WHAT WE'VE HAD TO SAY


     LETTERS TO POLITICIANS                 MISCELLANEOUS                          OPINION
 
 New York City Council - 2/6/00

 New York City Council - 2/26/00

 Oronto Douglas - Federal Convention on Tobacco Control

 Gov. Pataki - Fire Safe Cigarettes - 4/22/00

 Gov. Pataki - Fire Safe Cigarettes Addendum

New York City Council - 8/30/00

Councilman Michels RE: Proposed Smoking Ban - 1/29/01

Gov. Pataki, Senate & Assembly - Gov. Pataki Mulls Cigarette Tax Hike - 12/17/01
 

 

 Dick Morris - New York Post

Walt Disney World

Press Release - 12/29/00
Anti-Fire or Anti-Tobacco?
(shouldn't candles be regulated too?)

Response to above from Senator Daniel Hevesi, Jan. 8, 2001

Coincidentally or not, there suddenly seems to be expressed public concern regarding the dangers of candle usage.
NY Times Article:
City Warns of Candle Hazards, Citing Rise in Related Deaths

LETTER TO GAY & LESBIAN GROUPS:
"ALL WE ASK IS TO BE TREATED AS FAIRLY AS EVERYONE ELSE"
  IN RESPONSE TO JOSEPH CHERNER'S APPEARANCE ON ABC's 20/20

Syracuse.com
Most Parks, Beaches Would Ban Smoking Under Bill

NY Newsday
Cigs Off Beach?

CNS News
Anti-Smoking Bill Assailed As Civil Liberties 'Smokescreen'

NY Post - 6/2/01
BRYANT PARK MOVE MAY BE JUST START

NY Newsday
Extended Smoke Screen
Suffolk eyes 50-foot rule for hospitals

Christian Science Monitor
No smoking out here. This is a park.

NY Press
Devil Weed

CBS HealthWatch
Banning Smoking at Work--
Is It Discrimination?

CNN Live At Daybreak
Debating Secondhand Smoke

Gotham Gazette
Smoked Out

NY Newsday
N.Y. Smokers Hit With Nation's Top Cigarette Tax

The Journal News
Putnam, Westchester aim for more smoking curbs

Associated Press
Legislature Approves Deal On Health 
Care Plan 

New York Post
A Tax On The Underpaid

CNN Talk Back Live
Target smokers: the California push to raise the smoking age to 21

NY Newsday
Comptroller urged to drop tobacco investments

NY Newsday
Anger, Cheers For 50-Ft. Smoke Ban

NBC News4NY
Smoking Now More Costly In NYC

NY Daily News
Butt Out, Markowitz Tells Boro

NY Daily News
Smoker Fumes & Fights Back 
Defending right to light up 

New York Post
Mayor's Smoke Signals

NY Times
Cigarettes Up to $7 a Pack 
With New Tax

Staten Island Advance
 New tax chokes smokers 

ABC News
Sin Tax
Cigarette Taxes Sweep Nation

NY Newsday
Town Clears the Air
     Huntington bans playground smoking

The New Yorker
  Smoke-Filled Rooms
 Brooklyn Tobacco Party 

Associated Press
Smokers steamed over mayor's plan to ban smoking in New York City

Brooklyn Skyline
BUTT OUT!
Brooklyn Smoking Activist 
Battles Bar Ban

Associated Press
City Nabs Illegal Cigarettes

Brooklyn Skyline
Council To Vote On Smoking Ban

Christian Science Monitor
In New York, a firefight over smoke-free bars

Associated Press
Butt out: Shore resort clamps down on smoking

Brooklyn Skyline
No Room To Smoke

NY Daily News
Buttlegger Nabbed
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

NY Daily News - 6/21/99

NY Daily News - 6/25/99
(rebuttal to my letter)

NY Daily News - 12/29/99

NY Daily News - 1/1/00
(rebuttal to my letter)

NY Daily News - 1/9/00

Brooklyn Skyline - 6/13/00

NY Daily News - 8/2/00
(in response to a Letter to the Editor -
See "Breaking Butt")

Brooklyn Skyline - 9/5/00

NY Daily News - 11/8/00
(in response to Oct. 28 editorial "Caught in a Web site")

Brooklyn Skyline - 1/30/01

NY Post - 1/31/01

Reprinted (NY Post no longer archives Letters to the Editor)

All the readers knocking Sidney Zion's criticism of the "Nicotine Nazis" are ignorant sheep who blindly believe what they hear and do absolutely no research of their own into the facts ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," Letters, Jan. 27).

If anyone is distorting science, it is the anti-smokers and their well-funded researchers. They want to eradicate smoking and will stop at nothing, including touting scientific results that are meaningless as proof, in order to attain their goal.

Brooklyn Skyline - 2/13/01
(in response to Jan.. 30 article)

The Herald News - 4/4/01

Brooklyn Skyline - 7/17/01

NY Daily News - 12/6/01

Brooklyn Skyline - 12/11/01

Duluth News Tribune - 1/28/02

The Advocate - 1/31/02

New York Resident - 2/19/02

NY Daily News - 2/26/02

Duluth News Tribune - 4/26/02

NY Post - 4/27/02

Staten Island Advance - 5/8/02

Brooklyn Skyline - 4/9/02
(reader responds)
(CLASH responds)

NY Post - 6/21/02

NY Newsday - 8/21/02

NY Daily News - 8/23/02

NY Post - 11/4/02
Reprinted (NY Post no longer archives Letters to the Editor)

Epidemiology is the science used to research secondary smoke.  Every scientist will tell you that this field cannot prove cause.  The best epidemiology can do is show a possible link to cancer; no more, no less ("More Mayoral Madness," Editorial, Nov. 1)

No death certificate will ever be found where the cause of death is documented as exposure to cigarette smoke.

New York City is billions of dollars in the hole, yet Mayor Bloomberg is wasting taxpayer millions on ads that aren't even truthful to lobby for legislation against smoking.

NY Daily News - 1/4/03

The Business Review - 2/24/03

NY Newsday - 3/9/03

These politicians who buy the story that a "wave" of non-smokers will soon fill the smokers' stools that have been left empty due to the smoking bans clearly have no social experience.

The non-smokers are already there, with the smokers. Non-smokers who are the "partying" type of people have not been stopped from hanging out with their smoking counterparts.

So what the lawmakers stupidly expect is that the anti-smokers, all 2 percent of them, will fill the seats abandoned by smokers. These people do not "party" to begin with - let alone in a bar. They weren't there before and they won't come out now.

The only people being "protected" (the original specious argument) are the ones who haven't asked for it (including the employees) because the ones who have wouldn't go to a bar, with or without smoking bans.

 This denial of freedom of choice is destined for dismal economic failure.

The Daily Journal - 3/26/03

NY Daily News - 5/1/03

Mayor Bloomberg has spent more than $5 million in taxpayer money on his personal anti-smoking crusade. Half of that is to pass out free nicotine patches to people who probably only like the idea that it's free rather than have a strong desire to quit smoking.

The Journal of the American Medical Association concluded in a September 2002 study of California smokers that since becoming available over the counter, nicotine replacement therapies appear no longer effective in increasing long-term successful cessation. Knowing all this, when will somebody scream about how this money could keep open four of the eight firehouses slated to be closed by this irresponsible, self-absorbed spender?
 

 


 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE
A member of FORCES MAINE writes to the Bangor Daily News


This is in response to the January 1, 2002 letter from Katie Lozito regarding second-hand smoke.

I am only one of the rapidly growing ranks of smokers who have finally had enough and will no longer remain silent while anti-smoking zealots repeat myth after myth as if it were scientific fact in the hope that a lie repeated often enough will no longer be perceived as a lie.

Torturing statistics until a desired outcome is declared is not scientific methodology, it is propaganda.  The infamous suppressed World Health Organization study which failed to link second-hand smoke to ANY deaths somehow never seems to get any publicity, while the hysterical claims of health nannies are splashed all over the media.

I'd like to see the 53,000 death certificates stating that second-hand smoke is the cause of death.  They don't exist of course, but let's not let facts get in the way of the crusade.

The frightening truth is that anti-tobacco advocates are operating under the false assumption that our bodies and our property are owned by the state.  Tragically, there are thousands of people now employed, either by taxpayer-funded programs or by manufacturers of smoking cessation products, who have jumped on the bandwagon.  Unfortunately, there will always be a certain type of person who will be attracted by the opportunity to wrap themselves in the cloak of do-goodism and sanctimony while hectoring and demonizing their fellow citizens in a frenzied attempt to make them conform to their world view.

This is the very antithesis of what it means to be an American, and I don't intend to be silent or compliant while they trample my rights.

I am not alone...   Rose

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