(Although directed at some inane goings-on in Australia, this definitely applies to Canada, the U.K and the entire E.U. and the U.S. and etc.)

*** Film THIS! ***

An Australian publication called "The Age" recently had a story about the idea of banning smoking in movies. That's on the SCREEN...in the films. Why? It sends the "wrong message" to kids. Censorship must be the "right message."

Imagine Lauren Bacall blowing smoke-rings...with no smoke in the air and maybe just a pencil in her fingers. This may seem funny...considering the flood of films with Mad Slashers, intergalactic devastation, horror of all sorts, sex of all sorts, insane drivers, bombings galore, shootings, stalkings, rapes, infidelity, suicides, poisoning, spying, treason, fraud, hoaxes, maiming, torture, wars, lynchings, drunkenness, cruelty to animals, racism, intolerance, crooked cops, crooked public officials, sexism...and worst of all, Teeth-Gritting CUTENESS.

It's not funny to the industries behind-the-scenes pushing this "wholesome" anti-smoking campaign. And it ain't about health any more than George Bush's "wars" are about democracy.
* It's about NOT spending public money on public health-care...so that the loot can go instead to its rightful recipients, the corporate elite.
* Some of this corporate elite happens to be Part and Parcel of the cigarette industry, the one which caused so much disease and death.
* It's about dodging major liability and compensation to millions of victims. Did the natural tobacco plant do THIS? It's quite unlikely...actually impossible...but, officially, who knows? It hasn't been yet studied for possible or determined harms! It's a Frame Up, yet again, of nature to cover up the misdeeds of industry and corporate technology.
* There's about 450 tobacco pesticides still legal...at least in the U.S. About two dozen of them leave residues for unwitting consumer to inhale. About a third of these are chlorinated...thus sending KNOWN human carcinogen DIOXIN into victims' lungs, THE most efficient organs for getting the stuff into one's system. There is NO safe dose. This is STILL legal...despite the "concerned" anti-cig crusade. Outrage from the Environmentalists? Nah...they got too many cig-haters sending them membership payments etc. Some "environmental" groups accept money from members of the vast chlorine/petrochemical industry...which is involved in typical (non-organic) cigarettes.
* More dioxin (one of the "Dirty Dozen" WORST industrial pollutants on the planet!) comes to unprotected, unwarned, grossly-unprotected consumers by way of the chlorine-bleached paper. More comes from any number of the untested non-tobacco additives...many from pesticide-intensive agriculture. More comes from the Industrial Waste Cellulose used to make Fake Tobacco. (You didn't think "fine tobacco taste" meant there was necessarily tobacco in the cig, did you?) [What's the law in Australia re/ tobacco-free "tobacco" products?]
* Dioxin is particularly harmful to growing youth...and to fetuses and pregnant moms. Yeah...they "warn" kids and pregnant moms not to smoke...but without saying WHY...and without a WORD about the child/fetal-damaging industrial substances that contaminate most smoking products. If officials had one iota of concern for kids (or moms or anyone but their financial benefactors) they would have banned Chlorine elements in cigarettes years...decades... ago. Were they not paying attention to news about Agent Orange, Times Beach, Love Canal, DDT, PCBs, etc.? But, if they banned it, they'd need an explanation. If they said the TRUTH, that it was a virtual inevitable killer substance...their money and possible future jobs from chlorine industries would dry up...and a lot of prominent folks would be in prison for reckless mass homicide, risking public health catastrophes and fraud...for starters.
* Those who SAY they dislike what they call "big tobacco" (remembering that a cig may not have any tobacco at all...see the U.S. Patents) are VERY kind to the industry by refusing to mention anything about the chlorine/dioxin (it's not from nature...not in tobacco plants..etc.), the pesticides, the "Burn Accelerants" (to keep cigs "evenly burning"), the addiction-enhancing additives, the additives that so smooth the taste that one doesn't know damage is being done, and the additives that sweeten and flavor the products to make them so appealing to kids.
Blaming the firms for just "tobacco" is to utterly dodge the issue...the real crimes.
* Ah yes...how convenient that there's a lot of mainstream folks who just don't like natural plant use for smoking or "drugs". A Ready-Made "religious" halo can be plopped around this cause. It's all wholesome and nice. Well...what religion (besides Capitalism) condones secretly putting into products of mass consumption some of the world's worst industrial toxins and carcinogens...and chemicals that cause fires...and additives that maximize one's craving for the contaminated products?
* The crusade is about maintaining the "good name" of big insurance (part owners of Big Cig and cig additives and tobacco pesticides and paper and etc.)...which currently is working world- wide to privatize...to eliminate public health plans in favor of For-Profit, commercial health programs. Anyone who accepts THIS industry as a "Health Care Provider" isn't paying attention...or has a fried empathy system and survival instinct.


Who's concerned about "smoking" ? (quotes because...never defined for content).
*Big Chlorine: this involves oil, pesticides, plastics, synthetic fibers, pharmaceuticals, paper/pulp, corporate ag biz, waste, and others.
* Big Insurance: Top insurers not only insure these businesses, including Big Cig, they hold huge investments in them...again , including Big Cig manufacturing. Out of the other side of their mouths, they say "no smoking" of the very products in which they have economic interests. Plan is, of course, to MINIMIZE liabilities and profit loss. They control the anti-cig crusade by the classic trick of being Their Own "Enemy"...with help of commercial media which also pretends to be "shocked" and "concerned about the kids", etc.
* Pharmaceuticals: They make tobacco pesticides, unknown number of cigarette additives, AND more-profitable synthetic replacements for nicotine. They hope to TAKE natural nicotine from the Public Domain by promoting prohibition. (Add THAT to the devastating cannabis prohibition.) This will make nicotine a Controlled Substance to be, of course, controlled, used and profited on by them alone.
Why do they want nicotine? Believe it or not, it's a medicine. That's why the tobacco plant was USED, in N. America, for 10,000 years. It's used for appetite suppression, digestion, alertness and anxiety relaxation. Note how these characteristics are WELL represented in Pharmacies as Diet Pills, Tums, etc., pepper-upper pills and tons of tranquilizers. Nicotine is also a reliever of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's symptoms. A Pharmaceutical firm would be probably sued by its investors if it did not seek to capitalize on the up-coming Baby Boom generation of oldsters...with all their mental pathologies. Drug firms have a long despicable history of stealing natural plants from the public domain. Unimaginable that they don't do it here too.

So...let's see some of THIS in a Movie. Lets' see the 450 pesticides being applied to tobacco. Let's see the mining of the RADIOACTIVE phosphate tobacco fertilizers that put polonium into cigs and victims' lungs. Let's think of banning the poisonous contamination of consumer products before we think of banning depictions of uninformed USERS of the products in films. Let's also think of permanently banning ANY economic links between Public Officials who regulate consumer products and the entities who make and sell the products.

Some info to look into a lot of this...and links to other sites....at www.ktc.com/~bdrake. Check also www.pmdocs.org

(Pass this on...especially to those w/out computer access.)