[Though this was written in response to an indoor "smoking" ban threatening Massachussets, it applies to the U.K. and every place where this "wholesome" crusade has landed. Make a copy for local Pub or Restaurant owners.]
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A crime is a crime, an injustice an injustice, and a lie a lie...whether one cares about smokers, smoking, "fresh air" in bars, or not.

Here's a few points that just might cast an unflattering light on "anti-smoking" crusaders in government or in "grassroots" groups. These "concerned" folks do more to protect and defend their supposed enemy, the cigarette industry, than can be imagined.

What IS the cigarette industry? It is: tobacco growers, manufacturers of about 400 pesticides still registered for tobacco use, top oil firms that make tobacco pesticides, top pharmaceutical firms that make not only pesticides but cigarette ingredients, top Agri-Business conglomerates that contribute many (untested) non-tobacco agricultural ingredients, Paper/logging/pulp industries that make the chlorine bleached cig paper, adhesives (to glue the paper and filters, chemical firms that supply burn-accelerants (factor in untold thousands of deaths, etc.), chem firms that supply ammonia (to be mixed with CHLORINE?!)and formaldehyde and who knows WHAT else, big sugar (12.3% of a Marlboro, for starters), a heap of advertisers who lied for decades about these products being just tobacco, ALL of their insurers and all of their investors. This assortment of international gangsters prefers to be called "Big Tobacco", and the World Health Organization, government officials, and others go along with it.

This is so far from being about just TOBACCO, as we are told, that it's beyond ridiculous. It's into the stratosphere of a massive evasion of liabilities for all the complicit parties...INCLUDING the cigarette makers themselves who are condemned...slapped on the wrist..JUST for selling tobacco. They don't sell tobacco, and haven't for many years...even decades. They sell SPIKED, dioxin-delivering, radiation-delivering, addiction-ehhanced, fire-causing tobacco-BASED concoctions..or cigarettes made entirely without tobacco, made with chlorine-contaminated industrial waste cellulose made in many U.S. Patented ways.

* For just SOME of what a typical (non-organic) cigarette may contain, besides tobacco...IF the cigarette contains tobacco, see:
>  http://tobaccodocuments.org/profiles/additives/ <

* It's being said that bar/restaurant owners are not harmed economically by bans on smoking and that they do betterw/out smokers. If that is true, bar/restaurant owners would have banned smoking years ago.

* Workers in such places have been ignored for decades...utterly unwarned and uninformed about, and unprotected from the known deadly parts of typical cigarettes and their smoke. They are not offered and have not been offered tests for dioxin body burden levels (from the chlorine-sourced dioxin in cig smoke) nor offered tests for cell damage from radiation in cigarettes from those (still legal)uranium- contaminated phosphate tobacco fertilizers. Now, they are not offered compensation for exposures to these things...keeping in mind that neither they NOR patrons were responsible for this cig contamination, NOR was anyone told about it. Do we REALLY believe that corporate serving officials suddenly now care about workers' well-being?

* Though this is said to be about "tobacco"...not ONE study of harms of tobacco (itself, w/out adulterants) has been introduced to courts or legislatures. How can there be any legitimate law written about something that hasn't yet been even investigated or indicted? Sure, there's tons of "studies" about "cigarettes"...but not one of them describes the cigarette or presents analysis of contents, no matter how deadly.

* Burdens of law, and expenses, are being dumped on VICTIMS (including bar/restaurant workers and proprietors and the like)..while the perpetrators, represented by Gov't "Anti Smoking" officials, are not even compelled to reveal non-tobacco ingredients, not asked to prove safety of these adulterants, and are not even brought in for questioning ABOUT their ingredients.

* "Smoking" is a meaningless term UNLESS it's clear what is being smoked. It's like "eating". There's a big difference between eating oatmeal...or eating broken glass and old razor blades. Science, medicine AND LAW require such distinctions.

* "Anti-smoking" officials are the very ones who, for years, accepted campaign funds from cig industry members, enjoyed tax revenues from hoodwinked and poisoned smokers, ignored even public information about rads and dioxins in typical cigarettes, allowed cigarettes with added Burn Accelerants to be sold, allowed addiction-enhancing additives in the products (while they SAID they opposed addiction), accepted jobs from members of this cartel...and who now, seeing the harms and costs they caused, claim to be "concerned" "anti-smokers". The hypocrisy...the evasion of responsibility...is breathtaking.

Public records show Campaign Contributions to public officials. Check them out. Look for insurers, like Prudential, Cigna, Met Life, Travelers, and others that have been outed (JAMA and The Lancet, etc) for being OWNERS of multi-million dollar investments in CIGARETTE MANUFACTURING ! Look for oil/pesticides firms. Check for Pharms that may supply tobacco pesticides and cig ingredients. Look for the likes of Occidental...a top supplier of phosphate fertilizers. Look for investment/banking firms that may be linked to any of these. Look for even CANDY COMPANIES that may supply chocolate, cocoa, peppermint, vanilla and etc to cig firms...to all the better attract those kids.
Bar and Restaurant owners and many others, including the traditionally-used tobacco plant, are taking the rap for one of the most long-lasting, multi-homicide corporate crimes ever.

For a thorough overview of the story...as NOT found in any corporate media, see:  http://www.ktc.com/~bdrake Many links to other sites. Do a Google search for "tobacco pesticides" for some goodies too.

Finally, for now...the Dioxin Rap: Please consider calling typical cigs "Dioxin Dowels" instead of the insubstantial "coffin nails". Or call them "Pesticide Pegs"...for that tells the truth.

Not long ago the U.S. finally declared dioxin to be a KNOWN Human Carcinogen. In mid 90s, the U.S. EPA admitted that dioxin is "not likely" in nature (like in tobacco plants, etc.). The EPA (no radical enviro group, for sure) said that dioxin is "anthropogenic"...Man-Made. Despite some "dioxin-like" things that are rarely found, dioxin is a by-product of Dow-invented CHLORINE. Outside of oil, chlorine is the 'life blood' of many of the worst environmentally destructive, health damaging industries like oil, plastics, pesticides, synthetics, pharmaceuticals and so forth. It's the deadly part of Agent Orange, Love Canal and Times Beach and elsewhere.

Dioxin is "honored" as being one of the "Dirty Dozen" Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) slated for a GLOBAL Phase-out as per a multi-country treaty in Stockholm. Even the U.S. signed...because it could not say that dioxin wasn't worthy of this action. (U.S. gov't knows, however, that no chlorine-drenched U.S. Congress member would RATIFY the treaty so...wink wink...empty gesture.)
BUT...with the Known Carcinogen designation, AND the POPs Treaty...we have a situation where there is NO EXCUSE whatever for still tolerating chlorine adulterants in cigrettes and, therefore, dioxin (in HIGH levels) in cigarette smoke. This gov't has ignored it's OWN evidence...and cannot claim that they "didn't know" or that it's not their, and industry's, responsibility.
Is it tobacco's fault, or a smoker's fault, that a bartender or restaurant waiter got sick?...or is it the fault of those who STILL permit dioxin in cigarette smoke?...with no warning...with not a cent in compensation offered to victims.

So here's just a little science info [below] that will come in handy if some plan to challenge the smoking bans...or if some care to challenge those who deceived them, secretly endangered them and poisoned them (and perhaps killed their friends, family members and fellow workers) for so long.

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Just twenty typical (chlorine-contaminated) cigarettes exposes an unwitting consumer to over SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTEEN times the established minimum intake for dioxins! (4.3 divided by 0.006 = 716.66)
If chlorine/dioxin was rightly blamed for its part in so-called "smoking" problems, some powerful and notorious industies would be upset, to say the least. Their solution? Blame tobacco, the plant material their chlorine elements contaminate.
Action by gov't? IGNORE the chlorine-bleached paper, chlorine pesticide residues, and the other chlorine adulterants IN typical cigarettes...don't tell anyone about them...and "crack down" on the victims.

 http://www.gascape.org/index%20/Health%20effects%20of%20Dioxins.html
HEALTH EFFECTS OF DIOXINS [excerpt]
........In the USA, a very low minimum risk intake was set for 2,3,7,8-TCDD, on the basis of cancer incidence in a large experiment on rats (Kociba, 1978). This limit has remained at 0.006 pg/kg bw/day until the present. It was based on the assumption that dioxin caused cancer in the same way as radioactivity: i.e. just one molecule on the DNA could have an effect, leaving no safe level, only a level which can be predicted to cause a certain risk of cancer. The US EPA has a standard risk, deemed tolerable, of one in a million over a 70 year lifetime, and this was used to set the limit. Since most people take in far more than 0.006 pg/kg bw/day, enforcement of this limit would have huge implications for the industries producing dioxins. So scientists have been employed to produce arguments against the EPA. A committee re-examined the Kociba slides and reclassified some of the tumours as benign. Millions of dollars were poured into investigations into the mechanism of dioxin. These have increased our knowledge but they have not established definitely whether or not dioxin causes severe health problems in human beings.
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***** Dioxins in Cigarette Smoke *****

Copy of an abstract from US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Ga.

Authors: H. Muto, Y. Takazawa
Title: Dioxins in Cigarette Smoke
From: Archives of Environmental Health, Pg. 44 (3); 171-4
Date: May/June 1989

Abstract:

Dioxins in cigarettes, smoke, and ash were determined using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The total concentration of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) in cigarette smoke was approximately 5.0 micrograms/m3 at the maximum level, whereas various cogeners from tetra-octa-chlorodibenzo-p-dioxin ( -CDD) were detected. Particularly, the total concetration of hepta-CDD cogeners was the highest among these cogeners. Mass fragmentograms of various PCDD cogeners were similar to those in flue gas samples collected from a municipal waste incinerator. The PCDD cogeners that were not present in the cigarettes were found in the smoke samples, the 2, 3, 7,8-TCDD toxic equivalent value---an index for effects on humans---for total PCDDs in smoke was 1.81nng/m3 using the toxic factor of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Daily intake of PCDDs by smoking 20 cigarettes was estimated to be approximately 4.3 pg. kg body/weight/day. This value was close to that of the ADIs; 1-5 pg kg body/weight/day reported in several countries. A heretofore unrecognized health risk was represented by the presence of PCDDs in cigarette smoke.
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(Remember...dioxins are NOT from tobacco...just chlorine. Too bad this study doesn't mention that...but...there it is.)

( Incidentally, this study was cited by the EPA in it's "Dioxin reassessment", and by Lois Gibbs in her book "Dying From Dioxin". It has not, apparently, come to the attention of the Massachussets legislature...or Mass. media...or even "anti-smoking" crusaders like Boston's, "Infact" group. One wonders why. )

Tobacco Cannot Commit a Crime...but Industries Can and Do.