cigarettes in New York City comes with a state tax of $1.50, a city tax of $1.50, and a federal tax of 39 cents. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes will cost you $7.00. A ten-pack carton will cost you more than $55.00. Purchased at an international airport's duty-free store, the same carton retails for just $16.00.
There are few, if any, people who do not know there is an element of risk involved in the decision to smoke. There is risk involved when any American gets into his car and goes anywhere. Driving kills over 40,000 Americans every year. It is the price we pay for the mobility, and other benefits cars and vehicles provide. There is, in fact, risk in every human activity, including the enjoyment of alcoholic beverages and even the simple act of eating.
The U.S. engaged in a hugely failed experiment, called Prohibition, to stop people from drinking alcoholic beverages at their favorite saloon. It took a Constitutional amendment to end it. For many years now, the same thinking that imposed Prohibition has been at work to achieve the same outcome with smoking.
It is un-American in the most profound sense of that term. In a nation founded on the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, preventing people from the enjoyment of smoking runs contrary to the inherent right to enjoy this lifestyle option if you want.
Consider, however, some events in 2004. The first worldwide antismoking treaty - the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) - was ratified, and is now in effect. It is yet another example of the United Nation's intention to control every aspect of the lives of everyone on planet Earth. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is the lead organization in America, and it has promised to "now concentrate on enforcement efforts."
During 2004, six nations imposed a no-smoking ban. Among them were Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. These nations are notable for their liberal, i.e., socialist political agendas. Here in the U.S., so-called "nonsmoker's rights" became law in Idaho, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. At the local level, thirty-two jurisdictions passed comprehensive workplace smoking laws in 2004, along with "less comprehensive smokefree workplace laws."
There's more. Eleven States, including Virginia, where historically tobacco was the crop that encouraged its establishment and growth as an American colony, substantially increased their cigarette taxes. Consider the example of New York City, and multiply it by other cities and states, cashing in, while at the same time, banning smoking, indoors and out. That is obscene.
Now imagine a similar level of taxation on a candy bar, a cup of coffee, or soft drink. Think it can't happen? Think again.
ASH has big plans for 2005. It plans to "take advantage of a new ruling which now makes it possible for sensitive nonsmokers to sue states which do not provide them with reasonable protection from tobacco smoke pollution."
These suits will eventually cost taxpayers millions, draining vital financial resources from serious needs such as infrastructure improvements. ASH will push for more and more bans, on people who smoke outdoors on beaches, and elsewhere. In California, it is already against the law to light up on the beach.
Let's say you've just bought a condo, or moved to an apartment. ASH intends to encourage and assist lawsuits by apartment dwellers who object to neighbors smoking in their own apartments. In the name of protecting children, ASH will pursue laws that ban parents from smoking around their children, by getting courts to issue orders to ban smoking in custody cases, or by a foster parent, or in a car, while driving children anywhere.
All this is happening in the "land of the free, and the home of the brave," as well as around the world, where the U.N. antismoking treaty bans any advertising for tobacco products, requires health warning labels similar to those on products sold in the U.S., bans any secondhand smoke in workplaces, public transport, and indoor public places.
It empowers a vast law enforcement program against smuggling, and there will be smuggling, leading to cartels that rival illegal drugs. There's more, but the ultimate objective is to eliminate smoking anywhere on the face of the Earth.
This is pure fascism - using the power of the state to deny this simple pleasure from being enjoyed anywhere. And, when the national and global antismoking campaign is successful, these same people will turn their attention to banning the consumption of meat, fish, cookies, candy, potato chips, soft drinks, or anything else they decide you should not enjoy.
Do smokers have any rights? Apparently not.
From your link:
I think he was looking into the future demonization of tobacco. In fact, he might end up being right.
I guess these aren't "effects" of that "cause" then:
# An estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 35,000 coronary heart disease deaths occur annually among adult nonsmokers in the United States as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke.6
# Each year, secondhand smoke is associated with an estimated 8,000–26,000 new asthma cases in children.4 Annually an estimated 150,000–300,000 new cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in children aged less than 18 months (7,500–15,000 of which will require hospitalization) are associated with secondhand smoke exposure in the United States.4
# Approximately 60% of people in the United States have biological evidence of secondhand smoke exposure.7
# Among children aged less than 18 years, an estimated 22% are exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes, with estimates ranging from 11.7% in Utah to 34.2% in Kentucky.8
For every gay boy that jumps off a cliff, I break one of my cigarettes in half. Just doing my part.
Point taken...I haven't had my coffee today, lol!
I shudder to think, but something tells me that he (and you) wouldn't be too far off, if things keep on the way they are going. Why not? There are already plenty of people who think smokers who have children are just another child abuser. :(
I think it was a satirical prediction
Bout knocked me off of my chair when I read that garbage.
Associated with, is not causation. It is much the same as stating as fact that 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 35,000 coronary heart disease deaths occur annually among adult nonsmokers in the US as a result of riding in cars.
Are you positive it is the SHS or could it be air polution in general?
Now, for the asthma cases, that one is easy to debunk. If second hand smoke is causing asthma cases, why has the rate of asthma gone up while the rate of smoking has gone down. Using your logic, I would say that the negative correlation should lead to a fact that SHS is a useful tool in preventing asthma.
Your last two points indicate that people are exposed to SHS. No kidding.
"I haven't had my coffee today, lol!"
Your head must be killing you!
Come here little girl. I am a lesbian and a smoker who listens to satanic music, rock and country.......
bwahahahahahahaha........just too funny.
So how do "free" people and "free" private property owners handle this situation?
Free people know and learn what venues cause them so physical discomfort and then do not patronage such places again.
With all do respect to your wife, I would find it hard to believe that if you and her walked inadvertently into a private property venue in which others were smoking cigerettes and cigars, that your wife's health would be in suc "eminent" danger that before you have a chance to determine there is the presence of cigarette/cigar smoke and then decide to leave the premises, she would be "harmed" to such a degree that liability compensation would be justified.
The point of remark is that there is no constitutional basis for any government entity to ban the use of a legal product on private property, your wife's asthma withstanding, short of some provable, eminent danger to fellow citizens.
UK Sunday Telegraph...
Byline: Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent
Dateline: March 8, 1998
The world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks.
The World Health Organization, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report. Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week.
-------
The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - inhaling other people's smoke - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups. Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer.-------
The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers. The results are consistent with there being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer.
The summary, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood." A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of diseases."
-------
Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all. "It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk."
Pretty disgusting stuff if you ask me.
Heh heh...nah. I only have one or two a day, anyway. Seemed like a good excuse, though. :)
Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all. "It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk."
Statistics and Data Sciences Group Projects
I think any anti who tries to dismiss the findings of the U.S. Department of Energy labs at Oak Ridge, should be confronted with the question: "Are you saying that DOE researchers committed scientific fraud and that their findings on ETS exposure are untrue?"
I hope you're right. hehe!
That's really sickening. I was hoping those weren't your words or that you agreed with them.
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