April 9, 2000
 

Dear Mr. Douglas,

     I am writing to you out of concern as a private citizen of the United States.  Other than being an adult who has willingly chosen to smoke and will continue doing so, I have no ties to any smoker's rights organization [See Footnote]or any tobacco company.  I have taken it upon myself to be a voice of the adult people who smoke but who are shouted down or whose opinions on the subject of smoking are ignored as if we were wards of the state and are being cared for against our will.

     An article posted on the Excite.news web site contained the following quote from you on the subject of the World Health Agency's FCTC [Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] goal:

>"The tobacco corporations, finding no peaceful atmosphere in their home countries of the
  North, are moving shops. They want us to pay for their total disregard of human rights,"
  said Oronto Douglas, an environmental rights lawyer and Deputy Director of
  Environmental Rights Action of Nigeria.<

     As a man who has personally  undergone tremendous indignities and who is in the forefront of fighting for human rights, I am shocked that you would embrace this view.  Mr. Douglas, it is not the tobacco corporations, which manufacture a legal product and supplies ample health risk warnings on every pack of cigarettes, which disregards human rights, it is organizations like WHO that have disregarded human rights.  No one forced me to begin smoking.  I was not seduced by advertisements.  I understood from the beginning that a health risk is associated with smoking and that nicotine has been reported to be addictive.  That knowledge, and the fact that tobacco is legal,  allows me every right to decide for myself whether to smoke or not to smoke.   THAT is my human right.

     What the World Health Organization, numerous other health organizations and political bodies are trying to do is speak for me and millions of others in deciding what is best for us.  In my opinion, they are the ones disregarding my human right to choose what risks I am entitled to take in my own life.  Had someone stopped you from speaking out on unpopular subjects because there was a risk to your life, would you find that a reasonable reason not to speak out?  Judging from what life has thrown at you ("Douglas has been arrested and tortured by the brutal Nigerian Military regime.  That has not stopped him  from speaking out."), I would say that you did not opt to listen to those proclaiming to protect your life because your choice meant something to you, regardless of the risks they entailed.  In exercising your right to choose,  you took a risk that could have ended your life.  You were fully aware of the risk.  The same applies for those that choose to smoke.  In this day and age it is impossible NOT to be aware of the tobacco arguments and yet we still choose to smoke.  Tobacco companies no longer advertise and have supported campaigns to reduce youth smoking and government has taxed the product in excess in an attempt to thwart smoking yet there are millions of adults who, after all of this, still, as is their right, choose to smoke.

     In light of all of the above, wouldn't you say more than enough has been done to stem smoking just short of  a forcible removal, via outside influences, of my human right to choose to smoke?   Who are you or anyone else to force your choice, through actions that are beyond the common man's control, upon masses of people who disagree with your choice?  To consistently blame the tobacco companies for duping the public into smoking is in effect calling me and the majority of the smoking population a mindless group of individuals and I find that highly insulting.  I am a 36 year old woman who skipped a grade of junior high school, graduated from high school six months early and attained straight "A"s in college, hence allowing me the honor of being on the Dean's List.   Do not believe that everyone who smokes wishes they could quit.  That is simply not the case and are begging the government to stay out of our personal lives.  Using children as the basis of the argument to do away with tobacco is propaganda to achieve a smoke-free society.  It is up to parents to teach and guide their children towards making decisions that affect their lives, not government.  Government has every right to suggest or to warn about existing dangers and options that pose a risk but that is where its jurisdiction stops.

     So you see, my learning that you are a man dedicated to preserving human rights (through the environment, but human rights nonetheless), I am taken aback that you fail to see that the choice to smoke is also a human right.  Mr. Douglas, either defend ALL human rights or please stop acting in a human rights capacity or making statements regarding one group's "total disregard of human rights."   Your involvement in the FCTC  disregards MY human rights and detracts from what you supposedly stand for.  You are now guilty yourself of  what you profess others are doing.
 

Sincerely,

Audrey Silk
 

Footnote:  At that time NYC C.L.A.S.H. had not been formed.