Nothing like beating a dead horse!
I find it ironic that here we now have evidence of the one thing that the FDA legislation could potentially do that would actually make a dent in youth smoking
For the last time Doc.....18 year olds are considered LEGAL ADULTS, young adults yes, but still considered legal for MOST things (except drinking and some adult themed clubs). Many adults, most over the age of 21 I might add, happen to like menthol cigarettes, and other flavors as well. So tell me WHY do they have to suffer losing their favorite flavor of cigarette just because no one wants to enforce the already existing laws prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from buying cigarettes? OH that's right, because it's really total prohibition you cretins are really after.
You need to get off this schtick already, it's old news and like LadyTeal said....talk about beating a dead horse. And isn't illegal to beat any animal....dead or alive?
And for the record, why should we smokers believe something coming from a public health journal? We've already shown how you all lie. I also notice they don't provide any real source for us to actually check, just their word that they examined actual tobacco company documents? What a joke.
Lynda wrote:
"And for the record, why should we smokers believe something coming from a public health journal? We've already shown how you all lie."
So true. And how someone with intimate knowledge of these kind of people can take their word on something doesn't show naivete, but complicity.
Dr. Siegel wrote:
"An article...concludes that tobacco companies use menthol to enhance addiction of smokers, especially adolescents and young adults. The study, which reviewed tobacco industry documents..."
I looked at the link provided and saw this about adolescents: Nothing.
They made that up and Dr. Siegel is repeating it. The document said this in the summary:
PRELIMINARY TARGET CONSUMER : 18-Zy YEAR OLD SMOKERS BOTH MALE AND
FEMALE WHO SMOKE NON-MENTHOL BRANDS
PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS
• Low LEVEL MENTHOL - MUST HAVE HIGH RATIO
OF TOBACCO TO MENTHOL TASTE
MENTHOL PROVIDES HERITAGE CREDIBILITY
AMONG YOUNGER ADULT SMOKERS THAT ALTERNATE
FLAVORS CANNOT ACHIEVE [Comment from me: Would that be kiddie flavors?]
TESTED AMONG 18-24 YEAR OLD MALE AND
FEMALE SMOKERS OF NON-MENTHOL BRANDS
These people already smoke so why would they be worried about as far as addicting them? They're just trying to get them to smoke menthols. And what did the tobacco document analysis find?
THE ANALYSIS FOUND :
1) YOUNGER ADULT SMOKERS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR MOST OF THE
INCREASED SALES PERFORMANCE OF THE THREE KEY BRANDS
WHEN THEY WERE GROWING•
2) FOR THE MOST PART, THESE YOUNGER ADULT SMOKERS WERE
SWITCHERS FROM NON-MENTHOL BRANDS
Back to Dr. Siegel:
"For example, an R.J. Reynolds document notes that: "First-time smoker reaction is generally negative. . . . Initial negatives can be alleviated with a low level of menthol."
Just as we were all telling you before. Menthol is harsh on its own.
"Thus, manipulation of menthol levels in cigarettes plays a substantial role in sustaining addiction to cigarettes as smokers become older and more experienced."
No it doesn't. The "manipulation" plays a role in keeping those smokers to keep smoking their brands.
Btw, what do 50 year 3 pack a day menthol smokers smoke, pure menthol?
"The article concludes:.....'Although menthol is not addictive, it may contribute to tobacco addiction by promoting initiation and facilitating inhalation of smoke.'"
If you look at the first quote I have from Dr. Siegel near the top, their "may contribute to" transformed in his mind to, "tobacco companies use menthol to enhance addiction of smokers."
One throws out guesses and the next one changes them a bit and turns them into facts.
Complicit.
Doc this proves nothing. It says YOUNGER ADULT smokers.
Specifically: 18 - 24+. Not 10!
"Concludes" or "MAY?"
Have you forgotten what qualifies as SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE too? Tell me how they could get scientific evidence one way or the other no matter what flavoring is in there? Surveys and counting sales is not science.
Is your "solid evidence" from the old document where they state that by adding menthol they will increase sales and get more smokers? So what? It's a legal product. They have that right to add ingredients as they wish, and yes, to get more smokers enjoying the product and to get more smokers. THAT IS WHAT A BUSINESS IS ALL ABOUT. You sound like this is news to you. Why?
How many times a day do you see\hear\read an ad selling a product? When is the last time you heard a manufacturer say "we've made no changes to our product, as a matter of fact it's worse than it was before, but please buy it anyhow." What do you think BT is supposed to do? Marketing their product does not make them wrong. Keep reminding yourself, this is a legal product. I'd suspect that makers of cookies also have a template just like BTs.
If only thirty-percent of sales is menthol, and you have no proof whatsoever that all those sales are going to "children" why do you say banning menthol "would actually make a dent in youth smoking"? What proof, Doctor?
"All of the other measures are not going to do a thing?" Why not? Because they don't advocate calling us names? Hiding us in the woods? Refusing to give us jobs? Spreading lies that we are killers?
What, exactly, do you want?
Harvard reviewed old, old documents that specifically, specifically, states 18 - 24+ but publish their "research" to make it sound like it's a new horrific tactic that BT is using on YOUNG people. Eighteen is an adult. These are not children and this news is old. You are implying "we now have..." And if I recall, a "scientific study" by Harvard was debunked in this Blog.
http://
goodhealth.freeservers.co...amson_Kool.html
Ludo Cremers , Brown &Williamson's divisional VP brand marketing, indicated that although demographics show that Kool smokers are a diverse group - 50% Caucasian, 40% African American, 10% Hispanic - the advertising will be aimed at a hip, urban audience.
Part of the strategy was to see how Brown & Williamson could enhance the Kool brand to smokers ages 21 and 30 The Kool brand had lost leadership in the menthol category, since primarily it has been unable to attract customers in their 20s and 30s while many of its faithful older buyers are no longer around. B&W needed a plan for Kool again to appeal to younger adult smokers who tend to be most loyal and least sensitive to rising prices of smokes.
They needed to come up with a strategy that was capable of turning things around, but caution had to be exercised because B&W wanted to be a responsible commercial organization. Yet their profitability depended on the sales of cigarettes to young adult smoker.
But at what expense did this occur. We're sure Mrs. Ivey would be the first to tell you their advertisements are not intended to target youths. But as Dr. Siegel points out, "from a public health perspective, which matters is whether adolescents are exposed to cigarette advertising that leads to begin smoking, whether that exposure was intentional or not."
I heard this on the news tonight and wondered if you would touch on it. Didn't you once or twice say that you were not in favor of removing menthol? Why the bandwagon now? Why are your friends at Harvard considered "researchers"? Shouldn't they be called "experts" by now? Everyone here has debunked the menthol theory, yet the very "experts", the smokers are not to be believed nor heard, yet you yell and scream it is fact when Harvard writes a fake study and calls it fact? I can no longer imagine how low any of you are willing to go any more. Pathetic is the only word I can come up with at this late time of the night.
Again, Doc, I invite you to the world of empirical experiment. In fact, you could perform both of my suggested experiments at once: smoke a few puffs of a menthol and then a nonmenthal cigarette--and tho I'd originally suggested your pretending to be a smoker by leaving all premises at inconvenient times and just standing around the street, you could use two of these occasions to do the menthol experiment.
All you're doing here is repeating jiggered academic science and abstract elite paternalistic sociology.
Why are you so afraid to jump into the pool and actually get a clue of what you're talking about?
:
To expand less intellectually on Walt's point... The very thing that came to mind when reading all the news articles this "news" generated was that all these nonsmokers (the researchers and those that comment on it in the affirmative) have the audacity to claim what menthol does and does not do as far as attracting customers with not one of them having ever smoked any sort of cigarette in their life.
It's as bad as someone claiming they know what the flavor cherry (nevermind cigarettes, think the fruit) tastes like only because they HEARD what it tastes like.
More than anything though, I stand by my post on an earlier thread on the subject... REMOVING menthol is racist, not the other way around. Once again this particular minority is being picked on for denial of something and used as guinea pigs. It's TC that bears the shame.
How fortuitous, just when the Doc needs evidence to support his agenda and sound bite that menthol reduces tobacco harshness and is used to hook non-smoking youths, up pops "ze proof positive". With luck like that he should play the lottery.
GreatScot
Doctor Siegel, the best way to get white kids in St. Louis not to take up smoking is to outlaw all cigarettes except menthol. Smoking menthol in this town is for blacks and odd white people, not cool white kids. One white friend referred to my smoking menthol cigarettes as "not a gentleman's habit." When people in a bar bum smokes they usually refuse my menthols, unless they are black. But why should black adults be denied their preferred smokes?
Truthfully, I cannot tolerate regular smokes. Why should the government single out the smokes I happen to like?
I am thinking of abstaining permanently from smoking and taking up my old harmful habit of boxing, a habit that is pretty much incompatible with cigarette smoking. So I might train away my desire for smoke with bloody noses, liver punches and headaches that last for a couple days. I would go back to training with this guy. A scary prospect!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=H...feature=related
But I am an adult and I can choose the poison I prefer at any point in my life. Why should the government intrude on my life and ban any flavor of something I happen to like?
In my experience, its not the harshness of the smoke, but the incompetance of the beginner, something menthol won't cover.
My first cigarette was a menthol, and when you have never smoked before, you assume that it requires effort.
I asked if I might have a cigarette to try, upon lighting it, I inhaled mightily like sucking a milkshake through a straw,and was immediately convulsed with coughing.
After I recovered, I realised that this was an art that needed practice to master.
Nothing to do with harshness, instead of speculating wildy, it is better to ask someone who knows.
OT
A plaintive and familiar cry from Sioux City
"SIOUX CITY -- We are all wondering where all the non-smokers are at."
"One of the most common excuses I have heard in the past from non-smokers was that it was too smokey. OK, now that the ban is in effect, where are you?"
When will people realise that if someone is not afraid of the health warnings on alcohol, they are hardly likely to be intimidated by a little smoke.
Anyone who was going to go to bars was probably there already. So all they have done is destroy the atmosphere and halve their customer base.
As the prohibitionists seem to hate alcohol even more than they hate smoke,it was probably part of the initial plan.
Forgot the link
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/
...48700796966.txt
Since when does TC believe what Reynolds writes in a marketing paper without ANY scientific evidence? I see, as long as it supports the views of Tc ....
The tobacco industry attracted new smokers by promoting cigarettes with lower menthol content, which were popular with adolescents and young adults, ...
How do they know they "attracted" new smokers? Menthols have been on the market for more than 60 years, how come not everybody smokes menthol now?
and provided cigarettes with higher menthol content to long-term smokers.
They can even provide cigarettes with horse shit, but that wouldn't convert me, as long as I have the choice.
I still don't understand why Dr. Siegel doesn't promote nicotine free cigarettes, since he wants to take the addiction out of tobacco.
Are you suggesting that this "evidence" RETROSPECTIVELY SUPPORTS your comments that i and several others have sought ?Sorry it does not. This is merely a direct lift from studies undertaken on clove cigarettes which HAVE been shown to numb the throat and allow a higher quantity of tar to be inhaled,along with a higher nicotine content.Since smokers never input into these studies it's a simple fait accompli to present whatever is required.GreatScot you have taken the words right out of my mouth.Sorry Dr Siegel but you appear to be very much a con artist as the rest of them TC loopy land.
I think most of the other poster's have covered the topic well enough, I have only one thing to add.
You Herr Doktor are full of shit.
You have to laugh when the geeks get together and develop a theory about why people smoke menthols. The "study" would have been infinitely cheaper had they simply asked a menthol smoker. They could have even asked me, although I am not an African American and I did not start smoking menthols until 5 years after I started smoking. See, I would have blown two "theories" apart had they asked me why I smoke menthols. I do so because I LIKE them. I also prefer Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke and Burger King over McDonalds. It's a question of taste, with no BT conspiracy...just a legal company with customers who happen to prefer menthol. BTW the movement to ban menthol will not force me to quit smoking. I'll simply return to regular cigarettes...the same ones I smoked when I started.
Ragingly Callous Lynda wrote:: "And for the record, why should we smokers believe something coming from a public health journal? We've already shown how you all lie”
She has a point Doc.
What do we really have here. A “study” conducted by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health which concludes that tobacco companies use menthol to support addiction, especially among adolescents. The “study” is published by the American Journal of Public Health.
It’s being utilized by a professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the Boston University School of Public Health who “is not arguing that menthol products need to be removed from the market”, just that Tobacco Free Kids shouldn’t have accepted a deal which wouldn’t take it off the market.
Geez, I wonder if this study might be just a little bit biased?
James Austin wrote: “One throws out guesses and the next one changes them a bit and turns them into facts”.
The “study” appears to be nothing more than a public health interpretation of an internal tobacco company document. Did the researchers confer with their colleagues in the Harvard School of Business before drawing their conclusions?
The RJR document says merely that existing menthol cigarettes have had menthol content increased over the years to satisfy consumer demand and maintain market share. Because the menthol/tobacco balance in existing brands is too harsh for non-menthol smokers, an opportunity has opened up for a low level menthol cigarette. The target demographic is current non-menthol smokers in the 18 to 24 age group.
It sounds like a perfectly legitimate marketing strategy evaluation to me.
Oh, sorry Doc. I forgot. The tobacco industry is not a normal, legal industry selling a normal, legal product, and is not entitled to operate like any normal mainstream business. And, they certainly shouldn’t be discussing ways and means of supplying consumer demand for their abnormal, degenerate, nicotine addicted customer base.
I must admit though Dr Siegel the way you have built up the menthol issue throughout the period just makes me a little suspicious of your prior knowledge of when this report was due for publication.It has answered the question as to why your reluctance to respond to certain questions always appeared to have fallen on deaf ears.Your ability to manipulate those who are alleged to read your blog and use them to your advantage has proven your continuing value to the Total Control movement.I presume you have little wish to conduct any experimentation that would show that smokers are now treated with such contempt that their basic human rights are now willfully ignored on the instruction of the TC agenda.
I still don't understand why Dr. Siegel doesn't promote nicotine free cigarettes, since he wants to take the addiction out of tobacco.
Benpal, that's because it's NOT the nicotine addiction they want to end, it IS the SMOKE. They don't like the smell, they don't like having to wash their hair, body and clothing after an evening out....they want to wear the same clothes again without washing, they can't be bothered showering regularly either apparently, which might also explain why so many non-smokers literally BATHE themselves in nauseating cologne/perfume odors.
With due respect to posters in this blog, I don’t believe Dr Siegel is advocating to remove menthol from cigarettes. Whether it is true or not true that menthol attracts youngsters to addict them is hardly the point here. It is the hypocrisy of Tobacco Free Kids and the AMA that he’s denouncing. If they in fact believe what the ‘’pseudo-scientific’’ evidence this study produced i.e. that menthol is strategically added to tobacco by BT to attract new smokers and keep them hooked, then it should be the first ingredient that they should be demanding to be banned and not doing the exact opposite by advocating to exempt it for the one and only purpose to get the FDA legislation passed by hook or by crook.
Again IMHO, he’s attempting to illustrate here that TFK and AMA are completely inconsistent (read hypocritical) in their advocacy, not that he agrees that menthol should be banned.
Do I take it from reading these comments that all posters here agree with the FDA legislation and therefore support TFK to get it passed by any means possible including total hypocrisy and manipulation while pretending to be doing it for the ‘’greater good’’ of the public and particularly the children ? From reading the comments here, this is what I am led to conclude.
Again, whether this study is true or not is completely irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant is that TFK and AMA believe both the study and generally that flavoring is strategically added to hook youngsters and yet they want to exempt the most popular flavoring while banning insignificant others. Now that’s blatant hypocrisy and scandalous for a TC group that pretends to care for the health of the public.
"The loopholes in the bill, which preclude it from taking exactly those actions for which there is evidence that a dent in cigarette use would occur -- including the menthol exemption --" I think that your view is erroneous Iro,courtesy of the comment by Dr Siegel.The question regarding menthol and its suggested addictive nature is very much relevant unless one wishes to see the option of purchasing menthol cigarettes abolished.This is clearly the intent if FDA legislation can be halted.Perhaps i am merely more suspicious of TC motivation and that of our host.
Iro, I commented on the Doc's own remark about why the bill is flawed and it obviously as nothing to do with hypocrisy when he states "that here we now have evidence of the one thing that the FDA legislation could potentially do that would actually make a dent in youth smoking".
That remark tells me that he DOES believe menthol should be banned also. For the children of course.....ignoring the fact that 'the children' can NOT buy cigarettes in the first place.
Then there's the fact that he's preaching to the choir here as we all know about the hypocrisy and outright lies of his movement. He seems to be the one who needs to be convinced. We already know.
"Congressional leaders themselves have demanded that the loopholes be removed and after research has been presented demonstrating why the loopholes are critical to the protection of cigarette sales ..." Dr Siegel speak for WE NEED TO BAN MENTHOL BECAUSE THE ABOVE STUDY HAS NOW PROVED WHAT WE WANTED IT TO PROVE. QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM. Dr Siegel has never lied about his view on menthol,he has just never told the full truth of his views it appears.Using one arguement to promote and force the issue on another,yet denying that issue exists,isn't really being open in my books,but it is politically acceptable parlance.
Iro wrote:
"Whether it is true or not true that menthol attracts youngsters to addict them is hardly the point here."
It may not have been the original point, but it rated discussion IMO. Nothing in the cited tobacco document was there anything about adolescents, etc. etc.
"It is the hypocrisy of Tobacco Free Kids and the AMA that he’s denouncing."
True, but maybe TFK didn't know this alleged evil manipulation of menthol was happening or that menthol is now considered a kiddie flavor. Many of us here have said menthol is pretty damned harsh to inhale. Hardly what I'd use to hook kids. I'd give them non menthol Lights if that was my intent. LOL
"Do I take it from reading these comments that all posters here agree with the FDA legislation..."
No.
"What is relevant is that TFK and AMA believe both the study"
That article was has a publishing date of July 16, 2008. That was yesterday where I live. TFK has been spouting their exemption crap for a lot longer than a day.
What is TFK's stance on Brussel Sprout Flavored Cigarettes?
It's all flavors except menthol, right?
What were the names of the cigarettes with the lower amount of menthol that attracted kids? Were there little signs throughout the store saying that they were manufactured just for kids up to age 24 and suggest a stronger menthol for adults over that age? Highly unlikely, which means this so called study was written in a men's room somewhere in Boston. Oh yeah, I have never heard anyone say, "In 3 more months I can try those Marlboro Menthols or For my 24th birthday, I want a carton of those adult menthol cigs". What rubbish!
"menthol is now considered a kiddie flavor"
Then they should sack their researchers.
THE 15 MOST POPULAR ICE CREAM FLAVORS
(Flavor, percent preferring)
1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%
11. Cherry, 1.6%
12. Chocolate almond, 1.6%
13. Coffee, 1.6%
14. Rocky road, 1.5%
15. Chocolate marshmallow, 1.3%
All others, 23.7%
Source: International Ice Cream Association, 888 16th St., Washington, D.C., 20006.
Mint is not even mentioned.
I smoke either Golden Virginia or Amber Leaf Rolling tobacco with menthol filters.
I started smoking when I was 17, but didn't try a menthol 'roll-up' until I was nearly 20 (I'm 22 now). I preferred them.
I hate pre-packed menthol cigarettes - it's like smoking fresh air.
Interestingly, a friend of my dad's, who is in his mid-late fifties tried a menthol filter for the first time the other night (provided by me). He really liked them - and this is from someone who has smoked 'roll-ups' for years - without a filter!!!!
Of course, this is just my own personal experience, but menthol brands, accoutrements, etc., don't get young people smoking. If the first cigarette I'd ever had was a pre-packed menthol cigarette, I'd probably never have smoked again. They're absolutely pointless.
Iro,
do you think if TFK were demanding that all flavours were protected by the bill, the Doc would support the bill because it was consistent?
I believe he has stated previously that he would support the proposal,if it prohibited all added flavours. So what is his real beef? Excluding menthol? Including all other flavours? or simply the fact that PM had a hand in the wording and exceptions?
I have a suspicion that we are all being played like a fiddle and the maestro is going to get his wish without the inconvenience of advertising his bigotry.
GreatScot
Happy Birthday Jack!!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...h-
birthday.html
"Jack Priestly claims he has suffered no serious health problems related to his tobacco and alcohol habit.
Mr Priestly, a widower and former baker, began smoking cigarettes when he was nine and claims to have smoked every day since"
or simply the fact that PM had a hand in the wording and exceptions?
Great Scot, I do believe you have hit the nail on the head. The REVRUUND Siegel does not believe tobacco companies, smokers, or anyone else impacted by regulations on tobacco and its use has any place at the table nor a voice in such discussions. Remember, it's for our own good.........
Of course we really know that all of this crapola is for the non-smokers who are just too damned stupid to read and understand simple concepts like "smoking permitted" or it "may be harmful if you start." The Revruuuuuuund Siegel, as well as Bill God(almighty)shall have repeatedly informed us of that.
I have a suspicion that we are all being played like a fiddle and the maestro is going to get his wish without the inconvenience of advertising his bigotry.
I do believe that is what the Revruuuuuuund Siegel is hoping for, but he seems to have forgotten that smokers are a whole heck of a lot smarter than his cult followers in TC and he is going to be in for a rude awakening.
Iro has got it exactly right.
To repeat what Iro said, so insightfully: "I don’t believe Dr Siegel is advocating to remove menthol from cigarettes. Whether it is true or not true that menthol attracts youngsters to addict them is hardly the point here. It is the hypocrisy of Tobacco Free Kids and the AMA that he’s denouncing. If they in fact believe what the ‘’pseudo-scientific’’ evidence this study produced i.e. that menthol is strategically added to tobacco by BT to attract new smokers and keep them hooked, then it should be the first ingredient that they should be demanding to be banned and not doing the exact opposite by advocating to exempt it for the one and only purpose to get the FDA legislation passed by hook or by crook."
That is precisely the point. It doesn't matter whether this research is accurate or not. The point is that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids BELIEVES that it is accurate. It also doesn't matter whether I support banning menthol or not. The point is that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids believes that banning cigarette flavorings is the appropriate way to deal with this product.
So if you put those two together, then why isn't the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids calling on the removal of menthol from cigarettes? It is simply hypocrisy (or inconsistency) for TFK to argue, on the one hand, that chocolate needs to be removed, but on the other hand, then menthol has to stay.
The story here is not really about menthol at all - it is about the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the anti-smoking movement.
Personally, I don't support ANY FDA regulation of tobacco, and if Congress were to vote to remove the menthol exemption, I would STILL vigorously oppose the bill.
What I'm looking for here is not a ban on menthol or any other constituent (in fact, I think we should leave the cigarette companies alone and let them produce and tailor the product to meet the demands of their adult consumers). What I'm looking for is some sense of consistency, integrity, and principle among the leading tobacco control groups.
And right now, I'm not seeing any and that's disturbing to me.
Just to make my point clear, because some readers seem to have the wrong impression, I OPPOSE the idea of the FDA regulating the tobacco product. I don't think it's appropriate for the government to start meddling with what the product can or cannot contain. I think the way to deal with this problem is on the demand side, not the supply side. What the federal government should be doing is not trying to regulate the content of the cigarettes, it should be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes. And not by forcing anyone not to smoke, by but educating them and trying to encourage them to make that decision for themselves.
One final point - my personal opinion is not relevant to my criticism of the anti-smoking groups. I am NOT criticizing them here because I don't agree with them that the product regulation approach is inappropriate (although I do think so). I am criticizing them because they are not being consistent with THEIR OWN stated beliefs and propaganda.
It's the talking out of both sides of their mouth that bothers me, not which side of their mouth they choose to speak from. At this point, I'd settle for one side or the other. I don't even care any more. I would just like some integrity, adherence to some sort of principles, and consistency.
Your explanation is somewhat at odds with your choice of words used in your commentary and your seeming reluctance to answer questions that seek to clarify your position.As to your final sentence,wouldn't we all Dr Siegel,but who is going to fight to obtain it ? TC is no longer capable of providing the truth,your attempts at doing so,often leave us second guessing your motives.Whose fault is that ?
What the federal government should be doing is not trying to regulate the content of the cigarettes, it should be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes. And not by forcing anyone not to smoke, by but educating them and trying to encourage them to make that decision for themselves.
And yet your own personal choice of "education" is to FORCE, by law, private business owners to ALL be smoke free, removing any choice at all for the owner who might prefer smokers over non-smokers and smokers who have nowhere to go to enjoy socializing AND smoking IN COMFORT AND SAFETY. NOW whose not being consistent?
I understand where you are coming from regarding this FDA stuff; yet also contradict yourself. Anytime reasonable compromise is mentioned you pull out and very small minority of ill people and call us callous for thinking they should be able to read a sign that says "smoking allowed" and make the decision to go elsewhere.
Sorry Doc, your concept of "education" is a little too similar to the re-education camps of communist nations.
And then, in your own words here: "Second, I find it ironic that here we now have evidence of the one thing that the FDA legislation could potentially do that would actually make a dent in youth smoking," Leaving CTFK out of the equation, you just stated boldly that "we now have evidence of the one thing that the FDA legislation could potentially do that would actually make a dent in youth smoking". And now you want to try to convince us that you actually STILL oppose removing anything from cigarettes?
I don't if I'm confused or if you are.
Doc -That is precisely the point. It doesn't matter whether this research is accurate or not.
Topic headline.
New Research Confirms that Tobacco Companies Use Menthol to Support Addiction, Especially Among Adolescents;
For an intelligent, educated man, you have a persistent, unfortunate habit of writing ambiguously. Your headline , subsequent commentary and previous posts can easily be, and was (by me anyway),interpreted as a call for banning menthol. You have quoted this research as gospel, you have jumped on the ridiculous racist bandwagon, lambasted TFK's hypocrisy for not including menthol and having the gaul to negotiate with PM, and I am sure previously in one of the related topic discussions, you stated that you would be supportive of the bill if it consistently called for all flavours to be banned (I am too tired to trawl back and find it, please accept my apologies if my recollection is flawed).
Perhaps instead of opposing the bill by subterfuge you could just stand up and oppose it on principle, because it is wrong, legitimate business have the right to act in the best interest of that business?
GreatScot
BTW how is your new research study going? You know the one about the negative affects on smokers caused by TC and the ongoing persecution?
I wondered where todays headline was pointing. "New Research Confirms that Tobacco Companies Use Menthol to Support Addiction,"
Here's the "new research."
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/
...H.2007.125542v1
It's a meta-analysis of documents from various sources and from various points in time.
Here's the tobacco document.
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/
t...0140D49FD077454
It's about a low level menthol product opportunity. When was this written? Probably in the late 1950's. when R.J. Reynolds, manufacturer of KOOLs, developed the Belair brand which is no longer considered to be an important brand.
http://www.rjrt.com/company/
prof...ileFactBook.asp
It was advertised on Bob Barker's show sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?
v=7o...feature=related
Touted by Bob as the light menthol with the true tobacco taste.
It would appear that 50 years ago the KOOL brand was losing market share to Newport. Belair was introduced as a light version of KOOLs to compete with Newports.
As others here have already noted this is Harvards way of packaging a conclusion in a headline and then spending the 30 minutes of time that it took to document their work.
CASH, the Campaign Against Smoker Harassment, issued this statement today.
"What would you expect from Harvard?"
E=MC^2
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Y'know Doc, if you had started your article with this simple line, you would have had an entirely different response to this particular article.
"The story here is not really about menthol at all - it is about the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the anti-smoking movement.".
After all, isn't THIS what we have been telling you for years now?
Y'know Doc, if you had started your article with this simple line, you would have had an entirely different response to this particular article.
"The story here is not really about menthol at all - it is about the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the anti-smoking movement.".
After all, isn't THIS what we have been telling you for years now?
Yeah, I agree. There'd be over 100 "we told you so's"..........LOL 
Doctor
As a person slandered and put under virtual house arrest by TC's activities as far as a social life goes, I have been trying for at least 5 minutes to feel some sympathy and share your displeasure that your movement has been betrayed by two of its members....... its an interesting mental challenge
its an interesting mental challenge
Thank you Rose!!! I needed that chuckle today......hehehehehe
Lynda -
Just because I state that we know something that we could do which would make a dent in youth smoking does not mean that I support taking that action. I think it is pretty clear, for example, that if we banned smoking in all outdoors places, like they proposed in Belmont originally, we would greatly reduce youth smoking. But that doesn't mean I support such laws (I don't). It is possible to report the results of research showing that a particular intervention would be effective, yet not support that intervention.
I hope this clarifies some of the confusion.
Jerry wrote: "Y'know Doc, if you had started your article with this simple line, you would have had an entirely different response to this particular article.
"The story here is not really about menthol at all - it is about the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the anti-smoking movement.".
After all, isn't THIS what we have been telling you for years now?"
Jerry - Yes, you told me so. And yes, you're right: it would have made my point clearer if I had stated that up front. However, my style in this blog has been to first report the story, then to start my commentary when it says "The Rest of the Story." I can change that approach if readers would simply prefer a commentary. But I kind of like the idea of first presenting the relevant news or story, and then providing my commentary on it. But I can change it if readers prefer.
Like I changed my color infatuation, which is now gone from the blog, and I admit, the posts are much easier to read.
Dr Siegel ,do you happen to have Repace measuring the velocity of the hurricane you are creating by twisting so violently ? I again ask why you chose the words you did and present them in such a way if not to cause confusion as you would have us believe ? There is an organisation which promotes the use of PLAIN ENGLISH,may be advantageous.
Doctor
For me, the layout is fine as it is, it was the meaning of the text that originally confused me.
EinsteinSmoked wrote:
"It was advertised on Bob Barker's show sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's."
Speaking of advertising back in those days, I'm not an expert on tv viewership, but I dare say it was whites who were the target of these ads and not blacks. What age group was the target, I don't know.
Michael Siegel wrote:
"I think it is pretty clear, for example, that if we banned smoking in all outdoors places, like they proposed in Belmont originally, we would greatly reduce youth smoking."
You never smoked as a kid, did you?
Kids don't start out by smoking in public. Something about the fear of being caught.
As they get older, they're already breaking the law by smoking so what difference does it make if a park is smoke-free? They weren't legally allowed to smoke there anyway.
I do believe the following is something the good Revruuuuuuuund Siegel and the rest of the anti-smoker should read, read well, and then meditate (maybe even pray) about it.
United States Code
TITLE 42 - THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
CHAPTER 21 - CIVIL RIGHTS
SUBCHAPTER I - GENERALLY
U.S. Code as of: 01/19/04
Section 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,
regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the
District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any
citizen of the United States or other person within the
jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges,
or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable
to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other
proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought
against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such
officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted
unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was
unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress
applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be
considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.
.
.
Doctor,
You say you want to tackle the demand side of smoking through education.
Should we educate people to believe that smoking is good or bad?
The last 50 years of epidemiology shows a clear relationship between many diseases and tobacco smoke, so it is hard to think it is neither good nor bad.
Should we educate people to believe that the presence of damaging compounds in tobacco smoke
is enough to cause net harm or should we argue that compensating healing compounds in tobacco smoke cause net benefit?
Should we explain to people that cooking food does produce bad compounds but it has net benefit because energy is saved with in the body and that this is analogous to smoking? Or should we say that there is no benefit to smoking, it is not analogous to cooking food and that it is merely a pointless addiction which causes diseases?
Should we educate people to believe that the epidemiology shows that sick people are more likely to smoke or that people are more likely to by sick from smoking?
What I'm looking for is some sense of consistency, integrity, and principle among the leading tobacco control groups.
And right now, I'm not seeing any and that's disturbing to me.
Michael Siegel
Oh for crying out loud, get off that BS. Integrity? Principle? You're out of your gourd. No such thing has EVER existied in the anti-smoker cult. NEVER. And you damned well know it.
The anti-smoker cult --- yes you are a CULT --- is currently the last group able to promote bigotry and discrimination along with hatred and violence against a minority group of citizens with not only no consequences, but the full force of the government guns behind them.
If I promoted the type of bigotry, discrimination, and or hatred that your and your kind promote I would find myself before a judge so damned fast my head would spin. But you people do it every day with impugnity. You want our kids taken away from us, you want us fired from our jobs, driven out of our homes, denied medical services, our businesses bankrupted, taunted and harrassed on the street.......all because we use a LEGAL PRODUCT that you don't like and have to make up lies about.
Right now you have the media on your side, and thus the gullible public (including those too stupid to understand a smoking permitted sign), and the government --- but some things you do NOT have on your side is honesty, integrity or even your precious science.
I think the way to deal with this problem is on the demand side, not the supply side. What the federal government should be doing is not trying to regulate the content of the cigarettes, it should be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes. And not by forcing anyone not to smoke, by but educating them and trying to encourage them to make that decision for themselves.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 07.17.08 - 2:51 pm | #
WHAT part of the US Constitution do you not UNDERSTAND????????? Obviously ALL of it. The federal government has no business in this debate whatsoever.
Please tell me WHERE in the Constitution it states the federal government is permitted to regulate ANY product? Rrohibition comes to mind, but even that was done through the Amendment process and was susequently repealed.
You and your cronies ARE infringing upon our rights by usurping the Constitution and using Congress to dictate that which is the jurisdiction of the states (and of course we all know that is up for question.)
Re-read the document, and especially the 1st 10 amendments, commmonly known as the Bill of Rights.
"New Research Confirms that Tobacco Companies Use Menthol to Support Addiction, Especially Among Adolescents; Results Reveal Hypocrisy of TFK Actions "
What an absolute crock.
Anyone who took an unbiased look at the "Evidence" Would see a marketing department doing what they are paid to do. The attachment of some devious motivation, in conjunction with an entirely out of context example, is more indicative of a very bad case of denials, to support the more obvious racist and bigoted behavior we see before us today, among the very people who should know better.
They claim smokers live in denial? TC sets the standard and it obviously takes one to know one, or should I say misery loves company?
The same marketing principles can be seen in the round table discussions of tobacco control, which were created and repeated around the globe. The same identification of markets the same racial of "demographic" targets with custom made strategies, to target each group, The same measures of slogan impact with focus groups surveys and test markets. The same evaluations in play and at predetermined intervals, after time has lapsed and the same adjustments with focus on what is working and what you are able to get away with by the myths you create.
The same corporate execs who are attacked wearing their tobacco company hats are saintly when selling social marketing. The exact same sales people and executives when working for Altera and selling processed foods are "welcomed members of our corporate community" when the throw a few dollars back into community events. Money they are not allowed to contribute under the PM hat, however as Kraft the perspective abruptly changes.
Once again the TC monarchy has no clothes and once again they hope to sell their dynasty with story book fantasies depicting knights and dragons.
Sorry TC when people mature they leave the witches and dragons behind, the realities of life are quite enough to keep most of us occupied.
The growing up stage may be a place those with wealth and privilege never have to go, which keeps the rest of us bewildered by your preoccupations with ignorance, in dealing with human relations or inability in predicting how people not like yourselves will react to your inhumane experimentation.
Dr. Siegel stated his preference, "What the federal government should be doing is not trying to regulate the content of the cigarettes, it should be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes. And not by forcing anyone not to smoke, by but educating them and trying to encourage them to make that decision for themselves."
I have been nothing but impressed with the intelligence of the posters to this blog since I first got here; especially the smokers.
It has been about 44 years since the 1964 SG Report and during all of those years there have been barrages of educational campaigns to get smokers to quit. There is even a special day set aside for all smokers to stop for one day.
What new magical message do you propose? The people who post here are all educated and they have all heard these messages about smoking most of their lives.
We don't believe that the "education" we've been offered all of these years is true. For many years all that smokers had to go on was their own personal experience with smoking.
The internet has changed that. We can read these studies ourselves and we see time and again that the conclusions are wrong or the studies are flawed. We learn more everyday to justify our conclusions that we have been right all along.
But if you have a new magical message to overcome all of this we'd love to hear it.
E=MC^2
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Dr. Siegel wrote: “It doesn't matter whether this research is accurate or not”.
But, it does matter, Doc. Suspect scientific studies, propaganda and outright lies are at the heart of the whole issue. These are the weapons of choice for the tobacco control movement in their war on smokers. And it is a war, with a growing number of casualties and a lot of collateral damage.
In your blog you’ve criticized a lot of the misrepresentations and exaggerations of your colleagues, but you’ve never stated your stand on the root cause of the lies (they are lies Doc, not simply falsehoods or inaccuracies). The root cause is denormalization.
Forced behavioural modification in the form of denormalization is a morally bankrupt concept. Smokers are human beings. Don’t expect us to react well when we’re treated like Pavlov’s dogs. And don’t expect us to kiss the collective ass of tobacco control when they ring their bloody bell.
And, if some of your readers question your motivation, you have only yourself to blame.
I’ve only been reading this blog for a few months, but you’ve written half a dozen or more articles taking Tobacco Free Kids to task for their stand on menthol cigarettes. But, I can’t recall a single article which stated simply and unequivocally, “I oppose the FDA legislation because . . . “
Instead, you attacked Tobacco Free Kids (and the AMA) and even played the race card. Then you brought up a suspect study to make your point. If all the documents reviewed by the Harvard researchers are as innocuous as the one linked to in your article, the “study” is unlikely to be seen as legitimate by anyone outside the tobacco control movement who will simply use it as another propaganda tool.
Doc, you’re doing a great job of providing those of us without a voice the opportunity to speak our mind. But, let’s face it. Given your position on tobacco control, you’re not always going to like what you hear.
Dr. Siegel wrote: “The story here is not really about menthol at all - it is about the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the anti-smoking movement”.
Exactly! I don’t think you’ll get a lot of flack on that one Doc. But, it’s not an anti-smoking movement; it’s an anti-smoker movement. And when you’re walking on our side of the street, there’s a hell of a difference.
thanks for expanding on my post from yesterday, mike.
brandz
From a discussion of marketing to young adult smokers (as per the tobacco document linked in the blog) to Michael's "youth" and "adolescents" to Banzaf's "young children". Such age regression in just one day...
http://www.pr-inside.com/menthol...ill-
r707476.htm
"2008-07-16 23:40:52 - A new study showing that the tobacco industry manipulated menthol levels in an effort to attract young children into smoking (by masking the harsh taste of smoke for first time smokers), and to increase the addictive hold of nicotine on smokers, could delay a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction over cigarettes."
And the timing is just so... convenient.
Also of interest in this month's AJPH
Framing Health Matters
Project Cerberus: Tobacco Industry Strategy to Create an Alternative to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
Hadii M. Mamudu 1, Ross Hammond 2, Stanton A. Glantz 1*
1 University of California San Francisco
2 Independent Consultant (working for UCSF on this project)
Abstract
Between 1999 and 2001, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, and Japan Tobacco International executed Project Cerberus to develop a global voluntary regulatory regime as an alternative to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). They aimed to develop a global voluntary regulatory code to be overseen by an independent audit body and to focus attention on youth smoking prevention. The International Tobacco Products Marketing Standards announced in September 2001, however, did not have the independent audit body. Although the companies did not stop the FCTC, they continue to promote the International Tobacco Products Marketing Standards youth smoking prevention as an alternative to the FCTC. Public health civil society groups should help policymakers and governments understand the importance of not working with the tobacco industry"
GDF- From a dream about phone calls to ASH.
"oops, sorry, there was no intent to deceive, I just misread the research, I did not deliberately change the "young adult smokers" of the research paper into "young children" in my press release, of course I regret the error, I will immediately consider redrafting and reissue the press release and perhaps a full and frank apology for possibly misleading the public."
Later
"What, it's not changed yet? Gee, I don't know whats happened, I instructed it to be changed. Someone will pay for this, I will make someone really suffer. Find me a smoker, I'm mad."
GreatScot
GreatScot--what is it Michael calls those things... mis-statements... umm... mistakes... umm.. inaccuracies...?
And now for the REAL rest of the story
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/...68%7D&
dist=hppr
GREENSBORO, N.C., July 16, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- While Lorillard Tobacco Company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lorillard, Inc. (NYSE: LO)) has not yet had the opportunity to fully review the latest report from the Harvard School of Public Health...
...However the report's conclusion that Lorillard controls or alters the menthol levels in its products to promote smoking initiation or addiction is categorically false.
Lorillard does not control levels of menthol to promote smoking among adolescents and young adults. Furthermore, Lorillard does not engineer any of its cigarettes to promote smoking initiation or nicotine addiction. Importantly, the target menthol specifications for Newport have not changed at all since 2000.
Lorillard is in the business of manufacturing cigarettes for sale to adult smokers. The company wants every adult smoker who prefers menthol cigarettes to choose its Newport product. This is why Lorillard strives to make a product with superior taste and consistency.
The company also rejects the report's conclusion that Lorillard targets youth smokers. The authors should know that pursuant to an agreement with the state's Attorneys General, Lorillard does not advertise in magazines that have a youth readership of 15 percent or greater and/or a circulation of two million or more readers under 18 years of age. This is not a new policy and has been in effect for years. Contrary to the report's assertion, while the magazine advertising expenditures for Newport may fluctuate from year to year, overall spending on magazine advertising has decreased over the last 10 years."
Not that I care one bit about menthol levels. People do and will smoke what they want to smoke. Legal or illegal, menthol or non, ban or no ban, people will smoke tobacco because it is a healthful activity.
http://www.healthiertalk.com/vie...er=asc&
start=30
"On the other hand, we now have solid evidence that menthol is actually being used by cigarette companies to recruit and support addiction among literally millions of young smokers."
This is what you call solid evidence? The undated tobacco document you link to refers to adults who already smoke.
"First-time smoker reaction is generally negative. . . . Initial negatives can be alleviated with a low level of menthol."
The context in which you place this quote is completely wrong. It does not mean menthol will alleviate the harshness of plain tobacco for a non-smoker.
It means that a low level of menthol will be less harsh to a plain-tobacco smoker than a high level of menthol.
Got that? It's about the harshness of menthol!
You own integrity comes into question when you support your argument with junk science such as this. In light of you own denunciation of others' use of junk science, it makes you an astoundingly arrogant hypocrite.
I suspect the reason for the lack of clarity in the Doctor's writing is a lack of clarity in the Doctor's thinking. Dreams die hard and he's in push-pull mode. Evidence piles up-- and up and up--about the slipperiness, dishonesty, even viciousness of his Movement but apparently it still hasn't reached a critical mass. So it's easier to nit-pick than to squarly face the fact that the Movement itself is lousy (pun intended). This article seems to be part of the vascillation-- so of course it's unclear. And it is. Very.
Not about whether menthol should be removed; I think he's stated often enough that he doesn't think it should be. The lack of clarity slithers in, first, in his credulousness at the Harvard "study", and second, in his outrage at the horrible mortal consequences of NOT removing the menthol that he personally wouldn't remove, and the ostensible racism inherent therein.
The outrage appears to be directed at the awfulness of not removing menthol, tho when some of the smoke clears, it's apparently just about his quarrel with TFK. Or is it? Who knows? ( Maybe not even he. )
Einstein and Matt seem to have covered the general innocuousness of the tobacco marketing plans (dating back to the fifties) and it seems pretty clear that Harvard's just twisting things to fit with its (fifty years later) agenda. One question is: why would the doc so automatically believe this Harvard thesis? Brought to him by the folks who bring 30 minute heart attacks and Helena miracles.
Take a good look at Harvard's "conclusion"--
Tobacco companies manipulate the sensory characteristics of cigarettes, including menthol content, thereby facilitating smoking initiation and nicotine dependence....
In other words, they make their products taste good so that people will want to use them and they try to appeal to a variety of tastes so that more people use them. Same as when Kellogg's puts frost on (some, but not all of of) its wheat.
So why believe this is some wicked conspiracy? Except that it's fuel for the internecene spat. IOW, it's simply expedient to believe it; a nice hard snowball to toss across the schoolyard.
As though that were actually the only issue.
While the thrust of Dr. Siegel's blog entry is the hypocrisy it still trails along with it his belief (nevermind that this belief is not intended -- by him -- to be used as a reason to regulate it) that menthol IS the culprit that TC claims it to be.
And I believe it's THAT ride-along belief which has us up in arms, making the primary point of the entry secondary.
So we're not off topic, we just picked up on something else that offends US more.
As quoted from a Boston Globe article
http://www.boston.com/news/
healt...rchers_tob.html
Dr. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control researcher at the Boston University School of Public Health, said it "really demonstrates that menthol is playing a major role in maintaining cigarette consumption and especially in recruiting and supporting addiction among youth and young adults."
And the majority of posts here are intended to reject THAT conclusion.
Sorry I missed your post, Cowbell. It wasn;t there before I posted.
I can only wish our host will pay attention to your analysis, go back to the source, and re-evaluate this example of drive-by science from his friends across the Charles.
:
From Brandrepublic
Agencies line up for EU anti-smoking job
LONDON - The European Union is seeking an agency to handle a pan-European ad campaign on the dangers of smoking.
The winning agency will create a push to run across 27 member states next year. At this stage, the pitch does not include media planning and buying.
Agencies will be asked to create advertising for three briefs: one to dissuade young people from starting to smoke; another to persuade young smokers to give up; and a third to push the dangers of passive smoking.
http://www.brandrepublic.com/New...ti-smoking-job/
Like a mass campaign for a new soap powder.
Meanwhile
Pharma is cutting the legs from under you by announcing new medicines based on the beneficial components of tobacco,like they said, its not the plant chemicals that are bad, its the method of delivery.
The experimental fields are already growing.
Tobacco Promising "Factory" for Biopharmaceuticals
http://www.plantpharma.org/ials/...ndex.php?
id=156
Researchers Light Up for Nicotine, the Wonder Drug
"Smoking may be bad for you, but researchers and biotech companies are quietly developing pharmaceuticals that are decidedly good for brains, bowels, blood vessels and even immune systems -- and they're inspired by tobacco's deadly active ingredient: nicotine."
http://www.wired.com/science/dis...007/06/
nicotine
BTW
Science in action - human experiment!
The other day, I had a very nasty gardening accident, I smashed my right thumb nail half off, there was lots of blood.
As I stood there in silent agony, it flashed into my mind, Mayan battlefield medicine for wounds,wrap the wound with green tobacco leaves to stop the bleeding.
So I ripped of the leaf and wrapped it round my thumb.
As we know, unburnt nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, and the bleeding did stop quite quickly. Though every time I took it off it started to bleed again.
Real science, instant observable results!
Dr Siegel,how many people READ YOUR COMMENTARY ? How many READ THE COMMENTS ,ALL OF THEM ? So how many people have "misunderstood" what you have now corrected mainly in response to the comments left ? Are you suggesting that you are not aware of how the press react with these headline studies ? Your blog is different ? Is all of this good advertising for Boston University,has the admission rates gone up at all since you started ?
Rose,
After reading your links,
It seems pretty clear that the pharma/WHO are trying to develop alternative delivery systems for the rich west while actively seeking to deny third world smokers any net benefit from smoking.
They may as well tell them to stop cooking their food while they work out a cleaner way of cooking.
It’s a global public health disaster promoted by greed.
And Doll wondered why his cancer wards were full of smokers and why his doctors dropped like flies – what a joke. I am surprised he did not blame cough mixture for coughing while he was at it.
I agree with GreatScot and others upthread about the direction of the headlines above Michael Siegel's pieces. You can go back and read a few (in bold) recent ones, and add (in italic) the sort of thing you'd expect to find written under them
New York County Legislator Seeking to Ban Smoking Outdoors Because It Sets a Bad Example
Well, it does, doesn't it? Whoopee, a brand new reason to ban smoking outdoors!
Scene Smoking Still Claims that Tobacco Kills 124,000 Young People A Year; We Can Safely Conclude that They Do Not Care About the Facts
Yeah. It's well known that far more young people than that are killed by tobacco every year.
ASH Reiterates its Claim that 30 Minutes of Secondhand Smoke Increases a Nonsmokers' Risk of a Heart Attack to that of an Active Smoker
Actually, it only takes 10 minutes.
IN MY VIEW: Study on Effect of England's Smoking Ban on Quit Rates Not Only Represents Science by Press Release; It Also Appears to Be Shoddy Science
But that's just my view, so it doesn't matter. Go ahead and publish the stuff.
Special "Independence" Day Post: Australians May Need a License to Smoke
And about time too.
And so on. It's a variant form of science by press release. People will mostly just read the headline, and take that message away, not bothering to read what's underneath it, thinking they know what it will say.
The headline should summarize the text beneath it. Instead, Siegel's headlines usually repeat some wild claim, which he goes on to refute in the text beneath the headline. The result is that Siegel does a great job hauling water for antismokers. No big surprise there - he is an antismoker after all.
I think I'm going to try writing a few spoof Michael Siegel pieces, with scary headlines at the top, and lengthy refutations underneath.
Rose;
The better mousetrap?
"So I ripped of the leaf and wrapped it round my thumb.
As we know, unburnt nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, and the bleeding did stop quite quickly. Though every time I took it off it started to bleed again.
Real science, instant observable results!"
You may be on to something there Rose tobacco woven into band aids and surgical dressings?
Trouble is the entire "medical" and "scientific" community would attack any suggestion of trying to market them, regardless of their efficiency.
After all the wailing and all the money they spent, creating the evil dragon, they would heavily resist any product which allowed tobacco to be seen in a positive light.
Fredrik
I think I may just have found another missing link.See what you make of it.
Smoke Rings
"Many varieties of tobacco plant contain more than 10% of active ingredients, called nicotinia alkaloids. These are based on a pyridine ring, with a side group. Pyridine is an unpleasant-smelling liquid present in coal tar"
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/
mim...cotine_text.htm
Coal tar yet again, class1 carcinogen, rose to prominence around the 1900's, widespread use in cities 20 years before the cancer rate started to rise.
Plenty of documentation on cancer risks including lung cancer.
"Besides dye, many other coal tar byproducts are still in use, although similar materials derived from petroleum and natural gas have joined them, and replaced some. Here are some of coal's byproducts:
Benzene is a light, very flammable solvent, which is used in such different applications as perfume-making, dry cleaning, and gasoline production (where it cleans grease out of petroleum).
Creosote (CREE-oh-soat) can be made from coal tar, as well as from the wood tar that is a byproduct of charcoal making. Used to preserve wood exposed to the elements, it has been soaked into every telephone or power pole, and railroad tie, in sight. It also can be a component of cough syrup!
(Kerosine, also miscalled "coal oil," is actually a petroleum product. The name stuck, though, after Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner first extracted it from coal in 1854. In short order, kerosine was made from petroleum. It was the major source of lighting through the mid- to late19th century.)
Naphtha, a very flammable liquid, is used as a spot remover and as the solvent in varnish.
Paraffin, odorless, wax-like, and solid at room temperature but easy to melt, comes from coal tar as well as from crude oil. It is molded into candles, and poured atop jars of jam and jelly to seal them.
Toluene (TALL-you-ween), another flammable light solvent, is a component in an amazing array of products: explosives like TNT (trinitrotoluene), antiseptic, paint, saccharin, cosmetics, and textile dye."
http://www.lewis-clark.org/conte...p?
ArticleID=550
Roffo thought tobacco tar must be carcinogenic because coal tar was.
You just blame tobacco for the effects of coal tar and industry rolls on.
Take a look
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc...es/
s048coal.pdf
Anonymous
Theres that small problem of nicotine poisoning, my cut was only small, so I didn't get it.
Anonymous
I was reading a study some while back, where they tested the alleged effects of smoking on rabbits.
They injured the animals ears then injected the poor animals with fresh nicotine to see how well they healed, naturally having restricted the blood flow to the entire body, the rabbits didn't do too well.
The same appears to have happened with NRT patches in surgery.
And thats why the medical profession thinks that smokers heal badly.
Lets see that once again -
niacin
"pellagra-preventing vitamin in enriched bread," 1942, coined from ni(cotinic) ac(id) + -in, chemical suffix; suggested by the American Medical Association as a more commercially viable name than nicotinic acid.
"The new name was found to be necessary because some anti-tobacco groups warned against enriched bread because it would foster the cigarette habit." ["Cooperative Consumer," Feb. 28, 1942]
Really really OT, but worth a look: apparently the Dutch have come up with a way round their millstone/smoking ban here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...Holy-
smoke.html
'Dutch smokers are flocking to a religious movement known as "The Only and Universal Smokers Church of God" following a ban on tobacco smoking indoors.
Michiel Eijsbouts, founder and "Smokelighter" of the church he founded in 2001, has insisted that the Dutch smoking ban in place does not apply to members of his church under national and European human rights legislation.
"We think we have all the marks of a religion," he said.
"We will have to find out what the secular powers-that-be think. For us the constitution and European rules say we have the right to express our religion and we express our religion through smoking."
Article continuesadvertisement
Church members receive a card, for a fee of £3, to prove their religious denomination as a "Holy Smoker" to the authorities.
Believers sign up to a creed asserting a trinity of smoke, fire and ash. In terms of holy rites their god is honoured by smoking.
The Smokers Church or Rokerskerk has over 2000 members including a "missionary" in Britain, Mr Eijsbouts told The Daily Telegraph.
"For a smoker with a small s it is just a bodily need. For a smoker with a capital S it is a spiritual need, you have to have a religious experience. When you are lighting up you have to think of God," he said.
"Converting people was not easy until the smoking ban started but now people are flocking to the church."
Smoking has been banned in Dutch bars since July 1 and over 100 cafés have applied to the Church so as to be counted as religious institutions.
"We stand firmly behind the church's teachings and that is smoking," said Cor Busch, owner of the Lindeboom bar in the northern Dutch town of Alkmaar.
"Smokers are being discriminated against, a beer and a cigarette belong together."
A spokeswoman for the Dutch health ministry said: "Whether they call it church or not, it is still a bar or café and smoking is still prohibited." '
Might be worth joining them?
cancer wards were full of smokers
Fredrik
Muller observed the same in 1939, so it may well be that many of the smokers in hospital beds were victims of mustard gas for which lung cancers of the respiratory tract are an expected outcome.
Chemically damaged lungs but they continued to smoke?
Really , it all depends which end you look down the telescope, doesn't it.
Idlex,
While I agree with your point regarding newspapers (I do think that people sometimes just read the headlines of news articles), I've never heard of anyone who goes to a blog simply to read the headlines. Also, I've never seen anyone reprint just my blog post headlines, without the actual text.
But I do agree that with newspaper headlines, there could be a serious concern, because many people do just browse quickly through the headlines. I don't think anyone comes to my site to just read the headlines.
"I don't think " "I do think " is this what Tobacco Control rests upon ? since you don't KNOW Dr Siegel i'm most surprised that you are prepared to suggest that your thinking is the just option to defray the quite correct condemnation from many of your regular commentators.Why can't you just accept valid criticism for a change instead of playing a game of wriggly worms ?
According to annual cigarette manufacturer reports to US Federal Trade Commission, the market share for menthol cigarettes has fluctuated between 25%-28% from 1975-2005. See table 8 at: http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobac...te2004-
2005.pdf
If "tobacco companies use menthol to enhance addiction of smokers, especially adolescents and young adults," as claimed by some anti tobacco activists at Harvard School of Public Health, why has the market share for menthol cigarettes remained flat during the past thirty years?
Please note that these same folks from HSPH have been advocating congressional enactment of the Philip Morris/CTFK negoatiated FDA tobacco regulatory legislation.
Also please note that these same folks from HSPH also wrote and heavily publicized so-called research (the data for which they have refused to provide to me to analyze their data and research methods) claiming that tobacco companies have increased/manipulated nicotine levels during the past decade to make cigarettes more addictive (to youth and young adults), as well as a recent piece in JAMA claiming that their campaign to reduce tobacco use has failed during the past decade because the decline in cigarette consumption has been largely offset by increases consumption of smokeless tobacco and cigars (while failing to acknowledge that switching from cigarettes to smokeless tobacco sharply reduces morbidity and mortality risks).
"I suspect the reason for the lack of clarity in the Doctor's writing is a lack of clarity in the Doctor's thinking."
Very well said, Walt.
"I can only wish our host will pay attention to your analysis, go back to the source, and re-evaluate this example of drive-by science from his friends across the Charles."
If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. Of course, we all know that Dr. Siegel's definition of "junk science" is science that does not support his position.
Any piece of scientific trash that does support his position is deemed sound.
"What the federal government should be doing is not trying to regulate the content of the cigarettes, it should be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes."
WHY should the government be trying to decrease the demand for cigarettes, doctor? I believe you have NEVER answered that question. How is any of all that any of the damn government's business in the first place? How is it any of YOUR business?
This goes to the very heart of our quarrel. So please, once and for all, justify your stand that it's somehow the government's business. Or YOUR business.
Justify it. Just who in hell IS the government, anyway?
.
Harry, what is not understood by not only tobacco control, but every other busy body who thinks they know better is that Government is "We the People". It is not Doctors, Lawyers or Politicians. It is every citizen no matter who you are or who you want to be!
Is the Government the legislative arm of Tobacco Control ?
Harry,
excellent questions, the answers (if forthcoming) will be telling.
Loved this one- "Justify it. Just who in hell IS the government, anyway?"
A question that every man, woman and child should ask themselves regularly.
Along with asking themselves how and why "popular laws" are enacted. How did the driving popularity become popular, have we been bombarded with propaganda to manipulate popular belief. Who really benefits, what will they cost (not just financially) follow the money, have I really investigated the topic and formed an independent opinion or am I parroting media and single issue fanatic soundbites? Am I being manipulated?
But then again critical thinking is too much like hard work for the average citizen, here in the UK, we have not only successfully dumbed down our education system and the last couple of generations but somehow convinced them that they are too dumb to have an original thought or even an opinion of value. If it is in the papers or on TV it must be true. Scientists, self proclaimed experts and Doctors have been elevated to demigod status in the eyes of the public and don't our politicians and demigods just love it.
GreatScot
Si wrote:
"Is the Government the legislative arm of Tobacco Control ?"
ROFLMAO
Rose wrote:
"The other day, I had a very nasty gardening accident...Though every time I took it off it started to bleed again.
Real science, instant observable results!"
I'm really sorry, but for it to be real science you'll be required to do the same thing to your other thumb, but use a handkerchief on it this time.
Ouch! I'm glad I'm not you. LOL
Dr. Siegel, didn't you criticize the same researchers when they said the tobacco companies were manipulating nictine levels to ensure addiction?
PM, Lorrilard, etc., have issed the same catigorical denials as they did last time.
What makes this research more believable?
James
There are limits to what I'll endure in the pursuit of knowledge.
Strangely, the pain went of very fast and its healing very quickly, but I attribute that more to the superglue and paper I stuck my thumbnail back together with.
Strangely, the pain went of very fast and its healing very quickly, but I attribute that more to the superglue and paper I stuck my thumbnail back together with.
All I can say is EEEWWWWW.....
Glad you're alright though. Personally I think it was the tobacco leaf you used first that helped the most. But that's just my totally UNbiased opinion.....LOL
Lynda F
It could even be the black plaster with a skull and crossbones on that I put over the lot to cushion it.
Healing the whole person, both body and mind.
I've been waiting to use one of those plasters for ages. 
Idlex, While I agree with your point regarding newspapers (I do think that people sometimes just read the headlines of news articles), I've never heard of anyone who goes to a blog simply to read the headlines.
Is a blog really any different from a newspaper op-ed or news report? Either way, busy people mostly don't have the time to do much more than read the headlines and a further line or two, unless they're seriously interested.
And since I'm generally not that interested in the internal squabbles of Tobacco Control, I mostly don't read your op-eds. Not closely, anyway (which makes me someone who just reads blog headlines). Instead I mostly come here for the comments, which have a vivacious life of their own. When I do read your pieces, they regularly strike me as ambiguous, and leave me wondering whether you are, as you often claim to be, an antismoker who now thinks that TC is getting very sloppy, or an unreconstructed antismoker who enjoys posting token opposition to TC while, as someone else put it recently, playing his readership like a violin.
It's an ambiguity which is accentuated - but not created - by the contrast between the blog headlines and the close print underneath them. I suspect that it's an ambiguity that runs right the way through you. You don't know whether you're one of the ordained priests in the church of TC, or a condemned heretic outside it. And neither do your readers. This one included.
Idlex,i couldn't have said it better,your last paragraph sums up my feelings.Until Dr Siegel decides to sort himself/his style out then i remain a very firm skeptic.It isn't my fault,blame TC for their catalogue of deceit and lies throughout the years.
GreatScot, Dumbing down our education system and believing everything the media reports is how it works on this side of the ocean too. Sad that no one knows how to form an educated opinion anymore, but that was the quest in the beginning, wasn't it Doc? Dumb them down and then educate them with what we want them to know! That is why my work is cut out for me with my grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
I am also with Idlex on this one. I read your headlines and then skim the rest. If something different jumps out at me, I go back and reread what I missed. Haven't had to do that for a long time now. I also love the comments.
OK, fair enough. I will try to make the headlines more descriptive from now on.
Cowbell wrote: "we all know that Dr. Siegel's definition of "junk science" is science that does not support his position. Any piece of scientific trash that does support his position is deemed sound."
Anyone who reads this blog knows that is simply not true. If it were true, then why would I have trashed the Helena study, the Pueblo study, the Piedmont study, the Bowling Green study, the Ireland study, the England study, the Scotland study, the 'smokers are dumber' study, and the hundreds of reports about short-term exposure to secondhand smoke being a cause of immediate heart attacks? There are literally hundreds of posts on this blog criticizing, finding fault with, or trashing anti-smoking studies which support "my cause."
Are we reading the same blog?
OT
"Humans do not have the ability to synthesise sufficient nicotinic acid, this means that it is an essential component of a balanced diet."
"Our intestinal bacteria would require 60 mg of tryptophan to synthesise 1 mg of nicotinic acid so don't count on them"
.......
"The fact that the FDA ban of L-Tryptophan and the Newsweek Prozac cover story occurred within four days of each other went unnoticed by both the media and the public. Yet, to those who understand the effective properties of L-Tryptophan and Prozac, the concurrence seems "unbelievably coincidental."
"By publicly banning L-Tryptophan from its dietary supplement status and price, while allowing L-Tryptophan to be sold as a high-priced prescription drug, the naked duplicity of the FDA L-Tryptophan policy is revealed."
http://www.qhi.co.uk/features/fe...es/
feat_002.asp
Is this true?
There are literally hundreds of posts on this blog criticizing, finding fault with, or trashing anti-smoking studies which support "my cause."
While I can't verify the numbers (I'm too lazy to actually look and count I admit it), I have to agree with the Doc here, Cowbell.
While I can/do/will continue to criticize him for his stand...as well his own MIS-use of words...he has/does/probably will continue to dissect and disassemble bogus, lying TC bull feces (well at least the overtly outrageous ones).
I think the problem may be caused by addressing two different audiences with one blog entry.
Interesting article about Menthols and other flavors from 1959
http://www.time.com/time/magazin...25856-
1,00.html
BT was even toying with a 'fresh mowed hay' flavor/smell....LMAO, Yankee Candle makes a 'fresh cut grass' candle now.
Until Dr Siegel decides to sort himself/his style out then i remain a very firm skeptic. - SuperCallousSi
Me too. But I bear in mind his evocative description of himself, on one of the round table discussions with Gian Turci, as someone who felt like a runner who'd completed a long distance run, only to see the other runners just carry on running right past him. He's on his own, and he's torn. He still thinks he's one of the runners, one of the players, and that they're still his buddies, but he also knows he isn't, and that they aren't.
He's like one of those Cold War defectors - the kind that lost faith in communism after Kruschev's speech denouncing Stalin's gulag, but who still buys into Soviet ideals, still reads Marx and Lenin, and still polishes up his Young Pioneers metalwork award.
I think there'll one of two eventual outcomes. Either he'll seek forgiveness and sign up once again to whatever happens to be the current credo of the extreme church of TC (Smokers' breath kills in seconds?), or else he'll renounce all its doctrines in their entirety, including most of what he used to believe himself - 220 bartenders and all -, and write a fly-on-the-wall bestseller called "Tobacco Control Cardinal: my journey through bad craziness" or something. I'm not prepared to give odds which way it's likely to go. But I do have a strong preference for one outome over the other.
Wasn't your whole concern Dr Siegel ,TC becoming so ridiculously exposed that they were/still are making such incredulous claims that even the sheeple will eventually realise that they have been lied to ? TC are promoting their own self serving prophecy,but the payment will be implosion.Shredding studies that are so ficticious in nature that anyone with an ounce of logic and reason could see through them,could be utilised by yourself in two ways.Yes,you've shredded them and argued against your fellow/previous brethren but your approach to the menthol angle in this post has raised concerns.In essence IF it were accepted that you have made errors,they need to be rectified lest you leave yourself wide open to further criticism.I still believe that you have always been less than open on a number of issues.The ball is in your court,but i do believe Cowbell's comments should not be dismissed so easily.
There are literally hundreds of posts on this blog criticizing, finding fault with, or trashing anti-smoking studies which support "my cause." - Michael Siegel
Yes, I think that's quite true. But while you trash all these antismoking studies, you still remain an antismoker.
I think the problem may be caused by addressing two different audiences with one blog entry
I agree, and it's part of the ambiguity. The blog entries are directed at TC, but the contributing readership is 95% pro-smoking. Or at least anti-antismoking.
This debate is now so polarised, and set to become even more polarised - a war, no less -, that there's less and less space for anyone trying, as Dr Siegel appears to be doing, to occupy the vanishing middle ground. Which is why I think he's going to have to decide which side he's on - whether he's for public health, or for personal freedom.
In his last sentence, I think (I hope) idlex meant "public health" as an institution. I mean, those of us who are pro-freedom certainly believe that that is in the best interest of the overall health of the public. So, one can certainly be for both public health and personal freedom.
It is the institution of "public health" , and in particular, the Smoker Control (SC) folks who are the real threat to the public health.
GDF, what I'm utterly opposed to is the sort of endemic modern 'healthism' that sets health as an idol over and above all other considerations, in particular those of personal freedom.
Tobacco Control is at present busily suppressing personal freedom in the name of this idol, and its only measure of success is the implausible number of 'lives saved' by the various oppressive measures it manages to impose on people 'for their own good'. And no doubt Alcohol Control, and Food Control, and Exercise Control and various other sorts of Control are gearing up to follow the 'success' of TC in taking personal choice away from individuals in the name of all-important 'health'. The inevitable result is going to be an explosion, as ordinary people find their lives becoming more and more intolerable under this healthist tyranny, even in the supremely unlikely event that they actually do live longer.
So I don't see 'healthism' as an institution, so much as a blinkered and unbalanced ideology - to which doctors in particular seem to be unusually prone, perhaps because they're in the business of saving lives, and constantly look at life in this one-eyed fashion.
Real people living real lives, as opposed to healthist ideologues, balance their health against a basket of other considerations, and they are at times prepared to forego their health for these other causes - as when they take up arms to fight, and face injury or death, for some cause that they hold to be of greater importance than their personal well-being.
What I want to know is: are Bill Godshall and Stanton Glantz and Kenneth Repace (and maybe Dr. Michael Siegel too) prepared to fight and die for the idealistic healthist ideology they're busy imposing on everyone? Because this is where it's all going, faster and faster. And I bet they're not.
M asked: "Dr. Siegel, didn't you criticize the same researchers when they said the tobacco companies were manipulating nicotine levels to ensure addiction? PM, Lorrilard, etc., have issed the same categorical denials as they did last time. What makes this research more believable?"
M - While it may seem amazing for a tobacco control advocate, I judge research based on its quality and validity, rather than on who is doing it and what position it takes. I analyzed the nicotine study and found it to be flawed. I reviewed this study, and believe its conclusions are sound.
What makes a piece of research valid or not is not who writes it. It's how good the research is.
Idlex,
Your insights into reasons why people do not prioritize various health behaviors are illuminating and important. I wish that public health practitioners understood the very point you are making. It's interesting to hear you say this, because this is one of the key points that I teach in my introductory public health class.
idlex "What I want to know is: are Bill Godshall and Stanton Glantz and Kenneth Repace (and maybe Dr. Michael Siegel too) prepared to fight and die for the idealistic healthist ideology they're busy imposing on everyone? Because this is where it's all going, faster and faster. And I bet they're not.".
I agree, I am damn sure those listed are not so convinced of their "beliefs" that they would even risk actual physical danger for their ideals. I am also very much convinced that TC and the Nanny statists have "denormalized" their targets to the point where in the corner they have us backed into, that we have very little left to lose except our health and lives, and thats when this is going to get very dangerous indeed.
You want to talk about unintended consequences doctor, you better take a very close look at the more militant attitudes that are creeping into those of us who have done NOTHING wrong but try to preserve our own freedoms and lifestyles, after years of being labled "abuser's, addicts, scum, murderers, and whatever other disgusting names Anti's can try to pin on us, such as assassins child molester's monster, you get the drift, the list is endless", what do you think our temprament is becoming?
How long can you accuse good decent hardworking folk of these "crimes" which have never been realized, much less proven, before we start to act like the criminals we've been labled as for years?
How long until we reach the point of no return and openly declare war on those who have been at war with us for decades?
How long can you accuse someone of being a monster before they feel they have no recourse left but to BE THAT MONSTER.
You should really spend the weekend or however long it takes for your "behavioral sciences" to determine what the outcome of criminalizing 20-30% of the population produces the very criminals we are already accused of being?
Mr Doctor of Behavioral sciences, you would think this would be right up your alley, and you don't have a clue to what you and your movement have created with their "social experimentations", as you have evidenced all along with all of our "We told you so's".
You better pay attention here, because the next "we told you so" could be the one where we start making this a true war for our very survival.
While I'm committing the sin of commenting on a study to which I've only read the abstract, I don't find it worthy to contribute $22 bucks for something that probably doesn't deserve to line my parrot's birdcage.
It appears that this article is much like the "nicotine manipulation" study. Insinuating that there is a conspiracy to attract new smokers through menthol manipulation. Well obviously, some companies WILL try and find their niche, by changing their products, however to claim this is to attract and addict children is a gross misrepresentation. Likewise I COULD charge that tobacco control deliberately are attracting children to smoking by promoting it as an adult activity, and further promote it's use by their lobbying against legislation to make minor tobacco use an unlawful act, and I could further support this accusation that this motivation is financial as a means of keeping them employed. However in actuality there is nothing that was given that "proves" these are the motivations, and it is not a consequence of some other goal.
In the abstract it states that menthol sales remain stable, which I take to mean in proportion to non-menthol sales. So if this is the case, how can one derive this covert action was effective, as to me it proves validates the null instead.
Further, without linking menthol preference to actual smoking initiation, there is no evidence to conclude that menthol causes any more or less new users to become addicted to nicotine.
Perhaps we can do a double blind study and take 1000 ten year olds, and see if more or less of them become regular cigarette users if starting with menthol or non-menthol cigarettes. Do you think the RWJF would be willing to fund this? Could be 1000 more future patch customers!
Lets face it, this article appears to be nothing more then the typical TC witch hunt with malicious speculation masquerading as "scientific research", with biased conclusions to satisfy an agenda.
I do agree that if you are going to allege without fact that flavored cigarettes attract children, then I find it completely hypocritical to ban all other flavors EXCEPT menthol.
However, since tobacco is illegal to SELL to minors, I consider it illogical to consider that anyone is developing a market strategy to target new users of a product that can't actually legally BUY the product.
Perhaps instead of worrying about what flavors these kids are smoking, TC should get off it's ass and suggest that minor possession of tobacco products should be also UNLAWFUL. Since TC has already decided it worthy to make smoking an ADULT activity in their eyes, and has created a wonderful game to where these kids can try and prove they are adults without fear of punishment, I can't see actually making the act punishable, any worse as to reinforcing the adult activity as is already been established. Further, it may discourage some from actually trying to buy and use them.
This Dr. Siegel might actually do something positive to reduce smoking initiation in children, however as usual, Tobacco Control en mass opposes such.
While I'm not suggesting giving minors a criminal record, I am suggesting that it be made a non-criminal infraction like jay-walking or littering, and would help keep youths from being encouraged by other youth smokers openly possessing and using tobacco products.
Of course it seems that TC is oblivious to the effects peers have on smoking initiation, and instead would rather focus on the flavor of the month.
At best incompetent and inept explain their behavior, however corrupt and criminal may be better adjectives.
Idlex, Your insights into reasons why people do not prioritize various health behaviors are illuminating and important. I wish that public health practitioners understood the very point you are making. It's interesting to hear you say this... - Michael Siegel
Hey look, Doc. I'm nobody. Absolutely nobody. And nothing I say is either illuminating or important. Or even interesting, for that matter. Pretty much everybody on this comment thread has got a far better claim than I be 'somebody' than I do. Diane, Linda F, Si. You name 'em.
Don't try to escape into your abstract academic seminars. We're real people here. Not dumbass students. And we're increasngly angry people. And one day we're going to break down the walls of your stupid little theoretical world, and tear you limb from limb.
Michael Siegel wrote:
"I analyzed the nicotine study and found it to be flawed. I reviewed this study, and believe its conclusions are sound."
You've seen more of this alleged study than me because the conclusion I saw said:
"Conclusions. Tobacco companies manipulate the sensory characteristics of cigarettes, including menthol content, thereby facilitating smoking initiation and nicotine dependence. Menthol brands that have used this strategy have been the most successful in attracting youth and young adult smokers and have grown in popularity."
But their objectives were:
"We examined whether tobacco manufacturers manipulate the menthol content of cigarettes in an effort to target adolescents and young adults."
Where did they prove that? I assume the only "damning" tobacco document was the one cited and it showed nothing of the kind.
"Scientists not involved with the Harvard project hailed it as a landmark piece of research, sketching the richest portrait so far of how the industry uses menthol to attract customers. Dr. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control researcher at the Boston University School of Public Health, said it "really demonstrates that menthol is playing a major role in maintaining cigarette consumption and especially in recruiting and supporting addiction among youth and young adults."
Where?
"Results. The tobacco industry attracted new smokers by promoting cigarettes with lower menthol content,"
The tobacco document dealt with current non menthol smokers, not new smokers.
"which were popular with adolescents and young adults,"
Irrelevant.
And let's remember that non menthols outsell menthols.
"and provided cigarettes with higher menthol content to long-term smokers."
I'm not familiar with menthols and I'll ask the same question I believe diane asked, What writing do they put on these cigarettes so long-term smokers know which ones to buy?
"Menthol cigarette sales remained stable from 2000 to 2005 in the United States, despite a 22% decline in overall packs sold."
What else besides "menthol addiction" could account for this? Do menthol smokers have less access to off the books cigarettes? Younger and less likely to quit?
Btw, I went to that journal's website and saw this:
Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue
Monique E. Muggli 1*, Jon O. Ebbert 1, Channing Robertson 2, Richard D. Hurt 1
Abstract
The major tobacco manufacturers discovered that polonium was part of tobacco and tobacco smoke more than 40 years ago...the companies suppressed publication of their own internal research to avoid heightening the public’s awareness....Cigarette packs should carry a radiation-exposure warning label."
Now I know Richard Hurt is a typical myopic anti-smoker, but you'd think out of the 4 people involved with this, at least one would know many foods should also have to carry that label. And yet no mention. So much for health.
Doctor Siegel, you state: "For example, an R.J. Reynolds document notes that: "First-time smoker reaction is generally negative. . . . Initial negatives can be alleviated with a low level of menthol."
If anything this tobacco company document reinforces the fact that new smokers do not like menthol. And in order to gain marketshare from NON-MENTHOL brands, the menthol has to be almost non-existent and as you increase menthol, you increase the perception of a new kind of harshness.
Your brethren have promoted the thesis to the public that kids are hooked if they smoke more then 100 cigarettes.
I will contend, that most smokers are already addicted before they ever begin to regularly smoke menthol cigarettes.
If anything, having ONLY full flavor menthol cigarettes would REDUCE acceptance of cigarettes by new smokers, by your own supporting bates reference.
I think you're off the mark on this one.
Dr. Siegel: For example, an R.J. Reynolds document notes that: "First-time smoker reaction is generally negative. . . . Initial negatives can be alleviated with a low level of menthol.
"First-time", when seen within the context of the Reynolds document clearly means "non-menthol smokers trying menthol cigarettes for the first time".
Reynolds: Demographic target = 18-24 (18+) non-menthol smokers.
Dr. Siegel: On the other hand, we now have solid evidence that menthol is actually being used by cigarette companies to recruit and support addiction among literally millions of young smokers.
Where exactly do you see any sold evidence of anything in this strategic paper? They clearly target smokers, not non-smokers. They have a menthol brand and having found that some people find strong menthol too harsh, so they provide a low menthol alternative.
Really Dr. Siegel, you science seems more than shoddy in this case, it's more like making things up.
Have you noticed that the Reynolds paper was written on a typewriter? How recent can this paper be?
Walt H. "I will contend, that most smokers are already addicted before they ever begin to regularly smoke menthol cigarettes.".
I would have to vigorously argue against that myself, the term "Addicted" is used only to pigeonhole the habits of smoker's who derive pleasure from their use of tobacco, IF there is indeed ANY addiction, it would have to be considered a mental dependence, not a physical addiction, as I recall, Anti used to spout that it took only a few days for the user to rid themselves of the physical cravings of tobacco, although I have and do quit regularly, as Samuel Clemens also did, (Although I personally fast and cleanse myself for 40 days each year), and I have NEVER had ANY physical "cravings", nor any withdrawal symptoms in the 40+ years I have been doing my annual cleansing.
So how are you Walt defining Addiction here? As I recall, it wasn't considered "addictive" until AFTER the Anti's started their push for denormalization, at which point they changed the meaning of "Addiction" to include just about ANYTHING anyone does for pleasure, aimed directly at tobacco user's.
Doctor, as a "behavioral sciences" instructor, I really want an answer to this question:
How long can you accuse someone of being a monster before they feel they have no recourse left but to BE THAT MONSTER?
what EXACTLY are you hoping to gain in TC using a "denormalization" strategy to paint the user's of a legal product as less than human, or worse yet as all the nasty things Bill likes to call us?
And just what do you think YOU would do after years of this same abuse?
Including, but certainly NOT limited to, being forced to change your lifestyle or lose your livliehood, being forced into dangerous areas alone, being ridiculed for having the courtesy to respect unjust laws that force us to be treated in ways that animal rights activists would be screaming bloody murder if the same circumstances were used on animals.
Threatened with losing your children, your home, your job, your health, safety, and even your life?
Really faced with this, what would YOU do? Quit? Give up your autonomy in favor of safety? Go along with the groupthink? what? and WHY?
Ben Franklin said it well, "Those who give up liberty for the promise of safety deserve neither". So how do YOU justify the tactics used by TC against honest, hardworking citizens that have been "denormalized" in just the last two decades to the point of being blamed for everything from SIDS deaths, to child molestations, when all they are doing is continuing the lifestyles we CHOSE, some of us many decades ago, some of us decades before YOU were out of diaper, HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY that, based on one products slight elevation of risk out of the thousands of possible combined factors that exist already, without tobacco smoke?
There are literally hundreds of posts on this blog criticizing, finding fault with, or trashing anti-smoking studies which support "my cause." - Michael Siegel
That assertion supports my statement. My exact words were your "position" not your "cause."
Your position is that smokers belong at home and in select outdoor spaces of your choosing. You support this using some of the junkiest junk science I have ever seen, much of it from your own pen.
You discount, or simply ignore, evidence to the contrary.
Even your "trashing" of studies is limited. You actually stated that the Helena-like studies provide strong evidence that long-term exposure to ETS causes vascular damage, so ETS is as "deadly" as you claim.
You stand behind Repace's "hurricane force winds" and ignore all the ventilation studies provided by Bill Hannegan, Marcus Aurelius, and OSHA. You're using this current Harvard menthol rubbish to support your own menthol rubbish.
Now that "public health" is out of control, the behavior of your cronies is drawing too much scrutiny for your taste. As you are still firmly in the anti-tobacco camp, you need your own junk science, exaggerations, and science-by-press-release to be swallowed by gullible politicians and the public.
You trash the anti-smokers for disseminating specific false conclusions, for one reason only: if their credibility crumbles, they take yours with it.
Next thing you know, some guy in a bar can have a drink and a smoke at the same time, and you simply can't abide that.
Doc--
You say you've examined this Harvard "study" and don't find it wanting.
Specific and keen deconstructions have gone on in the Comments, yet you haven't addressed them. If the study is really as "good" as you claim, surely you can rebut the objections made here.
And surely you can give a full point-by-point defense of the study's hyped conclusions, backed by a series of unedited verbatims from the sources it provides.
Just saying "I read it and I like it" doesn't work. not among us skeptical peer reviewers here.
I agree with Biker Jerry that injecting "addiction" is the only thing that allows you to assign dark motives to normal product marketing. Since caffeine is "addictive" in the same sense as tobacco, then surely it could be claimed by Anti-Caffeine that Maxwell House, by trying to sell its coffee, is attempting to "addict" (make lifelong customers of) Our Children. They also "manipulate" the levels of caffeine and.. whoa! there are coffees that even add flavors: hazelnut, mocha, chocolate itself! Coke and Pepsi add sugar to caffeine and therefore double as street-corner pushers, luring children with candy and addicting them for life. Not to mention the corporate villains at Breyers. One taste of ice cream, the kiddies are hooked--and well on their way to arteriosclerosis.
I recently read an article about the marketing of Fabreze (an air and fabric "freshener") which was originally marketed for extreme situations, like the dog crapped on the rug. When the manufacturer discovered, thru lousy sales, that most dogs are housebroken, they changed their strategy-- actively seeking to make the use of Fabreze (get this now) an automatic habit-- "habit" was their word-- something to be used every time you clean a room, whether or not the premisis stank to begin with. . IOW, in terms straight out of Harvard, they wickedly attempted -- successfully, at that-- to addict housewives. Oh the horror. Looked at rationally, it's basic marketing: the profit in any product (in ANY product) comes, not from initiation, but from endless repeat sales. And therefore every manufacturer is guilty of attempted addiction.
I believe your friend Banzaf already tried the argument that carbs are addictive and McDonald's is a pusher, purposely luring children into lifelong dependency on burgers and fries.
And wait till they get a list of the 4000 toxic chemicals in Fabreze and turn their guns on its maker.
:
I seriously suggest Dr Siegel that you read and digest all of these comments BEFORE any further commentaries are made.The salient points are both many and varied.Of course you are free to ignore them but they will come back to haunt you for sure.Denormalisation sounded great in principle,actually achieving it without casualties is not going to happen.
Walt, you forgot pellet stoves. How come they are become so popular? Because the manufacturers, encouraged by the current green-think, bank on the fact that they use wood instead of petrol. Their marketing strategy is therefore to reinforce the green message in order to get people hooked to pellets.
Imagine if each family used a pellet stove. All those particulate matters, the surface required for all those trees, the industrial pollution by the manufacture and the distribution of the pellets ....
Ou ancestors used wood ... why do we need processed wood to start with?
I believe the Doc on this one.
Everybody knows that when the Tobacco Companies openly state that they are targeting existing "young adult smokers 18 to 24", they are in fact speaking in a secret code, known only to themselves and a few select anti-smoker demigods.
What they are really saying is that they are targeting never smokers under the age of 5. So unless you know the secret code language, reading the study would be pointless, you will never be able to reconcile the conclusion with the research data.
Hope this clarifies the situation.
GreatScot
Make's it much clearer, Greatscot
GreatScot wrote: “they are in fact speaking in a secret code, known only to themselves and a few select anti-smoker demigods”
Great Scott, GreatScot. I think you may have something there.
Since the single RJR document we have been able to review is the kind that crosses the desk of senior level management on a near daily basis, the Harvard research group should be able to find enough evidence to keep them churning out studies for years to come.
Dollars to donuts, these dumb ass tobacco industry executives asked their market research and product development teams to prepare similar reports, suitably coded, of course, when considering all new marketing strategies. It should be easy to show that big tobacco manipulated product lines to lure five, ten and twelve year olds into experimenting with cigarettes.
Let’s see. There was the development of filter cigarettes; definitely a smoother taste meant to entice youngsters. I might have started smoking earlier if my dad had smoked a nice refreshing filter cigarette.
And, king size cigarettes were just a cheap industry trick to addict children more quickly by providing more tobacco at the same price, to suit adolescent budgets. The Harvard types shouldn’t have too hard a time showing that light cigarettes were deliberately designed to encourage unsuspecting young boys and girls into the lurid, immoral world of smoking.
And, you have to admire their persistence; Brown & Williamson introduced the Kool brand in 1933. All these years developing just the right blend to get our kids hooked. The bastards.
James, here's Banzhaf has to say about Polonium-210
http://www.pr-inside.com/print709002.htm
Indeed, surveys show that most people have no idea that there is Polonium-210 in the cigarette smoke both smokers and nonsmokers inhale. The few who do know about its existence apparently assume that the dose is too small to have any significant health effect, never dreaming that it is killing over 17,000 people every year.
Unfortunately, the bill before Congress to give the FDA authority to regulate cigarettes, while prohibiting the use of most arguably-benign flavorings like clove and peppermint, does not require the removal or even any decrease in the toxic gases (like cyanide), more than 40 other cancer-causing chemicals (like benzene), or radioactive substances (like plutonium or uranium).
I'm keeping out of this, having seen the mess they made of tobacco plant biology, I don't think I can cope with the forthcoming studies which "prove" that mint is a deadly and addictive drug aimed at children.
The Abominable Dr Phibes
..a sleeping nurse has boiled Brussels sprouts dripped onto her face as she sleeps, Phibes then introducing a plague of locusts to her room....
http://
www.britishhorrorfilms.co...bominable.shtml
What makes a piece of research valid or not is not who writes it. It's how good the research is. Michael Siegel
You left out, who funds it, because in your world THAT does matter. In your world, should a study receive so much as $2.00 from a tobacco company the study is immediately denounced as flawed.
I'm nobody. Absolutely nobody. And nothing I say is either illuminating or important. Or even interesting, for that matter. idlex
Don’t sell yourself so short. We are all, here and everywhere, somebody. And while we may feel what we say isn’t important or illuminating, you’d be surprised at how often it touches another person and awakens something in them OR makes them stop to think for just one moment. I’m just your normal, average high school graduate, supporting myself, living paycheck to paycheck. All of us here, and I think I can safely say this for all, speak from our hearts, our passions run deep and we pay attention to the life we live and its experiences. The thing is, our passions are honest, so it’s easy to “wax eloquent” when speaking honestly from ones core. I’ve enjoyed several of your comments, so don’t sell yourself short.
Jerry,
My reference to "addicted" was in rebuttal to Dr. Siegel's remark "Cigarette company research revealed that a low level of menthol can reduce the initial negative reaction to cigarette smoking. Since the initial negative reaction turns many adolescents off of cigarettes permanently, reducing this reaction can be the key to successfully addicting a youth."
As for using the term addicted I agree that it is was a deliberate and conscious act by tobacco controllers to place a stigma on smokers, and you have my apologies for helping reinforce that
But while we are on the subject of cigarette addiction, I'd like to make a few comments.
I will not dispute that many people develop a chemical dependence on nicotine. If you've never experienced a "nic fit" and are a habitual tobacco user, consider yourself rare, but some people are more prone then others. The nicotine withdrawal symptoms occur very quickly, and manifest themselves as anxiousness and nervousness. The half life of nicotine is a little less then an hour, and why a pack a day is a common level among smokers.
As far as I can tell, this anxiousness and ease of irritability is the extent of the symptoms of nicotine deprival and in my case were completely gone after a few days. Well into the first twenty-four hours, being able to maintain concentration was difficult. None of these symptoms even begins to conditions compare to other chemical dependencies of caffeine, or alcohol or heroin. With caffeine, my abstention was marked by a violent and increasing and incapacitating headache. I have yet to successfully eliminate my dependence on this chemical, and kicking tobacco was a walk in the park. While I can't speak directly on alcohol or heroin, I have had the opportunity to make some observations.
Alcohol and heroin both can cause violent bodily reactions when eliminated and these can be life threatening often manifesting itself in the form of convulsions.
However, many people mistake the habituation of tobacco use with addiction. Granted this habituation is reinforced by a chemical dependence, but the habituation is much harder to kick then the chemical dependence. And I offer up as evidence the fact that more people are successful quitting cold turkey, then by pharmaceutical means.
When I smoked, I often used a cigarette as a reward or treat for accomplishing a task. To this day, I still find myself reaching my pocket for this reward, yet it's been years since I've used tobacco or nicotine.
Now, with that said, the question remains as to why has tobacco control misrepresented this "addiction", frequently claiming it is more "addicting" then heroin or crack?
One of the obvious reasons is to cast this stigma upon smokers, however this comes with a cost and is counter productive to encouraging smokes to quit. By making smokers believe it is very difficult to quit, they don't bother to even try, or will continue to put it off, year after year for a lifetime. Tobacco control a few years ago convinced me I couldn't fly across this country without NRT. It wasn't until one transatlantic flight where I forgot to put my patch on, that I realized it really was more in my head then being actually physically and hopelessly dependent. I further believe this misrepresentation is also deliberate in order to encourage the sales of cessation products and alternate forms of nicotine which only maintain and reinforce the chemical dependence, and is truly just a market share battle between two different drug distributors (cigarettes and patches) competing for market share, with the government using it's resources advance the latter.
So the opinion I'd like Dr. Siegel to express, is why do we not have congressional investigations of tobacco control's promotion of continued tobacco and nicotine dependence, when it is so obvious at least to me, the collusion tobacco control has with the nicotine distributors.
It all comes down to objectives;
Is TC primarily concerned with the "health" of; smokers? Non smokers? Children? when they suggest a ban on flavorings?
Is a health risk claimed as present today? or do we require 20 years of human studies to determine if the move will support or deter health risk?
If the ban has a sole objective to reduce advertising potentials by limiting choices. It seems to be more in support of making smokers [by racial stereotype casting]uncomfortable, than any credible move to protect anyone.
Illuminating at last; the true goal and nature of healthism, which as a power base, has always supported, forcing autonomous decisions by punishment and eliminating personal rights, by promoting socialist or collectivist [Borg] ideals.
How will those reduced choices by banning flavors [or limiting preparations which might change the flavor], affect a potential new smoker who has never smoked and has no perceptual Gage by which to compare?
Will they walk away entirely or find a level of comfort, in how many they smoke or how deeply? as defined in the light versus mild debate. A claim now being challenged in the conclusions of this later "Study"
Before flavorings were available people still started smoking and the largest percentage of smokers was promoted at a time when most rolled their own and no alteration of raw tobacco was even being discussed, much less being a significant inducement in a battle for market share.
Reality in looking at historical events, shows us the power of free markets created flavorings and the manufacturers created them in reaction to their existing market, not the other way around as TC is trying to claim in this study.
Similarly light and mild in the context most smokers perceive them indicated non hash brands. Similarly at one time manufacturers used the word "Fresh" to describe some brands, related to fresh air perceptions and not fresh as opposed to stale or old.
It stands to reason today, the only group with anything to gain in restrictions would be those interested in manipulating market share. That would be the professional marketing shills of a company which currently sells the largest amount or the most popular brands of non flavored cigarettes, and will be least affected negatively when the flavorings are banned.
By extension; the banning of flavorings, can not be credible in support of public health protections, more than it would be an example of promoting one company to the detriment of others who are more dependent on profiting by those flavored brands. All of them including menthol.
Which company comes to mind? And of course which TC partner is found to be the most conflicted, by the examination of the evidence?
In other words, why are our national health services promoting nicotine replacement, when it's been shown that long term sucess in quit rates largely favors cold turkey?
Instead of all the research trying to prove tobacco companies manipulate their products to gain market share...
How about finding out why people who claim to be focused on "helping" smokers quit, are actually promoting their continued addiction.
"Anyone who reads this blog knows that is simply not true. If it were true, then why would I have trashed the Helena study, the Pueblo study, the Piedmont study, the Bowling Green study, the Ireland study, the England study, the Scotland study, the 'smokers are dumber' study ..."
Sorry, doctor, missed your trashing of the 'smokers are dumber' study. But it makes me wonder whether or not there's been a 'bartenders are dumber' study. Although we really don't need a study there, because we know they're all dumb as hell since they can't possibly be adequately informed about the dangers of ETS. Isn't that so?
.
Waking a Sleeping Giant: The Tobacco Industry’s Response to the Polonium-210 Issue
http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/as...k/ash/
5923.html
The study, by researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University, reportedly finds that tobacco companies "continue to minimize its [polonium-210's] importance in smoking and health litigation and remain silent on the issue on their web sites and in their messages to consumers". It cites previous research estimating that smokers of 1.5 packs of cigarettes a day are exposed to as much radiation as they would receive from 300 chest X-rays a year, and that PO-210 may be responsible for 1% of all US lung cancers.
Could radiation be good for us?
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/u...ys/
page3_em.htm
Understanding X-rays - Diagnostic X-rays Do Not Increase the Risk of Cancer
- No studies of radiation to humans have demonstrated an increase in cancer at the doses used in diagnostic x-rays. A number of studies indicate that low to moderate doses may improve health and even reduce cancer.
- Nuclear shipyard workers were much healthier than non-nuclear shipyard workers.
- People living in areas with high natural background generally have less cancer.
- Radon in mines increases lung cancer. Radon in homes reduces lung cancer. (Radon is a radioactive, gas found naturally in soil.) Uranium miners had a higher incidence of lung cancer from the high concentrations of radon in underground mines. This was the basis for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to estimate that high levels of radon in homes cause thousands of lung cancer deaths each year in the US. However, a study of lung cancer death rates in 1,600 US counties representing over 90% of the population shows that counties with the highest radon levels have 40% lower lung cancer death rates than the counties with lowest radon levels. It appears that radiation from radon progeny (breakdown, decay) actually prevents some cancers caused by smoking.
eMedicineHealth is a first aid and consumer health information site written by physicians for patients and consumers.
???????????
Idlex, Your insights into reasons why people do not prioritize various health behaviors are illuminating and important. I wish that public health practitioners understood the very point you are making. It's interesting to hear you say this... - Michael Siegel
Idlex: "Don't try to escape into your abstract academic seminars. We're real people here. Not dumbass students."
Idlex, Dr. Siegel is fond of talking down to us as though we were one of his dumbass students -- patting us on the head when we might say something insightful, as "Your insights ... are illuminating and important." "Patronizing" is the appropriate word. And he obviously hasn't a damn clue that he's doing it.
We're not a class of your dumbass students here, doctor; so please stop treating us as though we were one of them. Get the damn tone right, at least.
.
Again we have another "Tobacco Industry Conspiracy" dealing with PO-210, yet tobacco control has for many years been promoting this fact. I know for over a decade many anti-tobacco groups have attempted to scare the public into believing smokers were highly radioactively contaminated. Banzhaf has promoted this for nearly a decade, yet I can not think of once where he or any other tobacco control group actually proposed the USDA ban the use of high phosphate fertilizers (the reason for the contamination of the tobacco leaves).
Yet these are suppose to be the people protecting the public health, but appear to be deliberately ignoring such measures.
The real cover-up and conspiracy is obviously within tobacco control, which has not so much as even bothered to even recommend the USDA the elimination of high phosphate fertilizers, despite their obvious concerns expressed in their concerns for non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke. So either there ARE NO real concerns, or these individuals are responsible for failing to protect the public through reasonable and responsible means, to the point of being criminally negligent.
Tobacco control a few years ago convinced me I couldn't fly across this country without NRT. It wasn't until one transatlantic flight where I forgot to put my patch on, that I realized it really was more in my head then being actually physically and hopelessly dependent. - Walt H
A few years ago I took a 10 hour flight to Japan, and an 11 hour flight back. On one flight I had no wish to smoke at all, and only vaguely wanted a cigarette a couple of times on the other. But then for me smoking is about relaxing and thinking and enjoying myself, and I never do that on air flights.
Don’t sell yourself so short. We are all, here and everywhere, somebody. - Lynda F
I was responding to Dr. Siegel when he wrote that my "insights" were "illuminating and important". I really couldn't see that they were any such thing. I couldn't see that I'd said anything that hasn't been said here a hundred times.
idlex,
It wasn't until we were on final, that I realized I hadn't put on my patch, as I was anticipating being able to smoke again. I hadn't even thought about it the whole trip.
After that I was able to do a twenty-five hour captivity on a Atlanta to Narita that had to divert because of a medical emergency and ended up having to wait on replacement crews in Portland while not being able to disembark the plane.
It's because of these types of experiences, I'm convinced habituation is far harder nut to crack then any physical dependence.
I hear so many smokers, that have bought into the propaganda that cigarettes are more addicting then heroin, and use this as a basis why not to quit.
This phrase is designed to keep smokers from trying to quit without the aid of nicotine replacement products.
And people wonder why I think smoker controllers (I like that term) are a fraud, and are only in pursuit of their own monetary rewards and continued employment, and are not benevolent as they would like to project and have others believe.
Walt H,
The Tobacco Control Industry has no interest in making smoking "healthier". They need smokers to die to justify their cause. Whether we die from pneumonia due to being sent out in the rain, problems from fertilizer, poor quality tobacco is immaterial. Just think about the RIP cigarettes, you no the ones that are impregnated with chemicals that force you to smoke continuously, I have searched for evidence that these are safe or at least no worse than ordinary smokes, to no avail. Suffice to say when they become mandatory in the UK next year, I will be returning to RYO.
GreatScot
"scare the public into believing smokers were highly radioactively contaminated"
Really? I didn't know that.
The old ones really are the best aren't they.
Health scare of the day 1950's
Them
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=q2...h?
v=q2PLls02gOU
Too easy
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/co...ct/143/3603/
247
Science 17 January 1964:
Vol. 143. no. 3603, pp. 247 - 249
DOI: 10.1126/science.143.3603.247
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Articles
Polonium-210: A Volatile Radioelement in Cigarettes
Edward P. Radford Jr. 1 and Vilma R. Hunt 1
1 Department of Physiology, Kresge Center for Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Polonium-210, which emits alpha particles, is a natural contaminant of tobacco. For an individual smoking two packages of cigarettes a day, the radiation dose to bronchial epithelium from Po210 inhaled in cigarette smoke probably is at least seven times that from background sources, and in localized areas may be up to 1000 rem or more in 25 years. Radiation from this source may, therefore, be significant in the genesis of bronchial cancer in smokers.
Cover-up eh? This predates the 1964 SG report. The Harvard School of Public Health no less. 44 years ago.
So why hasn't anybody in smoker control suggested that farmers NOT USE high phospate fertalizers on tobacco?
Michael Siegel wrote:
"What makes a piece of research valid or not is not who writes it. It's how good the research is."
Could you review the Kawachi study published in 1997 and see if it's valid or not?
One of its authors said this two years earlier, which is just prior to, or during his involement with the Kawachi study:
"'Epidemiology is a crude and inexact science. Eighty percent of cases are almost all hypotheses. We tend to overstate findings either because we want attention or more grant money.' [Source: New York Times, October 11, 1995]"
People who want attention. Doesn't that stem from neglect during childhood?
What do you believe the economic and social implications might be for this plan for full prohibition of tobacco in Europe by 2025? Does anyone believe that alcohol prohibition was a resounding success in the US? Do the anti-smoking NAZIS believe that the demand for tobacco will be gone in 15 years and that smokers will just salute the Hitler wannabes and say "yes, sir, no more tobacco for me."?
MEP calls for EU ban on cigarettes by 2025
LEIGH PHILLIPS
18.07.2008 @ 19:31 CET
An Irish MEP has called for a total ban on tobacco products across the European Union within 15 years.
Avril Doyle, head of the Irish faction within the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), on Tuesday told a Brussels conference on how to prevent the tobacco industry from lobbying EU politicians that she wants cigarettes and cigars illegal in Europe by 2025.
Earlier this week, the European commission unveiled plans to make Europeans pay a lot more for cigarettes by hiking excise taxes (Photo: wikipedia)
* Print
* Comment article
"I would be happy to see a long-term target date, say 2025, when it would be illegal to sell tobacco products in the EU," she said to an applauding crowd of parliamentarians and global health experts.
"That would give them 15 years' notice for all our citizens to realise just how serious we are about not allowing their continued sale in the EU, and hopefully elsewhere," she added.
Ms Doyle, who sits on the steering committee of the EPP, the largest political group in the EU assembly, organised the conference, which was tasked with developing ways for the EU to comply with what anti-smoking campaigners call the most important article of the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Article 5.3, which requires its signatories to prevent lobbying by tobacco companies on any public health policies.
The current EU health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, also in attendance, declared to the audience of health professionals and anti-smoking campaigners: "I am ready to commit today to not accept any invitation coming from the tobacco industry or those working in its interests so long as I hold office."
She said she expects a European Commission and member state decision on how to implement the article to be achieved by September, adding: "It wouldn't make much sense if only the commission acted in this way," and called on other public bodies to not talk to tobacco lobbyists either.
Talk of banning tobacco and tobacco lobbyists came as the commission unveiled plans to make Europeans pay a lot more for cigarettes by hiking excise taxes.
The commission wants to harmonise tobacco taxes across Europe in order to discourage smoking and clamp down on smuggling.
http://euobserver.com/9/26515
Dr you wrote: 'I judge research based on its quality and validity, rather than on who is doing it and what position it takes. I analyzed the nicotine study and found it to be flawed. I reviewed this study, and believe its conclusions are sound.'
Then you are purposely lying to us and others. You are a) writing like this is NEW, and b) stating the research shows they are targeting ADOLESCENTS. You are lying. 18 to 24 are NOT adolescents.
Great Scot--
If you want to know how bad RIPs are, google "Effect of the New York State cigarette fire safety standard on ignition propensity, smoke constituents, and the consumer market" Connolly et al, Tobacco Control, 2005.
He considers the fact that these cigarettes have up to 19% more crap than non-RIPs to be no big deal.
They also taste rotten and make people cough.
For their own good.
From Sheri's post: "World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Article 5.3, which requires its signatories to prevent lobbying by tobacco companies on any public health policies."
http://smokefreepartnership.eu/I.../ers-SL3-
02.pdf
What is meant by the Tobacco Industry?
The FCTC defines the tobacco industry as tobacco manufacturers, wholesale distributors and importers of tobacco products.
Article 5.3 should all include other entities and personnel who work for, or on behalf of, the tobacco industry such as:
- wholesale distributors
- front groups
- tobacco retailers
- tobacco trade unions
- and individuals such as employees, lawyers, scientists, lobbyists and journalists.
Walt
I can't imagine why anyone would wish to smoke such a thing, the plant chemicals are pretty easy to find out and they are all available in tablets without prescription, and none of them are addictive.
Its just knowing what they are.
Sheri, That lady is the reason all Politicians should be voted out of office and new blood brought in. Hate to say it, but I see this war on smokers as a preliminary first step towards World War III. Bet we win. For one thing, I know many military men who smokes and are ace snipers! They will be fighting for us and not the Government. What a mess tobacco control and RWJ has created. Wonder if Bloomberg and Banzaf has their bunkers dug yet? Bring it on!
Sorry for going o/t here but OMG!!!
Second Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC
http://www.fctc.org/docs/documen...briefing-
en.pdf
Key elements of guidelines for implementation of Article 8
In the time since the Convention was negotiated, the scientific consensus that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability has grown ever stronger, with the publication of important new expert reports, including those by the UK Scientific Committee on Tobacco or Health, 1 the US Surgeon General, 2 the French National Assembly, 3 the California Environmental Protection Agency,4 and others. These authorities further confirm that exposure to tobacco smoke causes a variety of illnesses, including fatal illnesses, in adults and children.
1: Acknowledge that Article 8 is grounded in fundamental human rights:
The proposed guidelines properly recognize that “[t]he duty to protect from tobacco smoke, embodied in the text of Article 8, is grounded in fundamental human rights and freedoms” (para 4). This acknowledgement is extremely important. By emphasizing this point, the guidelines not only underscore the importance of Article 8, but also clarify its legal and conceptual underpinnings. Because breathing second-hand smoke endangers life, a duty to protect against this hazard is implicit in the right to life recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in the fundamental right of all persons to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health, as recognized in the Constitution of the World Health Organization, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of is crimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other international legal instruments and custom; and as formally recognized in the Preamble to the FCTC itself. Parties’ obligations to protect their citizens from exposure to tobacco smoke also flow from the universal right of all persons to a healthy environment, as recognized in numerous other international instruments.
2: Legal protection, not voluntary measures:
3: Protection for all:
The proposed guidelines correctly emphasize that the duty to protect individuals from tobacco smoke “extends to all persons, and not merely to certain populations” (para 4).
The guidelines’ key principles reiterate that “[a]ll people should be protected from exposure to tobacco smoke” (para 7).
4: Create 100% smoke-free environments:
There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke, and notions such as a threshold value for toxicity from second-hand smoke should be rejected, as they are contradicted by scientific evidence.
Recent reviews by expert bodies, including the US Surgeon General, 7 the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE),8 and the European Respiratory Society,9 have concluded that ventilation cannot protect against the health risks of tobacco smoke. ASHRAE concludes that “the only means of effectively eliminating health risk associated with indoor exposure is to ban smoking activity”.
5: Ensure comprehensive coverage:
Others have proposed measures that permit smoking at certain times of the day. This approach cannot protect health. Even apart from direct exposure to tobacco smoke,harmful components of the smoke linger — in the air, on surfaces, and in furnishings — long after the lit tobacco is gone.
6: Draft carefully:
For laws to be effective, they must not only prescribe evidence-based measures that protect health, they must also provide a clear and comprehensive framework that will maximise compliance, ease enforcement,facilitate inspection and monitoring, and minimise the risk of confusion and legal challenge. It is especially important, as the proposed guidelines point out (para 13), to use care in defining key terms.
7: Educate and involve the public:
Where the public understands the health risks of tobacco smoke, smoke-free laws are popular and well respected, and are largely self-enforcing.
8: Involve civil society:
Experience from many jurisdictions confirms that civil society has played a crucial role in building public support for smoke-free laws, in assisting with their implementation, and in promoting compliance. Governments should recognize that successful smoke-free laws require the backing of civil society.
9: Specify the duties of those responsible for compliance:
Other jurisdictions create more specific duties. For example, because ashtrays are an invitation to smoke, eight Canadian provinces and territories prohibit ashtrays wherever smoking is disallowed. Removing ashtrays, in turn, gives owners additional incentives to ensure that people do not smoke, because of cigarette burns to carpets, furniture and tablecloths.
10: Set appropriate penalties:
11: Create an effective enforcement infrastructure:
12: Enforcement should be strategic
13: “Future-proof” the law:
Scientific evidence on the health hazards of tobacco smoke exposure continues to emerge, and our knowledge of which measures offer effective protection continues to evolve.
Against this dynamic background, it is important to ensure that laws can be revised and expanded as necessary — for example, through regulations to strengthen the law and close loopholes. The proposed guidelines acknowledge that legislation is this area must be flexible, and that Parties should anticipate changes to the legislation over time to reflect newly available medical and scientific evidence.
14: Monitor and evaluate:
"The Framework Convention Alliance and the Global Smokefree Partnership strongly endorse the proposed guidelines for implementation of Article 8 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) (Document A/FCTC/COP/2/7) and Encourage the Parties to adopt them without change."
and who makes up this Global Smokefree Partnership.
Recognize anyone Dr. Siegel?
http://www.globalsmokefree.com/g...on=article&
id=7
The Partnership is coordinated by the American Cancer Society and the Framework Convention Alliance, and the partners are listed below:
* Action for the Promotion of Smoke-Free Environments (APALTA - Honduras)
* Action on Smoking and Health London
* Action on Smoking and Health
* Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
* Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
* Cancer Research UK
* Coalition for Tobacco Control Pakistan
* European Respiratory Society
* Framework Convention Alliance - Philippines
* French National Cancer Institute (INCa)
* Global Tobacco Research Network
* HealthBridge India
* Health and Environmental Rights Organisation - Uganda
* International Nongovernmental Coalition Against Tobacco
* International Union Against Cancer
* International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
* Johnson and Johnson
* Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Institute for Global Tobacco Control
* Pfizer
* Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance
* World Heart Federation
"World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Article 5.3, which requires its signatories to prevent lobbying by tobacco companies on any public health policies."
I'll bet these people call themselves Progressives and yet they're moving us back to the Dark Ages.
Religion. Heresy. Crusades. They even have a Plague: Smokers.
I'm with idlex. They really are asking for it.
It would appear that some groups belong to both the Framework Convention Alliance and the Global Smokefree Partnership. Talk about double dipping..
Member Organizations of Framework Convention Alliance
United States of America
* Action on Smoking and Health (USA)
* Advocacy Institute (USA)
* American Cancer Society
* American Heart Association
* American Lung Association
* American Public Health Association
* American Society of Clinical Oncology
* Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
* Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (USA)
* Chinese Progressive Association (USA)
* Corporate Accountability International
* CorpWatch (USA)
* Essential Action (USA)
* Institute for Global Tobacco Control (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health)
* Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
* Islamic Medical Association of North America
* National African American Tobacco Prevention Network
* Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (USA)
* San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition (USA)
* Smokefree Air For Everyone (SAFE)
* Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (USA)
* Tobacco Free Coalition (USA)
* Tobacco Law Center (USA)
* Tobacco-Free Las Cruces Coalition (USA)
* Transnational Resource & Action Center
And of course from Canada are the usual suspect. Any one surprised?
* Airspace Action on Smoking and Health (Canada)
* Canadian Cancer Society
* Canadian Global Tobacco Control Forum
* Canadian Public Health Association
* HealthBridge Foundation of Canada
* Heart and Stroke Foundation (Canada)
* International Tobacco Control (ITC)
* Non-Smokers' Rights Association (Canada)
* Ontario Tobacco Research Unit
* Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada
* Saskatchewan Coalition for Tobacco Reduction
* University of Waterloo
Now isn't that interesting that Johnson and Johnson,Pfizer and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are involved.
Maybe this will explain their interest in the FCTC.
http://www.fctc.org/docs/documen...briefing-
en.pdf
Recommendations
In their ongoing implementation of Article 14 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), Parties should:
1. Recognise tobacco dependence as a chronic disease, like hypertension or diabetes.
2. Develop and publish comprehensive, evidence and consensus based national treatment guidelines.
3. Develop effective treatment for tobacco dependence.
4. Make tobacco dependence treatment and counselling services an integral part of national health programs and services, and improve the accessibility and affordability of treatment, including effective medications.
5. When planning tobacco control policy measures – such as tax increases, creation of smokefree environments, advertising bans, public information campaigns, and requirements for warning labels – that will result in large numbers of smokers trying to quit, recognize that treatment services will help dependent tobacco users to quit and will enhance the effectiveness of these policy measures.
As a concerned party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, how do I get a seat at this table, and a chance to air my views?
Unfortunately I don't remember electing or even nominating any of these organizations.
Talk of banning tobacco and tobacco lobbyists came as the commission unveiled plans to make Europeans pay a lot more for cigarettes by hiking excise taxes.
This is a concept, Sheri, that Dr. Siegel and the majority of US anti-smoker control freaks FULLY support. Of course such a concept is unconstitutional in the US, but since when did little things like the founding documents of our nation get in the way of their agenda?
ASHRAE concludes that “the only means of effectively eliminating health risk associated with indoor exposure is to ban smoking activity”.
The only reason ASHRAE has backtracked on their long held position is that some MAJOR TC activists have bullied their way on the the board of the organization.
Well it didn't take long to figure out that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is all over the FCTC. They even have an Internation Resource Centre.
As part of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids manages a grants program in conjunction with the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (the Union).
http://tobaccofreecenter.org/about_us
http://tobaccofreecenter.org/grants
http://tobaccofreecenter.org/
abo...obal_initiative
Partners and Grants
Other partners in this initiative are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the World Health Organization and the World Lung Foundation.
It would appear that they left someone off the list. I wonder why?
http://www.pfizer.com/
responsibi...artnerships.jsp
Pfizer's Commitment: The Pfizer Foundation, together with the Pfizer country offices will commit $33 million over the next three years (2007-2009).
Partners: Pfizer's 15 partners include: Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) International, Akebono-Kai, American Cancer Society, China Tobacco Control Association, Korean National Council of Women, European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), International Union Against Cancer (UICC), Japan Dental-Medical Association for Tobacco Council, Mexican Council on Tobacco, Philippine Business for Social Progress, QUIT UK/European Network of Quitlines, Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, The New Hope in Health Foundation, The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention and The Veronesi Foundation.
The grants will be managed by three intermediaries: the King Baudouin Foundation, Give 2 Asia, TCC Group, and The Resource Foundation with oversight from Pfizer Foundation. The Johns Hopkins University-Bloomberg School of Public Health will provide technical assistance and evaluation support.
And then there is the American Cancer Society who during 2006/2007 spent $3,615,000 on Tobacco control.
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/AA...itearea=&
level=
ACS International Tobacco Control Grant Programs
The following grant programs have been completed or are currently underway.
Gabz wrote:The only reason ASHRAE has backtracked on their long held position is that some MAJOR TC activists have bullied their way on the the board of the organization.
Actually you need to read the full conclusion to put that quote into the correct context.
http://www.ashrae.org/content/
AS...8211239_347.pdf
ASHRAE concludes that:
• It is the consensus of the medical community and its cognizant authorities that ETS is a health risk, causing lung
cancer and heart disease in adults, and exacerbation of asthma, lower respiratory illnesses and other adverse
effects on the respiratory health of children.
• At present, the only means of effectively eliminating health risk associated with indoor exposure is to ban
smoking activity.
• Although complete separation and isolation of smoking rooms can control ETS exposure in non-smoking spaces
in the same building, adverse health effects for the occupants of the smoking room cannot be controlled by
ventilation.
• No other engineering approaches, including current and advanced dilution ventilation or air cleaning
technologies, have been demonstrated or should be relied upon to control health risks from ETS exposure in
spaces where smoking occurs. Some engineering measures may reduce that exposure and the corresponding risk
to some degree while also addressing to some extent the comfort issues of odor and some forms of irritation.
• An increasing number of local and national governments, as well as many private building owners, are adopting
and implementing bans on indoor smoking.
• At a minimum, ASHRAE members must abide by local regulations and building codes and stay aware of
changes in areas where they practice, and should educate and inform their clients of the substantial limitations
and the available benefits of engineering controls.
• Because of ASHRAE’s mission to act for the benefit of the public, it encourages elimination of smoking in the
indoor environment as the optimal way to minimize ETS exposure.
on page 5 of the report they state:
In the absence of a quantitative criterion for acceptable exposure, the only protective measure for effective control that has been recognized by
cognizant authorities is an indoor smoking ban, leading to near zero exposure.
another words their hands are tied until they receive an answer to:
6.1.3.5 Ventilation in Smoking Areas. Specific ventilation rate requirements cannot be determined until cognizant authorities determine the concentration of smoke that achieves an acceptable level of risk. - Approved by the ASHRAE Standards Committee June 26, 2002; by the ASHRAE Board of Directors June 27, 2002; and by the American National Standards Institute April 2, 2003.
and I don't think that will ever happen.
"As a concerned party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, how do I get a seat at this table, and a chance to air my views?
Unfortunately I don't remember electing or even nominating any of these organizations."
Members are chosen largely in consolidation of the financially elite, nepotism and political patronage appointments rewarding their most effective friends.
A group formed initially to provide advice, has now declared supremacy over elected officials, who without consideration for their employers [the electorate] and without notice, signed away national sovereignty.
It comes down now to the people and whether they are willing to accept the validity of the group, to dictate your future telling you, what will be allowed, or to organize a resistance to denounce their authority.
No resistance and the industrial socialists will simply continue to redefine science and intelligent thought, in their own image.
BTW HIA health intervention is a large part of the repetitive process which defines their science. TC is just one such campaign.
A partnership between corrupted power hungry politicians their friends and families with the leaders of industry who will all profit from any "health" campaign.
The description, is not a matter of speculation or conspiracy theory, it is simply a matter of reading the description of the HIA process plan. A long read but enlightening if you really care what is happening to your world.
People are now described by these fascists as "vested commodities" or "human capitol". Health promotions are sold in terms of investment and projected profit returns.
Quite the foundation for human management and one world governance, profit margins?. Too bad the rest of us won't have any right to contribute to the discussions or the enabling constitution, which is already set in stone.
The Terrorists involved in 911 had these people [the UN] as their primary target. Maybe we sold them short and they should be seen as martyrs as opposed to murderers.
It all comes down to perspectives doesn't it, and Public Health has been doing a damn efficient job of twisting realities by process, haven't they?
Walt H. makes another very insightful point, which I wish to highlight:
"How about finding out why people who claim to be focused on "helping" smokers quit, are actually promoting their continued addiction."
I think this is an important question to answer. However, I'm not sure that we need to do too much to find out the answer. I think we know it already. The answer, at least as I see it, is that the key individuals making decisions about this issue are financially supported by Big Pharma.
For example, the Chair and many members of the expert panel which created the clinical practice guideline which tells physicians how to treat nicotine dependence had severe financial conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies. Not surprisingly, they recommended the use of pharmacotherapy with EVERY patient, and not the use of any cold turkey techniques.
I think Walt H.'s question is a great one. And I think the answer, essentially, is money.
Harry wrote: "we know they're [bartenders] all dumb as hell since they can't possibly be adequately informed about the dangers of ETS."
No - not CAN'T be adequately informed - AREN'T adequately informed. It has nothing to do with them or their intelligence levels at all.
I agree completely with Walt H. about the polonium-210 issue. I don't see what difference it makes whether tobacco smoke contains polonium-210 or not.
Idlex said: "I was responding to Dr. Siegel when he wrote that my "insights" were "illuminating and important". I really couldn't see that they were any such thing. I couldn't see that I'd said anything that hasn't been said here a hundred times."
Now I understand the problem. I wasn't intending to be patronizing at all. I am completely sincere when I say that I thought idlex's comments were indeed insightful, illuminating, and important. I realize now that the reason idlex perhaps doesn't see the remark as anything special is that most, if not all, smokers easily appreciate what idlex is saying. My remarks were directed more towards the fact that I wish my colleagues in tobacco control could appreciate what idlex said. While it may seem obvious and ordinary to those smokers reading the blog, it is NOT trivial to people within tobacco control. So while I have a dialogue with a large number of smokers and am able to be exposed to these kinds of insights, most people in my field won't so much as converse with a smoker.
I don't mean to be patronizing - what I'm actually suggesting is that people in tobacco control who do not ever so much as talk to a smoker truly don't have these insights. I wish more of them would read my blog, if only for this reason.
Gabz wrote: " Talk of banning tobacco and tobacco lobbyists came as the commission unveiled plans to make Europeans pay a lot more for cigarettes by hiking excise taxes.
This is a concept, Sheri, that Dr. Siegel and the majority of US anti-smoker control freaks FULLY support."
I think Gabz may be correct in stating that the majority of anti-smoking groups in the U.S. support this proposal. But I don't support it so I shouldn't be lumped in. I agree with Gabz that banning tobacco lobbyists would be unconstitutional.
No - not CAN'T be adequately informed - AREN'T adequately informed. It has nothing to do with them or their intelligence levels at all.
Actually, Doc, Harry is right. CAN'T IS the right word. If you'll recall during one of last years' fiasco's when we presented you with various options for warning signs on establishments that allowed smoking, you came back with some figures showing that over 40% did NOT believe the health hazards of smoking and SHS and stated then and there that they obviously couldn't be well informed. THAT alone told us that in your view, anyone not believing your fears, anyone still willing to take the risk couldn't possibly be well informed (which you never denied that either) and since we couldn't come up with the proper wording - and you refused to I might add - then total bans were the ONLY option.
I agree with Gabz that banning tobacco lobbyists would be unconstitutional.
Not unless we can actually ban ALL lobbyists. But if we're going to cherry pick only lobbyists we don't like, then I agree it would be unconstitutional.
I, however, have NO problem with ALL lobbyists AND special interest groups pressuring for legislation for that matter, being banned.
"I, however, have NO problem with ALL lobbyists AND special interest groups pressuring for legislation for that matter, being banned."
I second that. Especially the kind who stand before Boards of Health behind closed doors and spout statistics from unpublished studies.
"No - not CAN'T be adequately informed - AREN'T adequately informed. It has nothing to do with them or their intelligence levels at all."
Right. That thread was an astounding read. What's more astounding is that after all this time, and listening to all these people here, there is still no room in your rigid anti-tobacco mind for the possibility that after 25 years of pummeling people with your lurid warnings, they simply do not believe you.
That so many people are not freaking out over your shrill deadly/danger/severe health hazard speaks more for their intelligence than you will ever give them credit for.
Re-tracing the steps in all this:
Idlex, Your insights into reasons why people do not prioritize various health behaviors are illuminating and important. I wish that public health practitioners understood the very point you are making. - Michael Siegel yesterday 10.22 pm .
I think this refers to my post about 15 minutes earlier in which I identified Healthism - which set up health as an idol above everything else - as the enemy of personal freedom. I wrote:
I don't see 'healthism' as an institution, so much as a blinkered and unbalanced ideology - to which doctors in particular seem to be unusually prone, perhaps because they're in the business of saving lives, and constantly look at life in this one-eyed fashion.
Real people living real lives, as opposed to healthist ideologues, balance their health against a basket of other considerations, and they are at times prepared to forego their health for these other causes - as when they take up arms to fight, and face injury or death, for some cause that they hold to be of greater importance than their personal well-being.
Now Michael Siegel has re-iterated:
My remarks were directed more towards the fact that I wish my colleagues in tobacco control could appreciate what idlex said. - Michael Siegel
So, are you saying, Doc, that you wish your colleagues in tobacco control could appreciate that there's more to life than health? That real people balance their health against a basket of other considerations? I won't be at all surprised if you reply: "Yes."
But this is not just something that smokers uniquely understand. More or less anyone will understand it. The example of the soldier who joins up to fight in a war which might cost him his life is an example which doesn't involve smoking. Real people put their health at risk every day. Anyone who, say, goes swimming in the sea or in a pool is putting their life at risk. It's a very real risk. People really do drown. Quite often. But people who neverthless choose to go swimming balance the very low probability of drowning against the pleasure (and/or the health benefits in improved physical fitness) they get from swimming.
Do Tobacco Control advocates not understand this most elementary fact of life? I wouldn't be at all surprised if they don't. As best I can make them out, for them Good Health (as measured by longevity of life) is the only measure of the value of any activity, whether it be smoking or swimming or fighting wars. Nothing else matters. Health alone is of supreme importance, because life is all that really matters, and living 75.3 years is better than living 75.2 years, even if that life is sad, lonely, empty, and meaningless (and all sorts of other similarly immeasurable values (How does one measure loneliness?)).
most people in my field won't so much as converse with a smoker. - Michael Siegel
Why is that? Yet it's not uncommon these days. Somebody posted earlier something about how EU bureaucrats were proudly swearing they would never listen to tobacco companies.
To me that sounds like trial jurors saying they'd stick their fingers in their ears when the defence attorney stood up to speak.
Or global warming advocates saying they'd close their eyes to anyone who showed them a thermometer.
"The debate is over" once it's come to this. There is no debate.
All that's left is the war of the one against the other.
Michael Siegel wrote:
"[M]ost people in my field won't so much as converse with a smoker."
If this was about people of one race not talking to another race, they'd be called racists.
Regarding your friends in AT, calling them bigots isn't strong enough. This isn't just about not liking a group of people. There is actual persecution going on.
And you want to save this movement?
"All that's left is the war of the one against the other"
And as GreatScot pointed out earlier -- the other side has a every interest in seeing us dead. And they aren't hesitating to take the steps to make that happen. Denial of housing, education, employment, shelter, medical services... It's all happening now.
"By 1938, Jews had been almost completely excluded from German social and political life.[8] Many sought asylum abroad, and thousands did manage to leave, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts — those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."[9]
"During 1933, the German government enacted 42 laws restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to educate themselves. The most draconian of these laws, the law "for the reconstruction of the civil service", forbade Jews to work in any branch of the civil service.[13] The pressure against the Jews continued unabated. During 1934, a further nineteen discriminatory laws were introduced. During 1935, the government had enacted a further 29 anti-Jewish laws."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kri...i/
Kristallnacht
The war has already begun. Smoker control is the enemy, they want us wiped off the planet, and they will not just stop.
How about finding out why people who claim to be focused on "helping" smokers quit, are actually promoting their continued addiction - WaltH
"These tactics involve deceptive marketing, product design with the goal of creating long-term dependencies for "managing" chronic illness, controlling the flow of grant money to researchers with intent to influence reported results, manipulating the public with scare stories to influence regulatory agencies and legislators, and influencing and controlling health care education to produce professionals indoctrinated in techniques and modes of thought that will maximize corporate profits."
"According to FDA regulations, herbal products or nutritional supplements cannot make any claims to be curative or beneficial for specific diseases without FDA approval.
This, combined with the fact that naturally occurring chemical compounds ...cannot be patented..., means that any herb company that might miraculously obtain FDA approval for a specific product would not be able to protect its investment
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/review...2003-
2.html#abs
Small world, eh?
Callous Cowbell: I would also add that funding from industry (directly -Pfizer funds charity)(indirectly- Pfizer funds group who gives those funds IE: RWJF)or through taxes (Physicians for a smoke free Canada got $769,635.00 on 03/14/2008
from Health Canada).
If this movement is so important, or has public support let the supporters pay for advocacy ( using public donations), not taxes. Charities should not be getting gov't funds to lobby gov'ts!
http://www.contracts-contrats.hc...enDocument&L=E&
Buckshot:
ASHRAE. When that report came out, I wrote to them and asked what ventilation tests they'd conducted to reach that "conclusion." They tried valiantly to duck the question, but after much persevering back and forth, admitted: None. The report was based entirely on "medical" "facts" and, the oanel that wrote the report was an AT "Who's Who."
Lynda--
Sorry (well, actually I'm not sorry) but the constitution protects the rights of all citizens to petition the government. It's not just a question of cherry picking which citizens can or can't, and certainly not a question of banning all lobbying. The right to lobby is in the constitution.
Ann W--
Thank you! Brilliant, if chilling, spade work. Not without US precedent. If you're not familiar with the recommendations of the (equally stacked) Kessler-Koop Commission, convened by Clinton, take a close look:
http://ash.org/report2.htm
In case the link's dead, here's a good summary:
Press Release
July 1997
THE KESSLER-KOOP COMMISSION PLANS
“THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE SMOKER PROBLEM”
Defining the choice to smoke as “a chronic disease” and declaring “no value” to the use of cigarettes, a panel commissioned by the President and congress has proposed an Orwellian “blueprint” for “control”-- on an international basis-- that exceeds all boundaries of democratic tradition [says Wanda Hamilton, Vice President of the Florida Smokers Rights Association.]
The Commission, headed by ex-FDA czar David Kessler and ex- Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, has seriously proposed the immediate implementation of what clearly must be seen as totalitarian means-- backed fully by he 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.” Not only in America but all around the world.
Their prescriptions include (but aren’t-- unfortunately-- limited to) the following:
¶ Smoking bans in all public places in America, indoors and out. And eventually in all public places in the world. (Indoors and out.)
¶ Smoking bans, too, in the homes “where children... live,“ such fiats to be legitimized by “legal protections” designed “to protect children from parental tobacco smoke.”
¶ “Sustained” anti-smoking “educational programs,” not only for children but also for adults, not only in “the schools,” but also “in homes.” (“All aspects of society need re-education.”) Yes! Their word (and Mao’s): “re-education.”
¶ Research to be done on (really-- verbatim) “the effect of subliminal messages in early childhood.”
¶ For current smokers: “a mix of intensive services... provided to patients in hospital settings, psychiatric and drug treatment facilities and in-patient nicotine dependence centers.”
¶ Political surveillance “at all levels of government” to “expose tobacco campaign contributions, tobacco lobbyists, and ethically compromised government officials and lawmakers.”
¶ An executive order from the President to all cabinet departments and trade representatives instructing them essentially to blackmail foreign governments into accepting, embracing, enacting and enforcing these “tobacco control standards” within their own countries. Implementation to be paid for with U.S government funds.
¶ Also to be paid for with U.S. government funds, the “surveillance, prevention of”-- and punishment for-- illicit international trade in tobacco including, of course, “smuggling.”
The full report is available at www.ash.org
:
"If this was about people of one race not talking to another race, they'd be called racists.
Regarding your friends in AT, calling them bigots isn't strong enough. This isn't just about not liking a group of people. There is actual persecution going on.
And you want to save this movement?
James Austin | 07.20.08 - 1:59 am" How about answering this question Dr Siegel ? Or whether you are prepared to place yourself in a smokers position on the street ? Why is it these questions never seem to obtain your interest or response ?
Ok doc, I am starting to get just a little "peeved" here, I have asked you this direct question TWICE on this thread and been ignored while toy answer other's questions or even respond to posts that did NOT ask YOU a direct question. Keep ignoring this one and I may get the gumption up to come to Boston and "ask" you directly to your face.
"Doctor, as a "behavioral sciences" instructor, I really want an answer to this question:
How long can you accuse someone of being a monster before they feel they have no recourse left but to BE THAT MONSTER??.
toy = you, sorry, forgot to preview again.
All very interesting information, and all information, especially what Ann W posted is why World War III is just around the corner.
Any person that dares to attempt to enter MY home with CRIMINAL INTENT, will be faced with that "MONSTER" that you ANTIS have produced. This "MONSTER" does have the appropriate tools to combat the ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL entry by ANY person.
This is NOT a THREAT. It's a PROMISE!
Approved by the ASHRAE Standards Committee June 26, 2002; by the ASHRAE Board of Directors June 27, 2002; and by the American National Standards Institute April 2, 2003.
Intresting dates Ann, prior to then ASHRAE had an entirely different stance --- until they were infiltrated by the anti-smoker cartel. And were continually being accused of being a tobacco front group (gee where have we had that before?) omewhere in my files I have details of the antis attacks on them and the subsequent capitulation.
The non smoking public largely remain "uneducated" acording to Michael's definition. Although the majority will allow smoking bans and in some places they actually favor them. But when you ask them one on one if they are afraid of tobacco smoke, they snicker, because largely they know ETS is a convenient lie which suits their comfort.
When you ask if they mind if you smoke, how many actually tell you they do mind? Has the reality of the streets changed in that respect, due to the long term fear campaigns? I don't see it.
When the UN Fascists are successful in outlawing smoking in people's homes, I wonder if they will be snickering and rolling their eyes when police are given the power to enter all homes without a warrant, enabled by suspicion someone might be smoking inside.
I think Gabz may be correct in stating that the majority of anti-smoking groups in the U.S. support this proposal. But I don't support it so I shouldn't be lumped in. I agree with Gabz that banning tobacco lobbyists would be unconstitutional.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 07.19.08 - 10:45 pm | #
Dr. Siegel, you can't possibly believe us all to be that naive, do you? What do you call your outrage about PM being at the table discussing FDA regulation of its products? You never did say why you believe the tobacco industry, unlike any other industry, should not have a say in the regulation of their products. If that is not supportive of banning tobacco industry lobbyists, I don't know what is.
Banning all lobbies would be a mistake. Lobbies financed by taxes and in support of State or political goals should be recognized as a criminal act, because the partnership undermines the security of the people and allows unrestricted theft from the public purse.
These people are criminals and they deserve to be prosecuted, if for no other reason because they have shamelessly abused and profited from the public trust.
I, however, have NO problem with ALL lobbyists AND special interest groups pressuring for legislation for that matter, being banned.
Ragingly Callous Lynda F | Homepage | 07.19.08 - 11:28 pm |
I respectfully beg to differ, Lynda. The term "lobbyist" has been given a negative connotation because of the shenanigans a select. The truth of the matter is that the average lobbyist, at least on the state and local level are everyday people like you and me. A group of likeminded folks gets together for or against something and take their position to the government level. Generally one person speaks on behalf of the group, and that person would be termed a lobbyist.
When our group was fighting the smoking ban in Delaware we respesented individuals, small bar and restaurant owners, and smokers' groups. It was expeditious and beneficial to have only one person speaking for the group, as opposed to 20 or 30 trying to gt their 2 cents in. Which was a vastly different approach than the antis took. Another vast difference between us and the antis was that we didn't have million dollar budgets and ad campaigns behind us. We did everything on our own dime and time.
Just like the anti-smoker cartel has corrupted the concept of Public Health, so have a few high profile bad apples corrupted the concept of a lobbbyist.
No matter how he chooses to slice it or dice, Bill Godshall is as much a lobbyist as I have been.
Sorry (well, actually I'm not sorry) but the constitution protects the rights of all citizens to petition the government. It's not just a question of cherry picking which citizens can or can't, and certainly not a question of banning all lobbying. The right to lobby is in the constitution.
Yes Walt, it does protect the rights of all citizens……and deliberately LIMITS the power of the government. Therefore I don’t see how lobbyists are protected since they deliberately aid government in gaining more power for themselves.
Then there's the question of corporations NOT having the same constitutional rights protected as the average citizen. I'd have to find it, but as I understand it, corporations do not have the same "individual rights" protected as the average citizen. Lobbyists work for and are paid by Corporations.
The first amendment reads:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Petitioning the government for a redress of grievances is NOT lobbying the government with money to get legislation passed that affects all the people and only benefits those pushing for it. THOSE are the lobbyists that “We The People” should NOT be allowing. I can’t find where in the Constitution that “influencing government through money, gifts, promises to pass legislation to herd the people into a specific ideology” (and that is precisely what lobbyists do) is protected. If you can, please direct me as to where it is.
Smoking bans in all public places in America, indoors and out. And eventually in all public places in the world. (Indoors and out.)
“Sustained” anti-smoking “educational programs,” not only for children but also for adults, not only in “the schools,” but also “in homes.” (“All aspects of society need re-education.”) Yes! Their word (and Mao’s): “re-education.”
Research to be done on (really-- verbatim) “the effect of subliminal messages in early childhood.”
Political surveillance “at all levels of government” to “expose tobacco campaign contributions, tobacco lobbyists, and ethically compromised government officials and lawmakers.”
I don’t know Walt, that last one there looks like TC is attempting to deny some their lobbying?
So Doc, considering this is from a tobacco control plan from 1997, are you still going to try to convince us that tobacco control was never what has become about? Are you still going to try to convince us that you are shocked that they would even consider trashing the constitution by elimination of autonomy? Is this YOUR idea of “education” too? Or are you just going to claim ignorance of this document?
How long can you accuse someone of being a monster before they feel they have no recourse left but to BE THAT MONSTER??.
Callous Biker Jerry | 07.20.08 - 4:55 am | #
Doctor Siegel, Jerry is asking you a very important and honest question. please take the time to address it.
What is the usual outcome for a child growing up being told they are stupid or useless?
Why does a woman stay with someone that beats or abuses her?
If the individual has no hope, is powerless and their self worth has been taking away there are no options but to become the very thing they have been falsely accused of, even if it's just to please the accuser.
Jerry asked: "How long can you accuse someone of being a monster before they feel they have no recourse left but to BE THAT MONSTER?"
Not long. One of the theories that needs to be considered is called labeling theory. It basically holds that when people are labeled a certain way, they will eventually act that way, simply because of the label. The label becomes internalized. In a sense, it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
James and si asked: "And you want to save this movement?"
Well, I'm giving it a try. My first response is never to just give up and quit.
Idlex asked: "So, are you saying, Doc, that you wish your colleagues in tobacco control could appreciate that there's more to life than health? That real people balance their health against a basket of other considerations?"
Yes - that's EXACTLY what I'm saying.
There seems to be an increasing perception that secondhand smoke is the ONLY problem in the world and that all other values in society are subservient to removing every trace of secondhand smoke exposure. Just look at the position of ASH on issues such as child custody, adoption of children by smokers, firing employees who smoke outside the office, etc. The only important thing is avoiding any wisp of secondhand smoke exposure, even at the expense of the well-being of children's lives.
Also, I wish tobacco control practitioners would realize that people do balance their health against other considerations, and that many times, these other considerations weigh out over long-term health concerns.
I do believe that the major national tobacco control groups have lost sight of the other important values. One example was the global tobacco settlement where national groups pushed for a settlement which would have brought in billions of dollars (largely to them) at the expense of the legal rights of American citizens. Yes, I think health is important, but not more important than legal rights of individual citizens.
Another example is the DOJ lawsuit, where anti-smoking groups wanted the court to make a ruling that was clearly in violation of the law (but which would have resulted in billions of dollars for anti-smoking programs).
I would like to see more money for tobacco education and prevention programs as much as the next guy, but I'm not willing to sacrifice legal rights, the law, etc. to do so.
Gabz wrote: "What do you call your outrage about PM being at the table discussing FDA regulation of its products? You never did say why you believe the tobacco industry, unlike any other industry, should not have a say in the regulation of their products. If that is not supportive of banning tobacco industry lobbyists, I don't know what is."
But Gabz, there's a big difference between a tobacco company lobbying Congress in support of, or in opposition to a bill, and having the tobacco company WRITING the legislation in a secret negotiating session. I support the idea of lobbying, but there need to be rules to ensure that this kind of back-room wheeling and dealing is not the way it happens. That's not transparent.
Walt - Did the Koop/Kessler report actually call for bans on smoking in homes with children? The link doesn't seem active. If anyone can find an actual copy of this report online, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Is this what you are looking for?
http://www.ash.org/report2.html
Lynda F asked: "So Doc, considering this is from a tobacco control plan from 1997, are you still going to try to convince us that tobacco control was never what has become about?"
That is a very fair question. I haven't seen the actual plan that is being referred to, and I'm willing to look at it and re-consider my opinions. So if anyone has luck finding this online, I would really like to see it.
Thanks, Anonymous. I don't see anything in that report about banning smoking in homes. It just mentions workplaces, public schools, and outdoors service lines and stadiums.
In answer to your question Michael;
"Walt - Did the Koop/Kessler report actually call for bans on smoking in homes with children? The link doesn't seem active. If anyone can find an actual copy of this report online, I'd be interested in seeing it."
http://www.ash.org/
report2.html#...html#Appendix3B
If the document provided above from 1997, is in fact the article Walt mentioned. The answer is yes they did call for home regulation; "ban smoking in environments where children are present, especially in restaurants and where youth live, work and play."
From the section below;
"Policy Recommendations:
* The issuance of the FDA tobacco regulations in August 1996 are the cornerstone of national tobacco policy and must be retained and strengthened.
* Congress should repeal the Federal law that precludes State and Local governments from regulating tobacco promotion and advertising occurring entirely within a state's borders.
* States should license retailers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and importers with graduated penalties and license suspension for violating access laws, using fees to pay for enforcement in limiting youth access.
* Communities should work toward smoke free environments and receive assistance from state and local public health agencies to develop ordinances and implementation strategies.
* States and local jurisdictions should ban smoking in environments where children are present, especially in restaurants and where youth live, work and play.
* The National Cancer Institute should be particularly active in designing, promoting and evaluating tobacco control strategies.
* State and Local governments should not be preempted from enacting stronger laws.
* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shall provide sufficient funds to ensure statewide, community-based tobacco use prevention and control programs.
* The warning on packages should be moved to the front of the cigarette package and the most prominent side of the smokeless tobacco product package.
* The industry should be subject to penalties if youth tobacco use fails to drop by 15 percent in 2 years, 30 percent in 5 years, 50 percent in 7 years and 60 percent in ten years. The penalty would be based on the value of a teen tobacco user to the industry over the lifetime of the individual. It would be worth approximately $80 million per percentage point by which the target was not met. At a minimum, the FDA should incorporate the following criteria into its rulemaking process for establishing performance based penalties:
o -- give the industry powerful incentives to meet the targets,
o -- not limit the potential liability for failing to reach the targets,
o -- take into consideration the economic costs of all sectors of society of not meeting the targets,
o -- be based on the estimates of independent financial experts with full disclosure of economic assumptions used,
o -- become effective in the first two years after completion of the FDA rulemaking process.
o -- consider a variety of penalties including the enforcement of plain packaging without the use of color and logos.
"
I haven't seen the actual plan that is being referred to,
Doc, are you suggesting that you willingly became part of, and aggressively worked for, an organization/cause without finding out what the REAL goals were? Please tell me you are NOT trying to convince us you did that. Because if you are, then all I can say is you must be some kind of follower/idiot to blindly accept what anyone tells you without doing your homework. Sorry but that's how I see it.
* The industry should be subject to penalties if youth tobacco use fails to drop by 15 percent in 2 years, 30 percent in 5 years, 50 percent in 7 years and 60 percent in ten years. The penalty would be based on the value of a teen tobacco user to the industry over the lifetime of the individual. It would be worth approximately $80 million per percentage point by which the target was not met. At a minimum, the FDA should incorporate the following criteria into its rulemaking process for establishing performance based penalties:
o -- give the industry powerful incentives to meet the targets,
o -- not limit the potential liability for failing to reach the targets,
o -- take into consideration the economic costs of all sectors of society of not meeting the targets,
o -- be based on the estimates of independent financial experts with full disclosure of economic assumptions used,
o -- become effective in the first two years after completion of the FDA rulemaking process.
o -- consider a variety of penalties including the enforcement of plain packaging without the use of color and logos.
This is scary, pathetic, and downright wrong. What other industry is held responsible to this extent? What other industry is held responsible for what teens (who have minds of their own contrary to healthist nazis claiming they are too stupid to know anything, and love rebelling) choose to do?
What other industry is punished and fined if those who are not supposed to use their product do? Are gun manufacturers held responsible for criminals getting their hands on their guns? Are car manufacturers held responsible for the teens who steal their cars and cause accidents? Are pharmaceuticals held responsible for teens who steal their otc products and abuse them?
I'm sure there's a hundred more examples but you get my drift.
This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!
Wrong again Michael, I was just perusing that same document and found this:
"States and local jurisdictions should ban smoking in environments where children are present, especially in restaurants and where youth live, work and play. ".
Now, care to tell us AGAIN how they/you/TC/The Nannies, were NOT planning on a home invasion?
There are many other clues throughout that document, such as those that refer to forcing the tobacco companies to "finance" ALL intervention type groups, public and PRIVATE, and seeing the list of who wrote this document, and the FACT that at least SOME on that list are currently calling for ACTIVE BANNING in the home, you are either NOT able to comprehend, or are deliberatley not looking at the document when you state that you didn't see anything about banning smoking in homes, just WHERE DO KIDS LIVE if NOT in the HOME?
BTW, just HOW long is NOT LONG?
Is it longer than 1 year? 10 years? and how long have we been called Monster's for enjoying a legal product?
It's been at least two years on your blog and responses alone, so WHEN are we expected to become these Monster's?
And how does that knowledge reflect on your cost vs benefit analysys that you claim has not reached a critical point yet?
Ten years has passed and most if not all of the recommendations have been implemented in Canada for some time now, yet the 60% reductions demanded were not seen. We recently saw a number of reports indicating youth smoking numbers have stalled and have recently risen.
Is that reality considered the tobacco industry's fault, with total bans on advertising in place and large emotional pictures, adorning every package for years?
So much for the expert opinion. An opinion formed with exactly zero smokers at the table.
Go figure.
You know, I think I finally found out why the doctor runs this blog in that very same document:
"Research attitudes, turning points and developmental markers which may identify youth at risk for initiating tobacco use or progressing to more regular use.".
especially relevant to this blog, in my humble opinion, is the phrase "research Attitudes".
How does it fee to be looked at as a lab rat Jerry?
This blog is without doubt a part of that monitoring stage.
Bill G's constant incitements are consistent with stimulus injections, to gauge the extremes of the psychological conditioning process in play.
Just checking to see how efficiently we have been infected.
In the real world however;
TC acting as a socialist industry process [Fascism et al] has been successful in one strategy goal, in turning the focus away from the tobacco industry to the people. They, in acting as dupes of the tobacco industry, have succeeded in bringing tobacco sales, back to an acceptable profit and distribution level.
The Youth smoking numbers now exceed the national prevalence numbers.
Smoking is haphazardly being promoted and made more profitable, and soon we may see prevalence numbers rise to previous levels, seen before the SG started the decline.
Yet still the TC crowd in their contemptuous denials, continue to crow about success.
Using tax and other public money to fund lobby efforts clearly perverts the democratic process. No government should not be in the position of providing funding and grants to groups to voice opinions that aren't held by all tax payers. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
For tobacco control, this has come from monies allocated to the NIH, and Legacy Foundation, and has often been used to promote legislation and shift further tax burdens to smokers, and feed additional lobby efforts and to stigmatize the very payers of these taxes. By allowing publicly funded bureaucrats the authority to spend taxpayer funds for lobby efforts transforms the government from its role as a neutral policy maker into advocates of selective policies and ideology.
Political surveillance “at all levels of government” to “expose tobacco campaign contributions, tobacco lobbyists, and ethically compromised government officials and lawmakers.”
Clearly, while the hound is watching the hen house, the fox has had a free run of the yard. How many government officials and lawmakers have been ethically compromised by pharmaceutical industry seeking a market for their cessation aids in the pretext of being a benevolent entity, and not a for profit concern which they really are.
There is enough evidence that vested financial interests have influenced legislation and public health policy to better their financial interests to promote and create and sustain a market for their products. With the dismal record of successful quit rates using NRT over simple abstinence, health policy has been transformed into pushing nicotine replacement. The pharmaceutical industry has influence studies, supported direct lobby efforts and indirect lobby efforts using front groups representing themselves as active interests in tobacco control. They have dominated national and international conferences, again pushing their wares as the keystone of the consensus policy.
Over the last decade, there has been an significant shift in influence from one nicotine pusher (the tobacco industry) to another (the pharmaceutical industry). The later now dominates influence, wants to promote policy to watch the former to further distract from their own influence manipulation.
Understanding the battle plan is like getting a copy of the other team's playbook, waiting for the blitz and scoring an easy touch down with the opponent's reserve forces engaged.
http://www.hia2007.com/
Health_Im...tical_Guide.pdf
It is worth the time to read, It makes their actions not just predictable, but indictable.
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/
pub...ticle5p110.html
Dr. Siegel: ‘’ I don't mean to be patronizing - what I'm actually suggesting is that people in tobacco control who do not ever so much as talk to a smoker truly don't have these insights. I wish more of them would read my blog, if only for this reason.’’
I don’t know if this is wishful thinking or if you’re so naïve that you think that many TC advocates care about the smokers and they’re acting for altruistic or humanitarian reasons, but Dr. Siegel, when old people die of hypothermia in Canada when pushed out of their residences to smoke, when women are being mugged and raped while standing outside to smoke, when heads of family lose their jobs simply because they smoke, when patients are refused healthcare simply because they’re smokers, when children are separated from their smoking parents, and yet TC advocates and most politicians remain indifferent and inflexible, tell me doctor, what makes you so optimistic that anti-tobacco advocates would care what smokers think when reading your blog that it would make them temper their unethical and immoral war against their fellow citizens?
Doctor, if you’re sincere in your mission, there is no time left for appealing to TC advocate’s ethics, morals or understanding. It is time you help destroy this cult and rebuild it from scratch for the right reasons and with the right people! You have many brilliant career years ahead of you, you can do it the ethical way with integrity and compassion. TC is too far corrupted to be salvaged, the sooner you face this reality, the sooner we can start being a civilized society again.
I realize that it is a humongous task to ask of one person, but there are others behind you and there will be more if you take that first crucial step and stop believing that you're part of TC and that you can save it. TC as it has become, is beyond any true hope of ever rebecoming a respected public health authority.
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/r...rg/reports/doj/
I noticed that they want Big Tobacco to cover the cost of smoking cessation treatment.
http://www.rwjf.org/
programareas...1#int_grantinfo
From 1996 to 2004, funding established and provided continuing support for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids (the center).
The American Cancer Society, Atlanta, provided the initial start-up planning for the center. Once it was established, the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, Washington, took over operations.
The mission of the center is to promote policy and environmental changes that will prevent and reduce tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke, especially among children, and that will minimize the harm caused by tobacco.
http://www.rwjf.org/
programareas...1#int_grantinfo
GRANT DETAILS & CONTACT INFORMATION
Project: National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids
# Amount: $ 19,510,110
Dates: June 1996 to June 2001
ID#: 029600
# Amount: $ 50,000,000
Dates: April 1999 to March 2004
ID#: 035929
this site also list other funding sources.
It would appear that Tobacco Free Kids will sleep with anyone to get what they want........
(Thanks Iro for posting Marcus Aurelius links on another forum made it a lot easier to find out what is going on in the US)
James and si asked: "And you want to save this movement?"
Well, I'm giving it a try. My first response is never to just give up and quit.
Michael Siegel
---------------------
"My first response is never to just give up and quit."
But that's exactly what you want smokers to do. That's actually funny.
Your connection to this movement supposedly stops at workplace exposure. That has been largely accomplished. What did Cathy Bell used to say, "My work here is done"?
Or how about Carl's "Time to move on." You can start investigating the other part of the 50% increase in lung cancer risk in restaurant workers. They're still dying, you know. Maybe it's the candles.
Why do you still want to be part of this movement when it's crystal clear it's about smoking, not SHS. I believe it was you who said the goal posts have moved. That doesn't mean you have to keep playing. Your game is over.
I don't mean to go this far off topic but is the headline of the current article true?
"New Research Confirms that Tobacco Companies Use Menthol to Support Addiction, Especially Among Adolescents"
Adolescent defined:
http://dictionary.reference.com/...owse/
Adolescent
Synonyms = "1. immature, young. 3. youth, teenager, minor."
The Harvard Research might be "recent" but the underlying research is old. "Market Research" is being confused with "Medical Research". The ages of the market sector being discussed in the underlying "notes for presentation" is mischaracterized as "adolescents" when in fact they are young adults who are already smoking a new brand of cigarette called Newport, in 1958.
One of the reported results of the Harvard analysis is that, "The tobacco industry attracted new smokers by promoting cigarettes with lower menthol content." They may have been trying to attract smokers to switch brands but the tobacco industry was never able to explain, and still can't explain, why smokers start smoking in the first place. No "new smokers" have ever been created by menthol alone.
The conclusion, "Tobacco companies manipulate the sensory characteristics of cigarettes, including menthol content, thereby facilitating smoking initiation and nicotine dependence."
Facilitate defined.
http://dictionary.reference.com/...owse/
facilitate
There is no evidence that the introduction of the Belair brand was anything more than a response to the success of the Newport brand. The "target market" is smokers, (those who already smoke), between the ages of 18 and 24. There is no "target market" of people who don't smoke. The only facilitating being provided was a "me too" version of Newports that would make brand switching "easier".
Note for Dr. Siegel; doesn't this tobacco industry document look a lot like the notes a professor might prepare before a classroom lecture?
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/
t...0140D49FD077454
CASH, the Campaign Against Smoker Harassment, issued this statement.
"It is cheap and sleezy to publish marketing reports and misrepresent their meaning as having devious import."
E=MC^2
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
Dr. Siegel, I agree with everything Iro has stated. You are a brave man, you know first hand how they have treated you for speaking out, why would they give a second thought to a group of "addicts"?
Many times we have heard TC described as a "broad policy development" to influence decision makers. Acurate and effective as a direct result of biased perspectives growing in significance by process campaigns.
HIA is a process designed to deliberately inject bias into policy making decisions. Partnering with stakeholders who will profit from the implementation, gives them the advertising revenues which will profit all the conspirators.
Governments invent problems to solve in place of the real issues they are ill equipped to deal with and remain popular with the electorate. In short a political coward's dream come true.
From chart 1
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/
pub...110.html#table2
We see if the assessments or measurements are "Broad" the precision is low. [ETS measurements including anything below 10 microns in diameter rings a bell]
Telling a lie long enough is all you need to attach to the biased injections of predictions, by blackmail or willing political involvement, to recreate what the policymakers are forced to believe parrot and comply with.
Global Warming and a number of other unlikely although invented fears, were developed in the same way.
Described as "irrefutable proofs" when in a real sense they are absolutely controversial opinions, being developed in process to carry a much larger significance.
White is black and 2 plus two equals five.
Any opinion you want, HIA can develop the proof.
My understanding of Tobacco Free Kids is that it was started by and FUNDED by RWJF for the purpose of Lobbying, which RWJF CANNOT do. I read this somewhere, but I'm not sure where.
After reviewing the Koop-Kessler document, Walt was indeed correct. As Jerry points out, the document does call for banning smoking "in environments where children are present, especially in restaurants and where youth live, work and play."
This would seem to indicate a ban on smoking in homes with children.
And this is back in 1997.
My readers may well be correct in noting that the more extremist agenda of anti-smoking groups pre-dates my own recognition of it. With the development of the internet, it is far easier to be aware of the position of the groups than it was prior to the internet. Also, I was perhaps a little blind to it because I simply wouldn't believe that my colleagues held such views. It wasn't until my wake-up call with ANR in 2002 that I really started seeing the way these groups think and operate.
Thanks, Iro and Ann W., for these thoughts. You are probably right --- my own experience has shown me that many of my colleagues do not want to hear anything that smokers have to say. In fact, to be honest and blunt, I have been roundly criticized by many in my field simply because I have opened up a dialogue with smokers and have had an association with such "subversive" organizations as The Smoker's Club and FORCES. Never mind my positions. The simple fact that I had any communication whatsoever with smoker's groups was reason enough to cast me out of the movement.
How can a group of "scientists" study smokers without actually talking to them and gaining insight from their reasons for smoking and their thoughts about their "addiction"? How can any research that denies the inclusion of those it studies be honest and reliable?
"I have been roundly criticized by many in my field simply because I have opened up a dialogue with smokers and have had an association with such "subversive" organizations as The Smoker's Club and FORCES. Never mind my position"
If you look a little closer at the document in question you can start to realize smokers and any of their organized lobbies are clasified by wide brush as Tobacco Industry advocates, which by definition sets the standard of never listening to them. You have inadvertently associated yourself by the definition similarly, as a shill to big tobacco regardless of how ridiculous it may sound. Welcome to our side of the fence.
Further by classification of smoking as a disease they allow themselves the oversight and authority to see smokers only as disease victims, who require treatment. Treatment described in the same category as AIDS, being applied regardless of personal opinions or autonomy permissions granted.
Sheri,
The most obvious answer is...
They are not scientists, but activists with an agenda, looking to provide support for their agenda. Facts which fail to support their agenda, are discarded, ignored or buried.
Science is the effort to "understand". Scientists are those in pursuit of this knowledge or understanding, and should be indifferent to what the answer is, but rather gain in the understanding of why the answer is what it is.
There is never a question as to what someone like Glantz, or Repace will find as there is no doubt it will support their anti-smoker agenda.
But Gabz, there's a big difference between a tobacco company lobbying Congress in support of, or in opposition to a bill, and having the tobacco company WRITING the legislation in a secret negotiating session. I support the idea of lobbying, but there need to be rules to ensure that this kind of back-room wheeling and dealing is not the way it happens. That's not transparent.
Michael Siegel | Homepage | 07.20.08 - 11:30 am | #
But Gabz, NOTHING. That is HOW it is done. I agree it shouldn't be done, but it is, and it is done with ALL industry, not just the tobacco industry. It is done at all levels of government, it is only magnified by a thousandfold at the federal level. You don't think your side has been doing this forever at the state and local level as well as the federal level? If you do you are far more than just naive.
I can't come to Boston, but I would love to have the opportunity to speak with you one on one about what your side put me through in Delaware starting in 1988. The lies, the deceit, the backroom deals, the secrecy; all the things your side accuses the tobacco industry of doing has been done by your kind and by the mid 90s it was ONLY being done by your side.
I have stories of your side and their nefarious dealings behind closed doors that would make your hair stand on end and turn white.
In the strictest sense, TC has been deliberately passing off ad agency spin in place of what they knew all along was never science, presented as irrefutable science.
The loss of credibility among the medical journals as a result of publishing conflicted tripe, in place of legitimate research will be incalculable.
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/
pub...ticle5p110.html
"USES OF HIA
The explicit purpose of HIA is to make public policies as health-enhancing as possible. [[[[It is a prospective decision-support tool, not a scientific evaluation method]]]], and its key output is a set of recommendations for modifying the policy under consideration. However, it has other important spin-off effects:
* Health advocacy. HIA is a useful tool for raising awareness of health, especially in the intersectoral context.
* Personal, social and economic development. HIA is very participatory and promotes the personal development of people who undertake it, especially in communities and non-government organisations. Because social and economic development are influenced by social determinants of health, they are enhanced when HIAs are undertaken.
* Advocacy for disadvantaged groups. The focus of HIA on distributional impacts, as well as on whole populations, makes it important in advocating for disadvantaged groups and for partnership building. "
They didn't even get the "participation" prerequisite right obviously. Substituting amateur and urban myth opinions to formulate what they presented as informed opinions.
The result is only now, starting to emerge. A tremendous loss of credibility allotted to all stakeholders and an increase among youth smoking numbers as their intended message becomes a joke.
Jail is too good for the lot of them, How many of them will ever take responsibility for their deceit.
Expect a new HIA campaign in the near future; aimed at promoting their own credibility.
In my hand I have a cigarette package which claims 85% of all Lung Cancers are caused by smoking. Health Canada...
Can I rely on this information as accurate, or do I just put it aside with the rest of the incredible claims as rhetoric and uneducated nonsense.
The science indicates the latter to be true, I wonder how Michael would advise me.
I guess smoking by the indication of the information provided, places diesel exhaust, asbestos and radon gas in the minor risk categories or as insignificant risk, considering the thousands of contaminants we experience every day combined along with genealogy, the maximum effect only represents 15% of the lung cancer causes.
Surprisingly by real physical sciences, Lung cancer is so hard to reproduce and it takes on average 50 years to develop, while many other substances such as diesel exhaust produce cancers within hours.
Is it any wonder so few trust the word of the scientific community any more? If they really found a health hazard and people were in immediate danger today, they would have to initiate a panic with gunfire.
If we're discussing "Things I didn't know about my friends," did Dr.Siegel know they were already discussing the idea of refusing to hire smokers as far back as the 80s? You know, where "Right To Smoke" state legislations came from.
Project ASSIST, a government funded endeavor no less, has in its Chapter 5, several pages on this subject under Economic Incentives: Preferential Hiring and Promotion.
Here are several excerpts from it:
This section describes environmental manipulations based on the application of economic incentives. Economic incentives serve to reduce consumption of tobacco products by increasing, either directly or indirectly, the costs of using these products...An attempt is made here to present some of the conceptual linkages between economic incentives and smoking and to describe the development and current status of each of the three strategies.
There are several reasons for reluctance on the part of employers to implement preferential hiring polices. There is a perception that less restrictive measures are working well and that hiring restrictions are intrusive and go beyond normal employment practices. Businesses may not want to restrict their pool of available employees...Guidelines by Action on Smoking and Health (1989)...
Clearly, one potentially important contribution that such policies make is the message they convey about the changing social acceptability of smoking. Formal policies against hiring smokers are still relatively uncommon but may be highly visible and attract considerable media attention....If employment is contingent on quitting smoking, some potential applicants might be motivated to quit smoking rather than settle for some other job.
Dr. Siegel said that in 2002 he began to change his mind when he did/said something that was about ANR.
ANR is the "Americans for Non-Smokers Rights."
http://www.no-smoke.org/
I've never heard of them. According to ARN there is a tobacco shill under every bed.
http://www.no-smoke.org/getthefa...facts.php?
id=16
"You may say, "But the tobacco industry isn't here in my town." But don't be fooled - the tobacco industry is everywhere. Though you may never see a tobacco industry representative, they are everywhere that tobacco is sold - no town is too small. Big Tobacco's bottom line is at stake in every smokefree campaign."
Just like the agents in the Matrix. Isn't that right Mr. Anderson?
This isn't the agenda of an advocate. This is paranoia.
E=MC^2
Advocate for CASH
Chutzpah on loan from John Banzhaf
The entirety of TC has claimed consistently, the most significant reason for tobacco taxes is to offset the health costs of treating smoking related diseases.
Back in the mid 1990s the heavily increased taxation was reported as an influence, to reduce new youth smoking, although it was criticized heavily by those adults, who should have been getting rebates.
The evidence in the submissions in this blog alone indicates the real reason for promoting smoking taxes would be to punish smokers, in order to force compliance by increasing poverty.
How does anyone with a conscience moralize taxing, what they describe as an addiction more potent than heroin or crack addiction?
Is it the position of the learned world wide; forcing compliance in autonomy choices is an acceptable role for the so called professionals?
In the same breath out of the other side of their faces; they try to sell themselves as humanitarians filled with the spirit of caring and empathy for all those poor smokers and the children, they hope to protect.
It isn't all that difficult to understand, they are hardly worthy of what they claim to be.
Anonymous wrote: Can I rely on this information as accurate, or do I just put it aside with the rest of the incredible claims as rhetoric and uneducated nonsense.
Some more rhetoric and uneducated nonsense from Cancer Care Ontario?
Lung cancer rates now higher in young women than young men (Jan 2006)
http://www.cancercare.on.ca/engl...lt.aspx?
HC=true
More young women are now getting lung cancer and dying from it than young men. In Ontario, the incidence rate of lung cancer in young women aged 20–44 overtook the rate in young men in the late 1990s. The incidence of lung cancer in young men has been falling since the 1970s, whereas the incidence in young women rose between 1970 and 1983 and has remained at that level since then.
Lung cancer incidence trends reflect smoking trends 20 or more years earlier. Lung cancer trends in young adults are thus sensitive to changes in smoking habits among teenagers and those in their 20s.
Why in the world did they start with 20 year olds when the number of lung cancer cases in both sexes in the age group 20-24 never has exceeded 3 for all of Canada?
Mortality Summary List of Causes
Canada 1997
Total Deaths from Trachea, Bronchus and Lung Canacer
Canada all ages----------Ontario all ages
Male:--------9,726--------------3,191
Female:--- 5,713--------------1,954
Canada by age
--------------20-24--------25-29--------30-34-----
---35-39--------40-44--------Total
Male:-------1----------------1---------------9----
---------37-----------108-----------156
Female:----2---------------3-------------10-------
------47------------125----------187
Mortality Summary List of Causes
Canada 2000
Total Deaths from Malignant neoplasms of trachea, bronchus and lung (C33-C34)
Canada all ages----------Ontario all ages
Male:------9,650-----------------3,245
Female:--6,484-----------------2,396
Canada by age
--------------20-24--------25-29--------30-34-----
---35-39--------40-44--------Total
Male:------- 0---------------3--------------3-------------22---
----------103---------131
Female:----2---------------3---------------5------
------22-------------139----------152
To put this into perspective here are the population figures by age for Canada
Total population: 30,750,087 Ontario: 11,669,344
Population Canada by age 20-44
--------------20-24--------------25-29------------
------30-34------------------35-39----------------
-40-44
Male:-------1,063,620--------1,067,870--------
1,154,071 --------------1,359,796---------------1,306,705
Female:----1,017,566--------1,041,900--------
1,129,095 --------------1,335,765---------------1,304,538
Mortality Summary List of Causes
Canada 2003
Total Deaths from Malignant neoplasms of trachea, bronchus and lung (C33-C34)
Canada all ages----------Ontario all ages
Male:------10,203-----------------3,426
Female:----7,171-----------------2,513
Canada by age
--------------20-24--------25-29--------30-34-----
---35-39--------40-44---------Total
Male:------- ---------------2--------------3-------------23----
---------100-----------129
Female:----2--------------1--------------3--------
-----27-------------127-----------158
The figures for 2003 age 20-24 did not post correctly, it should have read
-------------20-24
Male:---------1--------
Female:-------0--------
This "surveillance at all levels of government". Ah yes, a smoker hate group, "American's for Non-smokers Rights" was enlisted to create a "watch list" of suspected subversives using California cigarette tax payers monies. Because the existence of this database became public knowledge, and subject to FOIA inspection, the database was taken private under funding from the RWJF.
Now the interesting part about this whole affair is, I have since found out, that an e-mail I had written to my county health department and county commissioners were published in this California Database. This is how far reaching the tentacles of this organization is, especially considering the fact that I live in a small county in Georgia. So why were California smokers made to fund an apparatus to keep informed of what some pissed off smoker in Georgia had to say to his elected officials. It reminds me so much of what you would expect from the Gestapo.
The database can be found at http://www.tidatabase.org/
While checking on what ANR has on my biography, I noticed they also have the Income tax filings from FORCES, to which I was once an officer of. Amazing how they can insinuate that FORCES received tobacco funding, claiming "For years FORCES has claimed to be a membership organization that did not receive tobacco funding. Internal tobacco industry documents are inconclusive on this point, although documents do show that FORCES and the tobacco industry have worked in partnership in the past. Yet ANR has been well aware of the what was filed with the IRS and for 1999 a grand total of $3231.00 and for 2000 a whopping $5,100.00 was received in grants and contributions.
According to their copyright notice, the information belongs to ANRF.
By contrast ANRF received $255,529 in 2006 from Governmental contributions, and a total of $4,323,037.00 Wonder how much of that was from pharmaceutical concerns?
They claim on their 2006 that ANRF did not attempt to influence national, state, or local legislation, including attempts to influence public opinion on a legislative matter or referendum. I guess operating an Enemies Database doesn't count.
And the average 4 hours a week that the executive director spends at ANR doing such things as lobbying for smoke free laws doesn't pay but $13,315 but in the average 4 hours a week the same director spends at ANRF claiming not to spend any time lobbying for smokefree legislation pays a whopping $74,976. Must be hard to keep that all straight, don't you think?
There are so many rats in the whole tobacco control woodpile, and the press is so oblivious to the whole issue. Too bad investigative reporting died with watergate. I guess they hand out pulitzers now for the report that can take copy from the press releases the quickest (or at least in health sciences that is).
"There are so many rats in the whole tobacco control woodpile, and the press is so oblivious to the whole issue. Too bad investigative reporting died with watergate. I guess they hand out pulitzers now for the report that can take copy from the press releases the quickest (or at least in health sciences that is).
Walt H. | 07.20.08 - 10:56 pm | # ".
I have to disagree slightly Walt, they are Not oblivous, in most cases they are complicit
The database can be found at http://www.tidatabase.org/
there are 135 records found for "Siegel".
Sorry I missed the afternoon class. But, yes, our team found the right link and the money quote. Before I knew they had, I went into the document and searched the word "children" and found, not only that one, but a gloating reference to smoking parents being denied custody in several states (seen as a model to be copied elsewhere) and passages like this:
Research the effects of environmental tobacco smoke on human growth and development and develop health policies that stress the benefits of the smoke-free home for children,
which reminds me of the Red Queen's pronouncement if "Verdict first, trial later." IOW, we know we want "smoke-free homes" for children, let's scrounge around for reasons.
At a soberer hour, I'll track down a NY state document from, IIRC, the nineties, where AT is actively opposing the then-proposed NY ban on employment discrimination against smokers
.
And-- gimme a minute-- I'll post a link that'll show how guys like Cherner and Glantz were essentially writing NYC law.
So it's only a crime against democracy when the industry lobbyists write laws, but not of course, when TC does?
:
Here's the link
http://www.nycclash.com/
CaseAgai...x.html#Appendix
Read, especially, from "Glantz in New York" to the end, tho it's not all that long.
:
Ann W.;
"Lung cancer incidence trends reflect smoking trends 20 or more years earlier. Lung cancer trends in young adults are thus sensitive to changes in smoking habits among teenagers and those in their 20s.
Why in the world did they start with 20 year olds when the number of lung cancer cases in both sexes in the age group 20-24 never has exceeded 3 for all of Canada?"
The largest flaw immediately apparent in the reasoning, is found when you realize the level of female smokers has never come close to the number of Male smokers. If smoking is the cause and all things are equal in risk how does the number of women exceed the disease rates in men.
When you take into consideration the raw number of smokers, has not changed significantly in over 50 years, it really brings into question the competence of those producing the report. In light of the dramatic changes in disease numbers related to smoking with a constant number at risk, a lot is left to the imagination, and it shows.
Ann W. - With 135 entries in the Tobacco Industry Tracking Database, I think I should ask the tobacco companies where my paycheck is!
Have you even looked at it? There are other people named Siegel, but of course you'd assume it's all about you. It's just a list of media references.
"So while I have a dialogue with a large number of smokers and am able to be exposed to these kinds of insights, most people in my field won't so much as converse with a smoker." -- Dr. Siegel
The definition of a dialogue, doctor, is 'a conversation between two persons.' If by 'a dialogue with a large number of smokers' includes among the smokers the posters here, then the dialogue you're having with us is a sorry one indeed, since you've refused to engage in full conversations repeatedly, and have repeatedly failed to answer our questions. As you damn well know. Who do you think you're kidding -- a bunch of 6-year-olds?
.
And as to this, doctor: " No - not CAN'T be adequately informed - AREN'T adequately informed. It has nothing to do with them or their intelligence levels at all."
Why not just cut the crap,doctor? If you need a refresher (are you getting senile?), I suggest you review the July 5th string from last year, and your response to Sam's suggestion (among others).
.
How exciting!!
I am named a few times.
Oi! Big Tobacco! Where's my cheque????
Oops!
My comment wont make much sense without Anns link:
http://www.tidatabase.org/
Walt H. - Glad to have your company in the tobacco industry tracking database.
Actually, "enemies database" is more accurate since it seems to track anything written that opposes the tobacco control cause, most of which in fact has nothing to do with tobacco industry funding.
Colin Grainger wrote: How exciting!! I am named a few times.
Well done Colin!!!! I understand that the cheques are in the mail - lol
I looked up Martha Perske on that database. Among other things, she was tagged for criticizing Dr. Siegel's 1993 restaurant study.
Perske, M.; "Cooking the books: a restaurant study," National Smokers' Alliance Web Site— http://www.speakup.org, 1997.
This article by National Smokers Alliance (NSA) member Martha Perske criticizes a 1993 study by Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University School of Public Health.
Named Persons
Perske, Martha; Siegel, Michael
Named Organizations
National Smokers Alliance (NSA)
Btw, Dr. Siegel, has anybody yet informed restauarant employees that there is still an increased risk of lung cancer even in smoke-free restaurants?
People who eat in restaurants kill children. That should be a bumper sticker.
Congratulations, all those who got a mention in the Tobacco Industry Tracking Database.
Clearly, their tracking is seriously off target.
Dr. Siegel,
Could you please respond to this from Topix?
Sheri wrote:
Please respond to Dr. Siegel's post about heart attacks after smoking bans. He spoke to that just today.http://tobaccoanalysis.b logspot.com/
Yes, I note he is addressing the Umbria statistics. I offer this for your consideration:
"Implications of a public smoking ban" Canadian Journal of Public Health 99(1); 72-65, January-February, 2008. This from Saskatoon, Canada, assessed the effect of smokefree legislation on the incidence of heart attacks and on smoking prevalence, as well as measure public support for such legislation. The authors CONCLUDED that, "the public smoking ban is Saskatoon, Canada, is associatwed with reduced incidence rates of acute MI (myocardial infarction), lower smoking prevalence and high levels of public support."
and this........
from the Journal of Drug Education 37(3): 217-226, 2007. Title: Reduced admissions for acute MI associated with a public smoking ban; matched controlled study. This study found that a significant drop in hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction for nonsmoking patients occurred following the implementation of a smokefree law in Monroe County, Indiana.
and finally (for the day):
Title: Declines in Hospital admissions for acute MI in NY state after imiplementation of a comprehensive smoking ban. American Journal of PUblic Health 97 (11): November 2007. This study found the New York state's 2003 smokefree air law resulted in "3813 fewer hospital admissions for acute MI than would have been expected in the absence of the comprehensive smoking ban," in 2004.
So, we have, in addition to England - Canada, New York and Indiana. What does Dr. Siegel have to say about those studies.
http://www.topix.com/health/smok...er/
p20#lastPost
Sheri,
My commentary on the Saskatoon study is here:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....elena-
then.html, and here:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....roblems-
in.html.
My commentary on the Indiana study is here:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....rt-
attacks.html, and here:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....alysis-
can.html.
My commentary on the New York study is here:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot....york-
state.html
Actually, "enemies database" is more accurate since it seems to track anything written that opposes the tobacco control cause, most of which in fact has nothing to do with tobacco industry funding.
It is key to be able to run a successful smear campaign, and discredit your detractors, which appears to be it's true purpose.
One day, somewhere in Hell, RJR and Philip Morris executives will face off in a steel cage match with the fascists in tobacco/people control in a bloody and painful fight to their 2nd death.
If there is a God there will be a lot of pain, suffering, blood and agony....and control freaks like Glantz and Godshall, and whining bitches who complained about SHS will be "accidentally" wounded by the crossfire.
Thank you for that mental image, Dr Blair, I enjoyed it immensely.
http://hell.unsaccodicanapa.com/
...al_cancers.html
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