Apparently the new-morality police in San Francisco has decided to prohibit pharmacies from selling cigarettes because they want to create a healthier population. Oh yeah? Then why is San Francisco at the top of the list of cities that promote and encourage homosexuality, which has been associated with premature death?

Anti-smoking measures are based on the belief that it's wrong to harm your own health, that of others and/or to be a burden on society's medical-care system, and many believe it is right to impose this value through government.

"The United States currently has more than 250,000 laws," writes Selwyn Duke, "and most of those enacted in recent times are the handiwork of leftists. They will mandate that people may not refuse to hire cross-dressers, that the Boy Scouts may not have access to public facilities, that religious symbols must not be in schools, and that employers must offer domestic-partner benefits, not to mention the tomes of regulations they have visited upon us. In their eyes, all legislation of morality is unequal, but some is less unequal than others."

The new ordinance will cover nearly 70 city pharmacies, including Walgreens, Rite-Aid and the few independently owned pharmacies that have not yet sworn off tobacco sales. “We don’t allow tobacco sales in hospitals, why should we allow them in pharmacies?” said Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Dr. Mitch Katz, director of the San Francisco Department of Health, said if the legislation works well in San Francisco, the city could pursue broader legislation in the future.

The bill specifically states that the F.D.A.’s new powers would stop short of the ability to order the elimination of nicotine from tobacco products or place an outright ban on all tobacco products. But the agency could reduce nicotine to nonaddictive levels. The F.D.A. could also require changes in tobacco products, like the reduction or elimination of other ingredients it chooses, such as a ban on flavored cigarettes that appeal to young people.

The bill was opposed by many Republicans who said they objected to expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and complained in particular that the F.D.A. was already unable to fulfill its work overseeing pharmaceuticals and food. Consider the FDA's recent wanton destruction of the tomato industry following the salmonella outbreak that sickened some 1,300 people in the U.S. and Canada.

"This is truly an historic day in the fight against tobacco," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the measure with Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.). "Regulating tobacco is the single most important thing that we can do right now to protect the public health of all Americans, especially our children."

There's that "for the children" argument again that Socialists in government love to use.

Representative John D. Dingell, said that it was hard to believe that the nanny state had not yet regulated the tobacco industry.

Proponents such as John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, hailed the approval as a historic and crucial step in the effort to control the private activities of American citizens. These anti-tobacco propagandists have thrived on slick marketing tactics and misleading the public about the harms of its products.

Enough is never enough for these globalists who want to control every aspect of our lives and drive our Constitutional Republic further into the annals of history.

Sunscreens do not offer blanket protection from the sun and do little to prevent the most deadly form of skin cancer; reliance on them instead of, say, a hat and protective clothing, might be contributing to skin cancer; and the Food and Drug Administration has yet to issue any safety standards, mysteriously sitting on a set of recommendations drafted 30 years ago.

The EWG also trashed any lotion containing harmful chemicals that can easily penetrate the skin. Oxybenzone, which blocks UVA, is a main offender. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found oxybenzone in the urine of just about everyone tested.

This chemical can promote DNA damage in the presence of sunlight. Oxybenzone and similar cancer-causing chemicals in sunscreens contribute to the minority view that sunscreens actually cause more and deadlier cancers than they prevent. Several small studies have found an increased risk of malignant melanoma, by far the deadliest form of skin cancer, among regular users of sunscreens.

Questionable product claims are widespread. Many products on the market bear claims that are considered "unacceptable" or misleading under FDA's draft sunscreen safety standards. Claims like "all day protection," "mild as water," and "blocks all harmful rays" are not true, yet are found on bottles. Until FDA sets an effective date for these standards, industry is free to use hyped claims. Companies' decisions to inflate claims has spurred class action lawsuits in California.

Source: Most Sunscreens Fail to Protect

Sunscreens are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways that the chemical industry and the government are failing to protect public health. An extensive body of scientific literature demonstrates that everyone in the world carries in their body hundreds if not thousands of industrial chemicals at any given moment, the result of exposures to contaminants in air, water, and food, and to ingredients in everyday consumer products.

No one understands the health implications of our exposures to complex mixtures of industrial compounds and pollutants: remarkably, federal health standards do not require companies to test most products for safety before they are sold, including nearly all chemicals in sunscreen and other personal care products. Little is known about the safety of most industrial chemicals. In the absence of data the federal government approves new chemicals for the market using computer models to predict if they are toxic to humans. This is concerning given that these pollutants cross the placenta, subjecting the developing fetus to hundreds of chemicals. A recent study conducted by EWG found an average of 200 chemicals in umbilical cord blood from 10 newborn babies. Two recent studies highlight widespread exposure to the common sunscreen chemical oxybenzone, and associate concentrations of this chemical in pregnant women to lower birthweight in their daughters (Calafat 2008, Wolff 2008).

People buy high-SPF sunscreens in advance of beach vacations or long days at the pool, assuming they've purchased products that maximize sun protection. High SPF ("Sun Protection Factor") products do protect you from sunburn, the well-known skin cancer precursor caused by the sun's UVB rays. But these products don't necessarily block UVA rays, the more deeply penetrating radiation linked to skin aging and wrinkling, immune system suppression, and possibly skin cancer.

Does Your Sunscreen Work?

The American Cancer Society estimates that secondhand smoke leads to as many as 40,000 deaths from heart disease and about 3,000 lung-cancer deaths in adults annually. Every year, secondhand smoke also causes between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia and bronchitis, in children younger than 18 months old. Those infections resulted in at least 7,500 admissions to hospitals, according to the organization's statistics.

Inland area part of worldwide study on secondhand smoke | Inland News | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California

Tags: second_hand_smoke, ets

State Senate Bill 346 would allow smoking inside some establishments, such as private clubs, outdoor areas and some family-operated businesses.

The bill's backers said bars and other establishments have seen a downturn in business since the ban took into effect last year.

Ohio Lawmakers Looking To Change Smoking Ban - Health News Story - WEWS Cleveland

An Omaha pool hall has joined the fight to stop Omaha's smoking ban.

Big John's Billiards filed a lawsuit asking a district court judge to overturn the smoking ban.

Attorneys for the business owners say the ordinance is unconstitutional because it gives an unfair advantage to businesses outside the city.

KPTM FOX 42: Omaha News, Sports and Weather; Nebraska News, Sports; kptm.com | Another Legal Challenge to Omaha's Smoking Ban

Tags: omaha, smoking ban

• Bullshit is the “you don’t have the right to force your [passive smoking] risks on people around you”, because there is no demonstrated risk from passive smoking exposure.
• Double Bullshit is that the “greatest cause of death and disease in our society is tobacco addiction”, for not even one death can be scientifically demonstrated to be caused by smoking, and the addiction theory is a farce.
• Bullshit is that a “smoke-free world is a better place”, for it is only a better place for those who hate smoking, but it is a far worse place for those who smoke. “Too bad on them”, say the selfish antismoking bastards.
• Fascist bullshit is the “government stepping in to establish whose right is to prevail”.

Penn and Teller said that these people “were born without the ability to detect bullshit”.

We believe that the pair were too kind at the time: The people who promote anti-tobacco hysteria were not only born with the ability "to speak it" they were born to produce it. They are fascists and con men extraordinaire. One must give credit where credit is due. Those who can't detect BS are victims of the fraud, just like smokers.

However, incompetence reigns everywhere and, later, Penn and Teller "admitted" that they were “wrong”, and that in effect, secondhand smoke kills” based on “new” (trash) “evidence from England”.

We call “Bullshit!” to that one! There is no “new evidence” that secondhand smoke is harmful: all the evidence available, regardless of its results, is utter epidemiological trash that does not deserve the name of science. Penn and Teller know that, but they clearly caved in to political pressures exerted directly on them and on their TV network by the antismoking bastards.

To use the language so dear to Penn and Teller, we can say that we liked them much better in their earlier version, where they were not so prone to kiss the ass of the professional charlatans of “public health” and cater to their rotten ideology.

Source: FORCES INTERNATIONAL

The measure will strengthen previous anti-smoking measures that bar Californians lighting up in many public places, including playgrounds, concert halls, restaurants, offices and some beaches.

The proposal, similar to a measure in Utah, is supported by the California Apartment Association, which represents about 50,000 property owners. But the Western Center on Law and Poverty argued that the proposal discriminates against the poor, the disabled and people of color, who smoke and rent at higher rates than other segments of the population.

On June 3rd., the Wichita City Council approved a city-wide smoking ban in a 4-3 vote. Mayor Carl Brewer, council members Lavonta Williams, Jeff Longwell and Sharon Fearey voted for it. Council members Sue Schlapp, Jim Skelton and Paul Gray voted against it.

Like the most famous anti-tobacco and anti-smoking advocate in the first half of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, the fascist Mayor Brewer, council members Lavonta Williams, Jeff Longwell and Sharon Fearey are more than happy to use their tyrannical powers to impose their will upon Wichita citizens.

• What gives non-smokers in our city the right to use the force of law to restrict the rights and freedoms of people who choose to smoke?
• Why does the govenment feel the need to intervene in our free market economy when the smoking issue has been taking care of itself over the past several years?
• If tobacco products are so harmful as social propagandists would have you believe, why don't they ban the product outright?

Freedom demands choice by business owner and customer. And, private property rights are best preserved when property owners are free to use their property as they see fit. Owners of bars, restaurants, and other businesses have, and should continue to have, the absolute right to permit or deny smoking on their property. They have for years been "voluntarily" regulating smoking and non-smoking in their businesses all over our city without the need for government mandated regulations, and without the need for government enforcement.

As I have argued before, smoking bans are NOT about public health…
they are about money, control, and jurisdiction.

Today's Anti-Smoking Hysteria has been engineered, funded, and very intentionally generated by powerful economic interests that stand to make zillions by making you and other smokers suffer hugely unfair punitive taxation, social ostracism, invasive and humiliating legal bans and social taboos, tax attacks, embarrassment, and psychological distress. The interests behind the hysteria are known today as the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex. They are the most powerful economic force on earth after the Military Industrial Complex and, perhaps, Big Oil. This blindly profit driven force has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into bogus junk science and international anti-smoking campaigns. They're doing this, of course, because they stand to make even larger amounts in the lucrative smoking cessation business.

The rise of the anti-smoking sentiment in America coincides with society's shift from accepting personal responsibility to attaching blame for just about everything on someone or something else other than where the true blame resides. Along with abandoning personal responsibility, "enlightened" Americans have renounced reason and truth and have handed over the control of their lives to a power hungry conglomerate of politicians, lawyers, judges, and quasi health professionals.

Unnecessary smoking bans criminalize people for choosing to use products that are completely legal. We don't need more laws intended to keep people safe from harms that they themselves can easily avoid, just by staying out of those places where people are smoking. For the people who value being in the smoky place more than they dislike the negative effects of the smoke, they can make that decision.

Charlie Claycomb, co-chair of the Tobacco Free Wichita coalition, asks why clean air is not a right when smoking is a right. The answer is that both clean air and smoking are rights that people may enjoy, as they wish, on their own property. When on the property of others, you may enjoy the rights that the property owner has decided on. Most intelligent people can quickly sense upon entering a bar or restaurant whether people are smoking. If they don't want to be around cigarette smoke, all they have to do is leave. No government regulation is needed: just leave. Likewise, employees may make the same decision. There are plenty of smoke-free places for people to work if they don't want to be around smoke.

It's long past time for freedom loving Americans to stand up and be counted.

• You should immediately STOP contributing your money to socialist special interest groups like the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association who stand in opposition to all that makes America good.
• You should immediately STOP eating at establishments that restrict your freedom. Next time you go to a restaurant where they tell you that you can't smoke… get up and LEAVE. Be sure to tell the manager why you're leaving and that you will not return until they restore your individual freedom of choice.
• You should DEMAND accountability of your elected city government representatives. Mayor Brewer, council members Lavonta Williams, Jeff Longwell and Sharon Fearey should be removed from office and people who truly believe in freedom should replace them.
• Perhaps there should be a public demonstration beginning on September 2nd. (the date the smoking ban ordinance goes into effect), where smokers and business owners defy the ban and stage mass smoke-ins. Sure, they may face fines — up to $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second in the same year and $500 for subsequent violations in the same year — if they are convicted, but since money is one of the primary motivators behind this ordinance, mass protests against this faschist regime could cost the city much more. The city's office of central inspection, environmental services department, police department, and other city departments could be overwhelmed by protestors causing massive additional work loads for city inspectors and enforcement agencies.
• Nanny state elitists like Charlie and Cindy Claycomb (co-chairs of the Tobacco Free Wichita coalition), Dr. Rick Kellerman (University of Kansas School of Medicine professor), and other anti-Americans should be shown the way to Wichita Mid-Continent airport where they can take the next flight out of Wichita to a more like-minded environment like China, Russia, or Iran where their collectivist ideas are embraced. Since they hate freedom so much, they should leave now.

This Wichita Smoking Ban is NOT About Public Health… It's About FREEDOM… and whether freedom is something worth fighting for.

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere." - Abraham Lincoln

"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." - Abraham Lincoln

In a 1998 article titled “Lies, Damned Lies, and 400,000 Smoking-related Deaths,” Levy and Marimont showed how removing diseases for which a link between smoking and mortality has been alleged but not proven cuts the hypothetical number of smoking-related fatalities in half. Replacing an unrealistically low death rate for never-smokers with the real fatality rate cuts the number by a third.

Controlling for “confounding factors”—such as the fact that smokers tend to exercise less, drink more, and accept high-risk jobs—reduces the estimated number of deaths by about half again. Instead of 400,000 smoking-related deaths a year, Levy and Marimont estimate the number to be around 100,000.

This would place the lifetime odds of dying from smoking at 6 to 1 (45 million smokers divided by 100,000 deaths per year x 75 years), rather than 3 to 1. However, about half (45 percent) of all smoking-related deaths occur at age 75 or higher. Calling these deaths “premature” is stretching common usage of the word. The odds of a life-long smoker dying prematurely of a smoking-related disease, then, are about 12 to 1.

Written By: Maureen Martin and Joseph L. Bast
Published In: Smoker's Lounge Issue Suite