A brief history of the War
on Smokers
What began as an honest concern for the public
health has, over the ensuing four decades, become a Holy Crusade, an
ideological war against one-quarter of the
American public funded with public money. These activities raise important
questions
concerning the propriety and legality of tax-funded
politics--the use of tax revenues by special interest groups to promote
one
side of a political issue. Such misappropriation
of tax dollars has long been recognized as inappropriate. Doing so essentially
forces taxpayers to contribute to political
causes with which they disagree--a fundamental offense against individual
liberty (and
constitutional principles). And it degrades
democracy, for it is an attempt by government to manipulate and manufacture
the will
of the people.
In 1964 the Surgeon General's report
on smoking and lung cancer was published, followed one year later by the
Federal
Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act which
required the Surgeon General's warning be printed on each pack of cigarettes.
Twenty years later, in 1984, the Comprehensive
Tobacco Education Act (Public Law 98-474) was passed. This Act created
the taxpayer-funded Interagency Committee on
Smoking and Health, a partnership between the federal government and the
biggest of the non-profits, including the American
Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, and later, the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation. Their stated purpose
was to coordinate public and private tobacco research and education
programs. This partnership laid the foundation
for the non-governmental organizations' involvement in policy making and
gave
them the power of another branch of government.
These unelected and therefore essentially omnipotent groups are still the
basis for the War on Smokers and they're more
powerful than ever...probably more powerful than government itself.
In 1985 legislation sponsored by Congressman
Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) was passed (over a presidential veto) that gave
Congress explicit controls over science funding
by the National Institutes of Health (which includes the NCI). Waxman's
bill
had the support of a large number of specialized
private health organizations, including the American Cancer Society and
the
American Lung Association.
On December 12, 1989, the National Cancer
Institute, an arm of the federal government's taxpayer funded National
Institutes
of Health wrote that using activists to reduce
public tolerance of smoking was the "state of the science" and the way
to go.
Later that year, in a booklet entitled "Tips
for Kids," the CDC commented that smokers were, in fact, "second-class
citizens"
and would eventually be treated as such. A
side effect of these strategies was to contaminate the pool of jurors who
would sit
on future lawsuits against the tobacco industry.
Also in 1989, C. Everett Koop as Surgeon
General of the United States changed the definition of "addiction" to include
smoking, thereby also including things such
as TV watching, video games, chocolate, sex, etc.
In October of 1991, the federally funded
American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (Project ASSIST) was begun and
by
1993, the American Cancer Society (ACS)
had prepared its Action Plan, which included raising cigarette taxes, the
banning of
tobacco advertising, workplace smoking bans,
and more.
In 1992, the CDC (which housed the ICSH)
began hosting meetings of public and private attorneys, many of whom were
heavy contributors to President Clinton's campaigns,
who wanted to sue the tobacco industry. These meetings were held
behind closed doors, not available to the public
or the media.
In 1993, the EPA Report on Secondhand
Smoke was published, giving the anti-tobacco crusaders a very big stick
with which
to beat the industry.
In 1994, after Hillary Clinton's disastrous
National Health Plan, the President was searching for a cause Americans
could get
behind. Presidential advisor Dick Morris
urged Clinton to take on "kids smoking" as a cause. (Although Clinton was
at first
reluctant, a 'poll' paid for by Dickie Scruggs
changed his mind.)
Scruggs, a Pascagoula, Mississipppi, attorney,
had a novel idea: a way to sue the tobacco companies that had never been
done. He took his idea to his old college roommate,
Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore. Trent Lott, Senate Majority
Leader and Scruggs' brother-in-law introduced
Dickie to Presidential advisor and right hand man, Dick Morris. Morris,
who
helped Scruggs pick the "right" jury for his
lawsuit, Scruggs and Moore began the first tobacco lawsuit which would
set the
stage for all others to follow. When the industry
realized it couldn't win a lawsuit if it was no longer allowed to use the
only true
defense it had--smokers knew what they were
doing and chose to do it anyway--they entered 'settlement' talks. During
these
talks, Hugh Rodham, Hillary's brother, was
brought into one of the law firms who stood to gain the billions in fees,
even though
he had no plaintiff's bar experience.
Also in 1994, and drawing on the earlier
ACS Action Plan, guidelines for a tobacco control program were published
in the NE
Journal of Medicine which included increased
federal taxes on tobacco products, comprehensive restrictions on
smoking in the
workplace and in public, bans on advertising
and sponsorship by tobacco companies, government support for conversion
of
tobacco crops to other crops, financial support
for tobacco counteradvertising, support for personal-injury litigation
against the
tobacco industry, etc., most of which guidelines
are now in place.
In May of 1994, Stanton Glantz received
more than 4000 internal documents that had been stolen from Brown &
Williamson
and its parent company, BAT Industries, by
paralegal Merrell Williams, Jr.who called himself "Mr. Butts." Possession
of these
damaging documents made Glantz a hot property
worth a lot of money in grants and funding.
The anti-tobacco crusaders soon realized that
simply telling people their health was at risk was not getting the result
they
wanted, so they decided to expand the problem--they
used the EPA's faulty report to make secondhand smoke a public policy
issue. C. Everett Koop, David Kessler, Richard
Daynard, James Repace, Stanton Glantz, and other activists enlisted several
politicians, notably Henry Waxman of California,
to help "prove" that tobacco company executives lied in testimony before
Congress about the addictiveness of nicotine.
Using modified criteria to call smoking addictive created a new 'social'
definition,
without which the tobacco company executives
could not be said to have lied and the anti-tobacco agenda would not be
nearly
as strong.
By adding the perjorative label "addiction"
to the unapproved habit of smoking, anti-tobacco forces justify intervention--for
the
addict's own good, of course. If an addict
doesn't understand what he's doing or can't keep himself from doing it,
that addict is
a victim so others can intercede on his behalf.
With or without his permission. They can take his money and use it against
him,
for his own good, and society at large approves.
In July 1995 the Journal of the American
Medical Association ran five long articles by Glantz and his co-workers,
including
Richard Daynard, on the pirated B&W memos,
later to be published by Glantz as The Cigarette Papers.
In 1998, commissioned by a Congressional
cadre of anti-tobacco legislators in response to the tobacco settlement,
ex-FDA
czar David Kessler and former Surgeon General
C. Everett Koop hand-picked representatives from twenty-three organizations
to constitute an expert tobacco control panel.
Among the representatives are some of the most zealous anti-tobacco activists
in
the U.S. including John Banzhaf, Executive
Director of ASH; Michael Pertschuk, Co-Director of the Advocacy Institute;
John
Seffrin, American Cancer Society; Dudley Hafner,
American Heart Association; John Garrison, American Lung Association;
Julia Carol, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights;
William Novelli, National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids; Matt Myers, Center
for Tobacco-Free Kids; Jesse W. Brown, The
Onyx Group; Jeff Nesbit, Science and Public Policy Institute; Thomas Houston,
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Smokeless States
Prog.;Judy Sopenski, STAT; Richard Daynard, Tobacco Products
Liability Project.
They met three times and provided to President
Clinton and Congress a 60-page document that is one of the most chilling
displays of disregard for American tenets in
existence today. Defining the choice to smoke as a "chronic disease" and
declaring
"no value" to the use of cigarettes, the panel
proposed an Orwellian "blueprint" for "control" of the problem on a global
basis.
The commission recommended the immedicate implementation
of what clearly must be seen as totalitarian means, backed fully
by the power of police state enforcement, to
achieve an almost classically totalitarian goal, a kind of mandated behaviorism.
Or,
to use their own words, "the goal is to change
the behavior of smokers." Everywhere in the world. Not only does every
single
organization represented on the panel (and
every individual representative) stand to benefit financially from the
proposals in the
Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public
Health Report, this blueprint gives the anti-tobacco advocacy groups far
more power than they should ever have, including
the "freedom and resources to monitor and oversee government enforcement
of legislation and regulation...freedom from
political "censorship" or constraints, including the freedom to advocate
the
enactment of tobacco control policies, ...and
to challenge the failure of government entities to carry out the law."
To enforce the proposed regulations and bans
and to administer all the funding, new federal and private agencies would
be
created and certain existing federal agencies
would be given additional funding and additional regulatory powers. The
"blueprint" is, in fact, the quintessence of
federal Nannyism with its focus on growth of the regulatory apparatus.
What is even
more disturbing is its stated aim to extend
its regulatory programs throughout the world and use U.S. funding and influence
to
do so.
Some of the Key Players
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, endowed
by General Robert Wood Johnson of international drug giant Johnson &
Johnson, funds health-related research and
advocacy, especially anti-tobacco efforts. Typical of the big NGOs, RWJF
shows
no respect for individual rights and the free
market, their president having endorsed heavy taxes on tobacco as a "way
to
generate revenue" for various of their pet
projects. Johnson & Johnson produces a number of tobacco cessation
devices such
as Nicotrol.
The National Cancer Institute has diverted
over $100 million in recent years from cancer research to lobbying and
political
activities. It funds the training of political
anti-smoking activists and the development in a number of states of anti-smoking
advocacy coalitions, which then lobby for state
legislative initiatives against smoking. Its partner in this diversion
is the American
Cancer Society (ACS), the nation's largest
and best-known health research charity. With ample assistance from the
other
major health charities and smaller antismoking
groups that stand to benefit from the funding, the NCI has managed to keep
much of this activity hidden from taxpayers.
The NCI has no direct regulatory function,
but its research and policy pronouncements influence other agencies at
the federal
and state level as well as the public. Aninsidious
and alarming problem with NCI's political activity concerns issues of
accountability. Who is responsible for such
spending decisions? And how are these people held accountable by the taxpayer?
Funds have been diverted towards political
activity in a manner that makes it difficult to pinpoint the responsible
parties. The
U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a person
cannot be required "to contribute to the support of an ideological cause
he may
oppose," but despite such legal prohibitions,
tax-funded politics runs rampant at NCI.
The American Cancer Society--charity
or big business? In 1988, the ACS was worth more than $400 million with
$69
million in land, buildings and equipment. Of
that $400 million, only 26% was spent on medical research and programs.
Of the
remaining millions, 60% went for generous salaries,
pensions, executive perks, and overhead. The next year, ACS's cash
reserves were more than $700 million, nearly
half coming from public donations and high-profile fundraising campaigns.
In the
past decade, however, more and more of the
ACS budget comes from large pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and
entertainment related corporations, and more
and more of their expenditures go not for medical research, but for advocacy
projects, primarily anti-tobacco.
The World Health Organization became
one of the most important players in the War on Smokers when Director Gro
Harlem Brundtland signed a partnership agreement
with several pharmaceutical companies in January two years ago, promising
to make tobacco control WHO's number one priority
worldwide, even though this is a diversion of money and effort from
blights such as Aids, dengue fever and malaria,
from new or drug-resistant diseases, and from the elimination of polio.
As
Norway's prime minister, Brundtland pioneered
global environmental politics and as Director of WHO, that ambition is
even
stronger. Their recent $10 million conference
in Chicago that brought together 4500 anti-tobacco activists from around
the
world was subsidized by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation and other anti-tobacco organizations.
Stanton Glantz, professor at UCSF, may
best be described by his own quotes:
At the Seventh World Conference on Tobacco and
Health held in Perth, Australia in 1990, Glantz gave the keynote address
in
which he said, among other things:
"The main thing the science has done on the
issue of ETS, in addition to help people like me pay mortgages, is it has
legitimized
the concerns that people have that they don't
like cigarette smoke. And that is a strong emotional force that needs to
be
harnessed and used. We're on a roll, and the
bastards are on the run. And I urge you to keep chasing them."
"Do you know that if you laid all smokers end-to-end
around the world, three-quarters of them would drown?"
Anti-smokers are heavily invested in the idea
that ETS kills. As Glantz noted in 1986, that claim allows anti-smokers
to use "the
rhetoric of the environment, toxic chemicals,
and public health rather than the rhetoric of saving smokers from themselves"
to
further their agenda.
"...and that's the question that I have applied
to my research relating to tobacco. If this comes out the way I think,
will it make a
difference? And if the answer is yes, then
we do it, and if the answer is I don't know then we don't bother. Okay?
And that's
the criteria."
When the hospitality industry in California
claimed that business was down due to the harsh smoking restrictions, and
that claim
began to effect other areas of the country
in which ANR (Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, founded by Glantz) was
attempting to enact similar laws, Glantz produced
a "study" that showed business was up.
Dr. Michael K. Evans, a respected economist,
accused Glantz of misrepresenting data (he included drive-throughs and
fast-food restaurants which were not affected
by the bans as well as those who were not in compliance, as many as 67%
at the
time) and reaching an unwarranted conclusion
on the proposition that 100% smokefree restaurant ordinances had no negative
economic impact on the restaurant economy.
He concluded that the study was flawed to the point of being unusable and
appeared to have been designed to mislead elected
officials. (Even so, Glantz's "study" is the only one quoted when
anti-tobacco crusaders attempt these sweeping
bans in other localities. )
A Sacramento court issued a restraining order
against Glantz for destroying documents in the above case and required
him to
show why he should not be held in contempt
of court. It also charged him with unauthorized use of University of California
resources for political lobbying, electioneering
and private political activities, and of using his time on the University
payroll to
do so.
Glantz was 'Principal Investigator' on a research
project of the National Cancer Institute which was conducted out of the
Institute for Health Policy Studies at the
University of California, San Francisco, and sounds a lot like the basis
for ANR's
"Enemies List" compiled later. Along
with other "qualitative and quantitative information," investigators proposed
to
"Document the role of the tobacco industry
in the creation and further development of the Smokers' Rights movement
and examine its social and ideological message
and political consequences for tobacco control."
Requests for copies of the completed project
under the Freedom of Information Act were fruitless, pages returned were
so
highly censored they were unreadable. The "Enemies
List," made up of groups and individuals who have written, spoken, or
otherwise commented on smoking in ways the
ANR consider unsuitable, was found out and reported in the LA Daily News
on
Dec. 6, 1999. The list was circulated--quietly--among
state and local officials who may have had to decide on smoking issues.
No one on the list--whether an ordinary citizen
or a respected conservative think tank--was to be given any credence.
"Since 1995, the California Department of Health
Services has awarded yearly grants totaling more than $1.2 million to a
Berkeley public advocacy group, the Americans
for Nonsmokers Rights Foundation, to provide community education
programs. Records show that its top priority
has been collecting information on groups and individuals that the foundation
believes are secretly working for Big Tobacco.
Julia Carol, the executive director of the Americans for Nonsmokers Rights
Foundation, said the group did nothing improper
...that informing local government and health agencies about "underhanded
tactics" of the tobacco industry has proven
to be an effective anti-smoking strategy. "If you're fighting malaria,
you go after the
vector -- you do mosquito abatement," she said.
So now we're "mosquitoes" according to Julia
Carol.
John Banzhaf
In 1966, after graduating from law school and
while working as a cruise-ship dancer, John Banzhaf III tried an academic
experiment--he argued to the FCC that the "fairness
doctrine" required anti-smoking messages get free air time to counter
cigarette commercials. Failing to interest
national charities such as the American Cancer Society, who felt the way
to fight
disease was through research and education
instead of litigation, he founded Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) to
go after
tobacco companies in earnest.
ASH bills itself as the "legal action arm of
the anti-smoking community," and provides anti-smokers with legal help
in everything
from taking custody away from smoking parents
to "suing the bastards." People are encouraged on the ASH web site
to file
complaints, harass smokers, and turn in parents
with anonomyous tips. . "All you have to do is prove it's (shs) a nuisance
and
it's an irritation," says Banzhaf. He compares
these cases to suing over a neighbor's smelly cabbage. "You don't have
to prove
it's a health risk, you just have to say, 'I
shouldn't have to live with this stink.' "
"I've convinced judges in 12 different states,that
smoking by a parent should be a factor in custody disputes. More than half
a
dozen parents have lost custody because they've
been smoking around children."--John Banzhaf
Memo from John Banzhaf, Exec. Dir of Action
on Smoking and Health (ASH)
A major national news
program is very interested in immediately locating a physician, social
worker, teacher or other similar
person who may have filed--or is considering
filing--a complaint of Child Abuse, Child Neglect, etc., based upon exposing
a
susceptible child to parental smoking (environmental
tobacco smoke).
IF ANYONE KNOWS OF A PERSON WHO HAS FILED --
OR IS EVEN CONSIDERING FILING -- SUCH A
COMPLAINT, PLEASE CALL JOHN BANZHAF AT (202)
659-4310.
"I think restricting smoking outdoors is the
next major step in the nonsmoker rights movement," said John Banzhaf.
"The law is clear that individuals maintain
no legal or constitutional right to smoke, even in one's dwelling," according
to John
Banzhaf.
Banzhaf loses one: On November 26, 1996, a
federal appeals court rejected a requested by ASH to force OSHA to finish
their workplace smoking regulations, proposed
in 1994. Banzhaf argued that the agency had broken its own deadline for
rule
making.
After the feeding frenzy that commenced in
1994 with Rep. Henry Waxman's shameful inquisition of seven tobacco company
executives, and five major grand jury investigations
of the tobacco industry were under way, Action on Smoking and Health
chimed in by offering $25,000 "to anyone who
provides information leading to convictions for `cigarette-related felonies.'"
No
indictments were ever brought nor has the $25,000
been claimed.
ASH's "Victories":
# ASH got the support of Surgeon General David
Satcher, M.D., the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], and
the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] for its
proposal to require cigar health warnings.
# ASH helped uphold an important settlement
for nonsmokers in Florida which has become final.
# ASH helped convince Montgomery County, MD,
to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars.
# ASH has persuaded several major restaurant
chains to review their policies regarding smoking.
# ASH helped prevent Liggett Tobacco Company
from escaping liability for its cigarettes.
# ASH helped to formulate the legal theories
behind the government's suit against big tobacco, and to prevent Senate
attempts
to cut off all funding for the suit.
(ASH takes "credit" for more than 1000 municipal
smokefree ordinances across the country.)
.FROM ASH'S WEBSITE:
That's right. Dozens of tobacco class
action law suits -- brought on behalf of current smokers, former smokers,
families of former smokers, nonsmokers, and
other entities -- are currently pending, and could result in awards of
many hundreds of billions [YES, BILLIONS!]
of dollars.
ASH's Sue the Tobacco Companies Information
-- Act NOW Before It's Too Late! This page tells you how and why you
should sue tobacco companies.
Please note, however, that this information
is available only to member-supporters of Action on Smoking and
Health
(ASH). To find out how you can
become a member of ASH on line, and to obtain access to this and
other valuable
information for members as well as several
special gifts, please click here to learn the many benefits
of joining ASH
on-line, over the Internet.
Richard Daynard, (ASHRAE), Professor
of Law Northeastern University School of Law. "For the past 30 years I
have been
a law professor at Northeastern University
School of Law. For much of this time I taught and thought about the nature
of the
legal process. For the last 15 of these years
I have specialized in toxic torts and complex litigation, and especially
in tobacco
litigation."
Daynard is one of the lawyers who received
grants from the National Cancer Institute in 1995 enabling them to"research"
strategies that would help U.S. states sue
the tobacco industry. Interestingly,
Daynard was instrumental in getting ASHRAE
(American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers)
to
re-write its standard that suggested that with
proper ventilation, safe indoor air quality standards could be met even
if a certain
level of smoking was permitted. Thanks to Daynard,
ASHRAE changed its mind and eliminated any reference to smoking being
permissible. Daynard brags that "This culminates
a 13-year effort on my part to get the 1989 language...changed. I was a
member of the ASHRAE committee that proposed
the change."
honor a handshake deal made in 1996 to pay
him 5% of any fees they might collect for handling the anti-tobacco claims
of state
attorneys general. Even though he was not directly
involved, he seems to feel he deserves to be paid for his "work" on the
state lawsuits and the Florida case, represented by former brother-in-law
David Boies. Although no better than Daynard, according to Scruggs, who
has filed a motion to dismiss the case, Daynard is "a bit more mercenary
than people think he is." "He's greedy," Motley said, adding that
Daynard's claim "that he had something monumental in the state lawsuits]
is stupefying."
"Smoking Devil" courtesy of James Repace, Repace Associates,
Inc., Secondhand Smoke Consultants--along with Ichiro Kawachi, PhD, Associate
Professor, and Stanton Glantz, UCSF.
Repace worked for the non-smoking EPA (he actually
called for the EPA's report on shs), but "personal health problems"
culminated in his having to work at home
(rather than at the office). When he absolutely had to go into the building
for
mandatory meetings, he wore a gas mask. According
to his curriculum vitae, Mr. Repace is singlehandedly responsible for
everything that is known about the dangers
of shs. He discovered it.
(from hearing before Montgomery County, MD,
Council on proposed smoke ban) "Repace bragged that he has been
called as an expert witness in several class
action lawsuits, including one brought by casino workers in Nevada against
tobacco
companies. He then proclaimed that he knew
more about second hand smoking than just about anyone else in the whole
world.
But when asked a question by one member of
the council, he made the assertion that it would take winds of at least
300 miles
per hour to clear an indoor dining area of
the toxins generated by cigarette use."
William Novelli, the founder and president
of Tobacco Free Kids, is a consummate public relations maven who also owns
a
large private PR firm, Porter Novelli, which
represents some of the largest and richest of the Big Pharmaceuticals who
make
nicotine replacement drugs and devices. His
'pro bono' work for the Big Nonprofits like the American Cancer Society
and his
profitable ties to the National Institutes
of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resulted in
millions of
dollars in funding for the Campaign for Tobacco
Free Kids.
"I believe in marketing as an engine that can
move goods off the shelf, promote organizations and candidates, change
social
behavior, advance causes and ideas and
help make America a healthier and better place." --William Novelli, President,
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids
*********************
"The demonization of smokers is one of the most
remarkable ethical changes in American society in the 20th century. It
has
transformed what was once a bad habit into
an outright sin." --Arthur Caplan, Director, Center for Bioethics,
University of
Pennsylvania
According to "The Weekly Standard," a conservative
weekly magazine, the anti-tobacco crusade is doing more harm than
tobacco itself, that it is promoting victimization
rather than personal responsibility. "The only conceivable consequence
of
equating hard drugs, which can destroy the
mind and soul, with tobacco, which can actually have positive effects on
the mind
and has no deleterious effect on the soul,
is to lessen the fear of real drugs among young people... The truth is
that tobacco
doesn't interfere with the soul, mind, conscience
or emotional growth of a smoker." (July 20, 1998 issue)