Smoking In Canada

This is written by my friend Frank.
The fact that the Edmonton Journal printed it says alot.

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/letters/story.html?id=aeeb5657-1cbc-4013-8bcf-010de771a3dc

Demonizing smokers

The Edmonton Journal

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Smoking at the Alberta legislature: This is yet another example of the extreme and disturbing direction the war on smokers has taken.

What exactly is the message Les Hagen and other anti-smoking zealots are trying to convey? Is it that the mere sight of a smoker will traumatize children for

the rest of their lives? That smokers are vile, evil people who should be quarantined or, at the very least, be kept out of sight? That contact with smoke from a pipe, cigar or cigarette means instant death?

If so, Alberta should import a series of television ads condoned and paid for by the province of Ontario that portrays smokers as being incredibly stupid and dirty, filthy people. One of the commercials graphically illustrates that smokers stink like dog poop.

Isn't it time the media, politicians and the general public take a step back and begin to question just how far the deliberate campaign to denormalize and demonize smokers has gone? In the name of all that is decent, it's the right thing to do.

Frank Zaniol, Niagara Falls, Ont.
© The Edmonton Journal 2005

Supply and Demand

The most redundant statement any modern corporate executive can utter is an excuse for raising prices related to supply and demand.

Giant corporations control prices on all goods and services at all levels. All the traffic will bear!!! There just isn't any competition.

Weather, war or whatever doesn't slow them down. They take all they can get away with, whether they destroy their markets or not.

Cattlemen have fussed about having to feed their cattle because the market won't provide a profit, while a good steak costs over $20.00 a pound at the grocery store. Ground meat went from 69 cents a pound six months ago, to over $3.00 a pound now. Gasoline prices were lowered because of consumer disgust, not supply and demand. Then there's medical care, insurance, drugs, energy, groceries, cheap labor overseas products and just about everything else.

Supply and demand sucks.

Twisting the Truth - Parden My French

Marx predicted that when money accumulated in too few hands, the workers would revolt and set up a communist state, which is a government owned dictatorship. All efforts to deal with this possibility do not constitute a communist state. Far right efforts to misinterpret American actions that clearly deal with the possibility, just make the possibility more viable.

Since Joe McCarthy, right wing garbage has done more damage to capitalism and free enterprise than socialism has. This junk is total B.S. except for the Federal Reserve part. The system provides free money to banks. As the economy grows, the money supply must increase but it shouldn't be increased at the expense of we the people.

These right wing bastards are worse than anti-smokers!!!!!!! Taking them out of government would certainly put the constitution back in gear. The shit for brains Supreme Court is dominated by the right wing and appointed by Republicans who have succcumbed to the idiots on the right just to get elected by a confused electorate.

Sam Nettles -"Real Texas Freedom"
http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/realtexasfreedom or http://realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/




Karl Marx stated in his Communist Manifesto that the following 10 planks are a TEST as to whether a country has become communist or not. If they are all in effect and in force the country IS communist.

1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose.

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management. Kelo v New London and the 6500 residents of Riveria Beach, FL currently being evicted by local Government who have sold out to Condo Developers.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State "income" taxes. We call it "paying your fair share".

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

We call it Death Tax, Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

We call in government seizures, tax liens, Public "law" 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of "terrorists" and those who speak out or write against the "government" (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

We call it the Federal Reserve. A credit/debt system nationally organized by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). This private bank has an exclusive monopoly in money creation and is directly responsible all inflation

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the State.

We call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) madated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver's licenses and Department of Transportation regulations. There is also the postal monopoly, AMTRACK and CONRAIL.

7. Extention of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

We call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture. As well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Evironmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.

8. Equal liablity of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

We call it the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two "income" family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920's, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000. And I almost forgot...The Equal Rights Amendment means that women should do all work that men do including the military and since passage it would make women subject to the draft.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

We call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public "law" 89-136.

10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

People are being taxed to support what we call 'public' schools, which train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based "Education".

Austin Bars Fight Ban

City tries to smoke out bars
In first test for ordinance, several bars face court dates
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, December 06, 2005

At Clicks Billiards, customers are not encouraged to smoke, but they're not exactly discouraged, either. There are no ashtrays in the club, and there's a "no smoking" sign on the front door. If patrons do light up, they are asked to sign a note that reads, "I have been informed that smoking on Clicks premises is NOT permitted, and that if I smoke, I must leave." But the note also says, "It is house policy that if you do not leave, we will not force you to leave, nor will we call the police."

In the first major test of how sharp the teeth of the city's new no-smoking rules are, Clicks and another bar, Mickey's Thirsty I Lounge, face criminal misdemeanor charges in municipal court on Dec. 14. A third establishment, Rack Daddy's pool hall on Riverside Drive, has also been charged with a misdemeanor, but no court date has been set.

Matt Rourke
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
(enlarge photo)

Greg Robbins of Austin lights up as Richard Hernañdez, left, and Jeff Roberts smoke Friday at Mickey's Thirsty I Lounge on North Lamar Boulevard. Mickey's will face criminal misdemeanor charges in municipal court after the city says it violated the no-smoking ordinance.

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If convicted, the bars could be forced to pay fines of up to $500 for each citation they face, said Bob Flocke, a spokesman for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department. According to city records, Clicks' two locations, on Oltorf Street and North Lamar Boulevard, have received nine citations since Sept. 1, when the smoking ban began; Mickey's was given one citation; Rack Daddy's, three.

The citations at the two Clicks locations include failure to remove ashtrays and failure to take reasonable steps to prevent a person from smoking, according to Carol Sahm, a compliance coordinator with the department's environmental and consumer health unit.

Lawyers who have fought the ordinance said the municipal court hearings are another opportunity to challenge the underlying lawfulness of it.

"This is a test of the policy," said Marc Levin, a lawyer who is advising Clicks. "There's an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of it."

On Thursday at 2 p.m. there was precisely one patron sitting at the bar at the south location of Clicks, a well-lit, large pool hall, and he was smoking. He had signed the policy, and a waitress passed him a plastic foam cup, ostensibly to put out his cigarette. He tapped the ash from his Marlboro Light into the cup and smoked some more.

"This is the only bar I'll come to now," said Michael Lewis, the customer and a former bartender at Clicks. "It's about ambience."

Clicks invested $70,000 in a specially ventilated room and another $23,000 in an air filtration system in a bid to gain an exemption before the ordinance went into effect, but according to Dale Bearden, a manager at the North Lamar branch of the pool hall, the city said that the room was installed too late and that the filtration system is inadequate. (Flocke said Clicks did not get the permit to create a specially ventilated room in time for the exemption.) The room remains largely unused.

"I realize it's a law, but I just don't see it as a just law," Bearden said. "It's not a smoking issue; it's a freedom of choice issue."

He said that shortly after the smoking ordinance went into effect, the bar's sales fell by 31 percent. Then, a month ago, after a federal ruling that largely upheld the smoking ban, Clicks shifted gears and began asking smokers to sign the form.

Nick Alexander, the president of Clicks, which is headquartered in Dallas and has 21 pool halls across the country, said the form was drafted with an eye to testimony given during last month's federal case. He said the city testified that to comply with the ordinance, a bar or pool hall had to put out no-smoking signs, pick up ashtrays and ask patrons not to smoke. He said city officials also said businesses should follow their own house rules when dealing with patrons who refuse to put out cigarettes.

"According to our house rules, we do not let people sit on our pool tables, but if they do, we're not going to physically remove people or call the police," he said. "We're complying with the ordinance as set forth via the testimony" in the courtroom.

Sales are still off 19 to 20 percent. The club has been in the red since September because the smoking ordinance has kept customers away, Bearden said. In the 17 years he has been a manager at Clicks, it had lost money in only about three months, largely because of end-of-year discoveries of accounting errors, he said.

"People are either driving farther to go to the outskirts of the city where they can smoke, or they're staying at home," Bearden said.

According to mixed beverage tax records kept at the state comptroller's office, the smoking ban does appear to have had an effect on business, at least at Clicks. The two Clicks branches paid the state $19,144.30 in mixed beverage taxes in August. The mixed beverage tax is 14 percent of mixed beverage sales. The next month the two Clicks branches paid $16,349.34 in mixed beverage taxes.

But during the same reporting period, mixed beverage sales appear to have increased at the Rack Daddy's location, rising from $8,205.40 to $8,312.22.

At Mickey's Thirsty I Lounge, about "99.9 percent of the customers are smokers," said Mickey Leathers, the bar's proprietor. He said his staff has a hard time asking them to put out their cigarettes because "they're pretty mean."

The Austin ban, which passed in May with 51.8 percent of the vote, prohibits smoking in most public places, including most of the city's bars and restaurants. It has more or less withstood attempts by bar owners to keep the ban off the ballot in the first place and repeal it once voters approved it. Bar owners did persuade a federal judge in October to reduce fines from $2,000 to $500 and prevent the city from being able to revoke licenses of businesses without judicial review.

As of Nov. 28, 96 complaints against establishments had been called in to the health department, and investigators decided that 54 of those complaints were founded.

"Generally speaking, the first violation we'll work with them, and the second violation we'll work with them," Flocke said. "After that, they'll get a citation."

The bars that face charges are "habitual violators," he said.

asherprice@statesman.com; 445-3643



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href="http://realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/2005/12/real-texas-freedom_06.html">Real Texas Freedom: Real Texas Freedom

Real Texas Freedom

Press Release
For Immediate Release: December 5 , 2005

Do Smoking Bans cause a 27 to 40% drop in admissions for myocardial
infarction in hospitals?

December 5, 2005

Antismokers claim that studies have shown that bans bring about an immediate
and drastic decrease in heart attacks among nonsmokers exposed to smoke at
work.
This claim was never true to begin with - the cited studies never separated
and analyzed nonsmokers as a separate group - and it has now been pointed out
in the pages of the BMJ that even the claim of saving lives among the
combined population of smokers and nonsmokers might be worthless.

While many making that claim may have believed their information to be
accurate, it is now obvious that its basis has been thrown strongly into question.
As Jacob Sullum noted in a December 1st reaction to the announcement, "An
effect this dramatic (i.e. an immediate and pronounced drop of hospital
admissions for heart attacks) should have been noticed all over the country..."

Just a week before the Chicago Aldermen were due to vote on a citywide
smoking ban, two independent researchers working together, David W. Kuneman and
Michael J. McFadden, unveiled a new study covering a population base roughly
1,000 times as large as the previous town-based studies. The new study
indicates strongly that rather than a 30% decrease in heart attacks, statewide
smoking bans seem to have literally NO EFFECT AT ALL on heart attack rates.
Incredibly the data even indicates that California's statewide heart attack rate
went UP by 6% in the first full year of their total smoking ban!

The data for the study and the basis of its design have been backed up and
expanded by well-known antismoking researcher Michael Siegel who has come out
in support of the researchers' approach as providing "compelling evidence that
brings into question the conclusion that smoking bans have an immediate and
drastic effect on heart attack incidence." His observation is echoed by
researcher Kuneman who asks, "Ever wonder why you didn't hear about post ban
heart attack declines in New York City? Or in Minneapolis or Los Angeles? Now
you know!"

On December 4th the British Medical Journal entered the fray with the online
publication of a Rapid Response by Mr. McFadden outlining the new research
and posing sharp criticisms of the earlier studies and of the refusal of the
authors of those studies to respond to previous criticisms and questions.
McFadden points out that the data in the Kuneman/McFadden study are fully open
for public examination and far less selective than the data in the earlier
studies and notes with pride that he and his co-researcher have been quick to
respond to all queries posted about their methodology on Dr. Siegel's web blog.

He also poses the wider ranging question of whether studies commissioned by
the "Antismoking Industry" should begin to receive the same cautious reception
accorded those commissioned by "Big Tobacco." The current study, as well
as an earlier one by the duo, were unfunded and neither researcher receives
grants for their work from either interest group. Kuneman sharply asks the
question, "Why the difference between the studies? For one thing we weren't
dependent on antismoking-targeted grants!"

At this point there appears to be very little, if any, real scientific
support for the claim that protecting nonsmokers from normal levels of exposure to
secondary smoke prevents any heart attacks. And it is this claim that has
always provided the impressive numbers upon which ban advocates have pressed
legislators to pass smoking bans.

Without those numbers proponents of extreme bans are left with little other
than the widely discredited EPA figures relating ETS to lung cancer and a few
isolated instances of hospitality workers who have come to believe that their
own cancers were caused by working in smoking establishments. Samantha
Phillipe, editor of the longstanding smokersclubinc.com newsletter, notes that
while it's always a cause for sadness when someone becomes ill that it's even
more sad when they are misguidedly advised to blame family and friends for
their illness.

Without a compelling body of scientific evidence backing them up, smoking
bans are an unnecessary and overbearing intrusion of government into the spheres
of free choice, private property and free enterprise. And the
Kuneman/McFadden study points up just how uncompelling even some of the strongest and most
publicised evidence actually is.
References:

Article:
_http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/hospitaladmissions.html_
(mip://033eaf30/="http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/hospitaladmissions.html")
2)Mike Siegel's blog analysis and followup comments:
_http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2005/11/new-study-casts-doubt-on-claim-th
at.html_
(mip://033eaf30/="http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2005/11/new-study-casts-doubt-on-claim-that.html")

3) BMJ Response:
_http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7446/977#123038_
(mip://033eaf30/="http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7446/977#123038")

4) Jacob Sullum's REASON column:
_Hit and Run_
(mip://033eaf30/="http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/12/the_vanishing_m.shtml")



###

Press Release Approved by Samantha Phillipe
President
The Smoker’s Club, Inc.
PO Box 814
Center Conway, NH 03813
info@smokersclub.com
http://www.smokersclub.com


Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of SmokersClubInc.com
web page:
_http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/_ (http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/)
Email:_ Cantiloper@aol.com_ (mailto:Cantiloper@aol.com)

Real Texas Freedom

Anti-Smoking tactics:
AS tactic #1) Don't debate---distort! If your opponent makes a valid point about flaws in your science, ignore it. Don't even read it. Then, mischaracterize his entire argument.
SOUNDBITE: "Oh, I guess if it says secondhand smoke is harmful, it MUST, in your twisted world, be a bogus study."


AS tactic #2) Employ, very liberally, the fallacy of question-begging. While you're ignoring the junk-science debate, pretend there is no debate.
SOUNDBITE: "Freedom? To do what? Give other people cancer?"


AS tactic #3) Spew glib enthusiasm like a brainwashed cultist! Keep repeating cheerful, exuberant slogan-type sentiments about the "smoke-free future"; combine the sunny optimism of Heaven's Gate with the raving of a demagogue mad on world conquest. Do this over & over again. You'll give your opponents a headache.
SOUNDBITE: "December 8. No more secondhand smoke in bowling alleys, bars, and restaurants. Yes!!! That will be a great day. I can hardly wait."


AS tactic #4A) Insult them! It's very important to hammer home the message that smokers, as a group, are fair game for denigration, insult, and general abuse.
SOUNDBITE: "i hope all you smokers get banned ... you are filthy and disgusting ... p.s. you stink."
SOUNDBITE COMBINING TACTICS 3 & 4A: "December 8 will be a great day. In fact, I'm thinking about writing to Gov Gregoire to suggest that Dec 8 be made a state holiday. I will suggest calling it 'Smokers Can Kiss My Ass Day.'"


AS tactic #4B) Smear them! Waste no opportunity to call your opponent a liar, hypocrite, or shill. Don't say he's mistaken or misinformed---say that he's a deceptive con-artist who's muddying the waters.
SOUNDBITE: "So Melle the Deceiver and Gomez the Distorter have been joined by Saprobe the BSer."


AS tactice #5) While accusing the other side of lying, spread lies shamelessly and repeatedly. Remember, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth!
SOUNDBITE: "Every credible, peer-reviewed legitimate scientific study has found that secondhand smoke kills."


AS tactic #6) Resistance is futile! Take a page from the totalitarians. Promote your arguments on the ground that your side's victory is inevitable. Pretend that political clout is a mark of virtue (in blatant contradiction to all of human history).
SOUNDBITE: "States that allow smoking will fall like dominoes, very quickly. No one likes to be behind the times. The ease and speed of passing smoking bans will increase exponentially."


AS tactic #7) Link your opponents to the tobacco industry, based on the most tenuous connections. If a bartender has accepted Camel promos, smear him as an RJ Reynolds employee! If a researcher worked at 7-Up while 7-Up was owned by Philip Morris, say that he used to work at Philip Morris---and if someone posts his research, dismiss it as "Big Tobacco-funded." Et cetera.
SOUNDBITE: "I think we can now safely store Fuzed's posts in the 'Big Tobacco Bullshit Artist' file."


AS tactic #8: Link your opponents to the tobacco industry based on no connections of any kind. So you know nothing about the person you're arguing with. Why let that stop you? Write as if he's linked to Big Tobacco.
SOUNDBITE: "Melle is reading straight from his Philip Morris crib sheet."


AS tactic #9) If you lose an argument, never fear---just pretend you've won! So your opponent backed up his position reasonably & consistently, with adequate references, and you have nothing to say. Just start saying you won the argument! There may be some inattentive and/or retarded readers who will accept this at face value, and their votes count too!
SOUNDBITE: (wait until the argument you lost is a day or two old) "You had neither facts on your side nor debating skills. Simply put, you were out of your league."

AS tactic #10) Shoot the messenger. Should your opponent quote the local police chief saying the ban won't be enforced, simply ignore the fact that he's quoting. Treat him as if he, & he alone, invented the idea of non-enforcement. In the same vein, should he quote a prominent epidemiologist who says risks below 100% are "insignificant," ignore the authority of the epidemiologist---treat the whole thing as your opponent's personal opinion. You may succeed in misleading some readers---see #9.
SOUNDBITE: "On reading all your angry, defeated, drivel, 'Fuzed', there is only one thing significant enough to be worth knowing. Exactly what are YOUR plans for breaking the law?"

AS tactic #11) For God's sake, keep your mouth shut!!! The anti-smoking movement has come this far without ever addressing certain subjects---e.g., the epidemiological weakness of the science, the lucrative smokefree-nicotine market, the fact that nonsmokers' rights groups and Big Tobacco both lobby for the same legislation---and we're not about to start now! If the opposition breathes a word on these subjects, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! (If you really want to say something, throw them a cheap insult.)
SOUNDBITE: " ... "
ALT. SOUNDBITE: "What's your agenda? Making sure the air is dirty? Hmm, stupid much?"

From: The Stranger Forums

Antis: Who they are

Antis: How to fight

Antis: Ban Alerts