"The merchant has no country."
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one."
American journalist A.J. Liebling, Contribution, The New Yorker, May 14, 1960

"True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective."
American writer/editor Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News, 1920

"Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark."
Walter Lippmann, The Good Society, 1933

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
Learned Hand
American jurist
The Spirit of Liberty, 1944

"Materialists and madmen never have doubts."
G.K. Chesterton,
British essayist, novelist
Orthodoxy, 1909

"Free people, remember this: You may acquire liberty, but once lost it is never regained."
Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Swiss-born French philosopher,
The Sociat Contract, 1762

The quotes in this column (except C.S. Lewis) may be found in The Great Thoughts, compiled by George Seldes (ISBN: 0-345-29887-x)
They are under the topic: Liberty

March 2005:
The Misinformation Age
Science, Government, Corporations Run Amuk

Were you to spend, as I have, weeks of hours on the Internet looking up, reading and printing out studies and articles from multiple sources regarding secondary smoke, you would conclude that we, the public, have been misled. You would also have more than 2,000 pages of evidence to support this conclusion.

Since 1993 and the release of the EPA's flawed 1992 report on passive smoking, anti-smoking forces have harassed businesses and public entities into creating ever more restrictive anti-smoking policies while shaming smokers into silence and intimidating into compliance those who believe in freedom of choice and the American free-enterprise system.

This is the United States of America: land of the free, home of the brave. Or, at least, it was when I was growing up. Now we are on a slippery slide down a dangerous slope into a pit of governmental regulations that extend into private businesses and will, if not stopped, dictate individual behavior at home, at work and at politically correct play.

If you doubt this statement, do the research I have. Get on the Internet. Go to smokers sites and anti-smokers sites. Go to PubMed and print out the studies that show the actual relative risk factors and learn how to read the studies. Read the court cases. Find out who the players are in this tragic game of control.

Both sides refer to this as the tobacco wars. When I was taking international relations at Texas Tech University for my degree in government, the professor said there never has been and never will be a war fought on the face of the earth as long as man is alive that is about anything but money and marketplaces. He said wars have a stated cause that inspires citizens to fight for their country, but behind the cause is the reality of money and marketplaces (i.e., real estate). With this in mind, who has the most to gain in the tobacco war?

Not U.S. citizens whose choices are being selectively eliminated. Not the tobacco industry, whose product is being restricted and whose opinion has been discredited.

Then who?

Money and worldwide marketplace winners include:

1. The pharmaceutical industry. This industry has "the largest lobby in Washington, D.C." said Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, in her book "The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It " (ISBN: 0-375-508465/Random House hardback). Their employees have served on the decision-making entities of government agencies responsible for creating reports to the public and suggesting legislative action.

2. A number of so-called charitable non profits. The pharmaceutical industry has funded programs of non-profits such as the American Cancer Society, The American Heart Association, the American Medical Association -- need I name more? -- that foster the idea that secondhand smoke is harmful to those exposed to it. Did you know that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, an avid participant in the anti-smoking campaign, receives most of its funding from its parent company, Johnson & Johnson?

3. Anti-tobacco researchers. Studies in the field of secondhand smoke (a.k.a. environmental tobacco smoke/ETS) have been conducted by researchers paid by funding from the pharmaceutical industry, charitable non-profits and the federal government through the monies acquired from the tobacco settlement.

Two leaders in the anti-smoking cartel Stanton Glantz and James Repace have become rich off of their efforts. Any report their name is attached to must be read with the idea that they come to the study with a known bias -- their own pocketbooks. Neither is an M.D.

4. Big business. When smoking is banned in a city or state, it isn't the large restaurant chains that usually pay the price. It is the small businesses, the family restaurants, that lose. Many have closed. This pleases big business because it means less competition. Many waitresses, waiters and bartenders have reported lost revenue. Their tips have decreased. This reminds me of the first gasoline crises in the 1970s. Prior to the crises, a number of service stations across the United States were owned by independents. Afterwards, the major oil companies controlled most of those stations. You might still see the same people working there, but those controlling the station behind-the-scenes had changed. That was true for my father-in-law, who worked for an independent operator in Irving, Texas, prior to the crises. He was still there afterwards, as was his former boss, who no longer owned controlling interest in what had been his service stations.

My research on the Internet took me to smokers sites, anti-smokers sites, PubMed and other medical sites, liberal and conservative watchdog sites, federal government sites, charitable non-profit sites, university sites, and news gathering sites, among others. I have spoken with individuals on both sides of the so-called "health" issue. An attorney read the court cases to make sure I correctly understood the rulings. A medical doctor read the studies mentioned in the following report with the same goal in mind. Both saw more supportive evidence in said documents than I did.

Conclusion: We, the public, have been and are being told a whopper. When it comes to second-hand smoke, this appears to be the age of misinformation.

Unfortunately, some people don't want to know the truth. I remember a situation that occurred when I was in college. My philosophy professor at Texas Tech University ran afoul of the psychology department when, at the latter's request, he addressed the group. I know what he told them that so upset the psychology professors. He said that when they removed the soul from their discipline, they lost their science.

Now we have pseudo-science where computers generate reams of meaningless statistics for opportunists of every persuasion to use to further their own agendas. Little by little, they are dismantling our individual liberties and freedoms.

Time is past due to speak up for the truth.

Three page Report:
Report | Report 1 |
Report 2 |

Smokeless Tobacco

Texas Taxpayers Beware: For update on HB3 click here for smokescam home page

Taxes/Obesity: To read about Michigan targeting taxes from Internet sales of tobacco products and trace the history of the so-called obesity epidemic, including data about CDC and obesity deaths that show programs targeted at the obese are based on a statistical con, click here.

Since creating this site, I have discovered that anti-smokers twist the truth and have difficulty in a direct conversation coming up with proof for their allegations. Click here for a report and letters to and from the Hyatt in Chicago regarding the 2005 Conference on Tobacco and Health. Comments from this site follow the letters.

Much has been said pro and con regarding smoking bans and their impact on business. For the facts, click here for a U.S. study that uses the U.S. Department of Commerce's Census Bureau's Statistical Abstracts of the United States for the years 1990-1998.

Don't bury liberty!

Time is running out for Americans to, as the Constitution of the United States says, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

"The Constitution succeeded in solving the pressing problems the young nation faced in 1787. With necessary amendments, it has continued to provide a means for a nation, grown ever more powerful, prosperous, and complex, to grapple with the difficulties presented to it by a dangerous and interdependent world.

"Its future will depend on the ability of a self-governing nation of free men and women to find within this rich and living charter the way to confront the challenges of the centuries ahead. An active and informed citizenry is necessary to the effective functioning of our constitutional system. As our first Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, 'The people make the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will and lives only by their will.'

"All of us have an obligation to study the Constitution and participate actively in the system of self-government it establishes. This is an obligation we owe not only to ourselves and to our posterity, but to the Framers, who risked everything for freedom, and to the brave men and women who throughout our history have preserved the Constitution, often at the cost of their lives. Let us rededicate ourselves to the values the Constitution embodies."

David Osterlund, in an introduction to the United States Constitution, June 13, 1995