Posted on 05/12/2005 2:03:38 AM PDT by SheLion
ALBANY, N.Y. - Smoking rights' groups, tavern owners and libertarian political parties in nine states are calling for a boycott of donations to major charities, saying their support of smoking bans is a threat to small businesses and civil rights.
"No more," says Audrey Silk, founder of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, which is leading what appears to be the first-ever boycott of the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association.
"We will stop contributing to Big Nanny," she said. "Why do we want to donate to groups that are out to ruin our businesses and demean us as human beings?"
Smokers' and libertarian groups from Minnesota to Massachusetts are targeting the nonprofits for their political activities. The smokers' rights groups complain that the charities don't just support research and people afflicted with disease, but use their considerable lobbying power to help write smoking bans in states and municipalities.
Silk says her group gets no money from tobacco interests.
Silk targeted the American Cancer Society's radio and print advertising campaign in New Jersey, which calls on residents to urge their elected officials to pass an indoor smoking ban. Such bans hurt "mom-and-pop businesses and are intended to make pariahs out of adults engaging in a legal behavior," she said.
American Cancer Society national spokeswoman Colleen Wilber said she hasn't heard of such a boycott before. But she said the organization's lobbying efforts to support smoking bans to protect workers from secondhand smoke draw local opposition.
"We know people lose their lives to secondhand smoke and we see it as our obligation to protect those people from getting sick or dying," said Karen Becker, spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society of New York and New Jersey, which supports New Jersey's proposed indoor smoking ban.
The boycott effort is supported by Silk's CLASH, the national Smokers Club Inc., Illinois Smokers' Rights group, Indiana Amusement & Music Operators Association, the Kentucky Licensed Beverage Association, the Metro Louisville Hospitality Coalition, the Cambridge Citizens For Smokers' Rights in Massachusetts, the Smoke Out Gary group based in Minneapolis, Minnesotans Against Smoking Bans, the Fight City Hall group of Minnesota, Taverners United for Fairness New York, the American Arborist of New York, the Madison County Chapter of the Independence Party Ohio, the Lakewood Hospitality Association of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Smokers Action Network and Tennessee's Yes S.I.R. group.
The groups are urging members and sympathizers to continue to donate to charities with similar goals including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Mary Crowley Medical Research Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Shriners Hospital for Children as well as local medical charities.
YEAH! And the Bas&83ds STILL use that "mistake" of 53,000!! And NOT ONE SOB in the media has EVER called them on it!!! And I haven't contributed to the usual suspects for ten years. The local bar & small restaurant owners here (Toledo) did the same thing (boycotted them) and MAN, did they catch hell for it. That amendment passed anyway, modifying our council/newspaper imposed ban, allowing bars, private clubs, bingo halls, and any restaurant w/ ten employees or less (IE:local) to be exwmpt. All ADULT-frequented establishments. The usual suspects spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads trying to get the amendment to fail, but it passed anyway, despite their efforts & a DAILY onslaught by the BLADE (our local print rag, the owner & staff of "journalists" DESPISE smokers! There is NO DOUBT in my mind that the reason they're now going for a statewide ban is because they're so pi**ed at Toledo voters. They won't take a loss lightly, you know.
Time for people to stand up and take back private property rights. This is a good beginning.
Titled "Lies, Damned Lies & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths," the article focused on the 1993 report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimated that 419,000 Americans died of diseases attributed to smoking in 1990.
The authors maintain that the CDC used statistical trickery to grossly exaggerate the dangers of smoking.
The alleged death toll included diseases for which the relative risk to smokers is statistically insignificant. So insignificant that groups such as the National Cancer Institute refuse to recognize such levels of risk.
Also the CDC failed to correct for variables, a mortal sin in statistics.
July 17, 1998, decision by Judge William Osteen of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Osteen nullified the EPA's 1992 assessment that there is sufficient evidence to designate second-hand smoke as a human carcinogen.
Judge Osteen determined that the agency had knowingly, willfully and aggressively disseminated false information with far-reaching regulatory implications.
http://www.junkscience.com/jun99/indystar.htm
Well, that is not their job to diss a group of people that choose to use a legal product. It is their job to educate and find cures. They make me sick and I haven't donated to them in years.
Just like the United Way. They will NEVER get one dime from me! OR the AARP. Damn, the list just gets longer, doesn't it?!
You better believe it! We might lose at the polls since "they" outnumber us. But by golly, we sure can put a crimp in their coffers by not donating any money. Wonder how they will support themselves then?!
Oak Ridge Labs, TN & SECOND HAND SMOKE
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?"
Bull Chit.
I wish someone would make them back their statements up.
Bull Chit.
I wish someone would make them back their statements up.
Isn't that awful? And the general public believes them. Anyone with no knowledge of this believe the lies they put out. It's just mind boggling, Joe. I'm sick of it!
I was miraculously able to give up smoking nearly 3 years ago but I'm all for smokers' rights.
Bless you. I hope I am the same way should I ever decide to give up smoking.
Thank you so much! 
Exactly!
They make me sick and I haven't donated to them in years.
Nor have I. I have also begun a campaign to "educate" everyone I come in contact with regarding their misinformation and manipulated conclusions.
Also, I was surprised that FORCES Int'l. was not on the list of those participating in the boycott. Do you know anything about that organization?
"Lies, Damned Lies & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths,"
http://www.forces.org/evidence/files/marim.htm
PRESS RELEASEFor Immediate Release: May 11, 2005
Contact: Audrey Silk (917) 888-9317
SMOKING BAN TARGETS TO ACS: BUTT OUT.
FUNDRAISING/ DONATIONS TO CEASEComing together as a first-ever nationally formed alliance, business associations and citizens' rights groups who have had their private property rights and free will usurped, will no longer help fund the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association or the American Heart Association.
At issue is the charities' relentless pursuit of smoking bans in city and state legislatures all across the country -- ban legislation that the charities themselves very frequently help to write and then promote to the general public. Strongly noted too is that by using their tax-deductible donations for lobbying for legislation they are teetering on the edge of violating the IRS code for charitable organizations.
The ACS, for example, is currently sponsoring a radio and print blitz, urging New Jerseyans to phone their representatives demanding a local ban. And, according to their own press release, Chicago is next.
Contrary to reports pumped out by smoking ban proponents, these smoking bans decimate mom-n-pop businesses and are intended to make pariahs out of adults engaging in a legal behavior.
Clearly, businesses that hold fundraisers for, and citizens who donate to, these health organizations are giving to groups that then use that money to destroy and attack them.
" No more," says Audrey Silk, founder of NYC C.L.A.S.H. (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment). " We will stop contributing to Big Nanny. Why do we want to donate to groups that are out to ruin our businesses and demean us as human beings?"
This misuse of funds -- funds that should be dedicated to more research and less "bureaucratic backwaters" -- is apparent to Smartmoney.com. In ranking the top 100 biggest charities in order of which "spends the public's money wisely" Smartmoney.com has the ACS coming in at #93.
Jim Avolt, a spokesman for an Ohio business group that's part of the alliance rates it even lower than that. He points out, "I feel the ACS, the ALA and the AHA should all lose their non-profit status. They were significant financial donors to the pro-ban forces at work in Toledo. And the irony of it was," Avolt continues, "they were using the same money we'd given them in donations and just handing it right over to our political opponents."
"What's more," Silk adds on behalf of furious smokers, "is that the ACS is also behind demands on state legislatures to make smokers pay more in taxes in order to legislatively control legal human behavior they don't approve of and to fund their increasingly ineffective programs. The states get millions of dollars a year through the Master Settlement Agreement -- a hidden tax already paid by smokers -- but because the states shortchange the ACS programs they want to shake us down for more!"
Incredibly, the ACS is behind taxation without representation when smokers are made to "pay up and get out."
This boycott will continue indefinitely, with more groups and private citizens expected to join in.
But it doesn't mean that members of the alliance won't continue to donate -- just not to those charities. There are thousands of worthy ones out there and they'll be the recipients of contributions instead. Charities like Make-A-Wish Foundation, Mary Crowley Medical Research Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Shriners Hospital for Children are just a few of the favorites, as are people in dire medical need in each of our own local areas.
The alliance agrees that cancer and heart disease research will not suffer by donating to other same goal charities -- and neither will we.
PARTICIPANTS
National: Smokers Club, Inc.
http://www.smokersclub.com/
Illinois: Illinois Smokers' Rights
http://garnetdawn.tripod.com/
Indiana: Indiana Amusement & Music Operators Association http://www.IAMOA.org
Kentucky: Kentucky Licensed Beverage Association http://www.fightthesmokingban.com/
Kentucky: Metro Louisville Hospitality Coalition
http://www.fightthesmokingban.com/
Massachusetts: Cambridge Citizens For Smokers' Rights
http://www.ccsr.org/news
Minnesota: Smoke Out Gary (Minneapolis)
http://www.smokeoutgary.org
Minnesota: Minnesotans Against Smoking Bans http://www.minnesotansagainstsmokingbans.com/
Minnesota: Fight City Hall
http://www.fightcityhall.net/
New York: NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment http://www.nycclash.com
New York: Taverners United for Fairness
New York: American Arborist
New York: Madison County Chapter of the Independence Party
Ohio: Lakewood Hospitality Association
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Smokers Action Network
http://cantiloper.tripod.com/
Tennessee: Yes S.I.R.
http://www.yessir-tn.infoNational: Private citizens
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
....the only requirements to be add to these statistic's
1.you died (not how or why)
2.you smoked at sometime while you were alive (not how long or how much)!
Bless you. I hope I am the same way should I ever decide to give up smoking.
Likewise. HAD promised my Mom to quit by year's end (last year).
Think that I would have done it (even after 45 years of smoking) had she not had a stroke, day after Christmas and her having passed at end of January.
Stress (my crutch and excuse) was too much.
Nevertheless am going to keep my promise and will quit in the near future--sometimtes before the end of year.
Right on----you smoked,you died.
I'm still waiting for an obituary that says that someone died and they NEVER smoked----in other words they died from non-smoking.
I'm all for the boycott of these charities---if they think I'm so "stupid" and distasteful I will give them nothing.
I'm waiting for the day when the State will remove your children from your care because they hear somebody (who doesn't like you for whatever reason) saw someone smoking in your home.
These people have to be stopped before they get any more powerful. They WILL come for your children if they are not.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.