Thursday, June 26, 2014
June 27, 2014 - Issue #762"[Lighting a cigarette] Well, I'm not here to impinge on anybody else's lifestyle. If I'm in a place where I know I'm going to harm somebody's health or somebody asks me to please not smoke, I just go outside and smoke. But I do resent the way the nonsmoking mentality has been imposed on the smoking minority. Because, first of all, in a democracy, minorities do have rights. And, second, the whole pitch about smoking has gone from being a health issue to a moral issue, and when they reduce something to a moral issue, it has no place in any kind of legislation, as far as I'm concerned." - Frank Zappa |
Another Ban Failed: Bullitt County, KY. The Kentucky Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a smoking ban approved three years ago by the Bullitt County Board of Health. The board exceeded its authority, the court said, so the ban is invalid. But the decision is not about health risks, the opinion states. It's about which governmental entity has the right to make a law. State law allows boards of health to adopt regulations "necessary to protect the health of the people," but the Supreme Court opinion says the law does not provide the power to "adopt any regulation relating to that broad field."
Obama Tobacco-Free but Still Chews Nicotine Gum, Doctor Says. Physician to the president Dr. Ronny L. Jackson says Obama's overall health is "excellent" and that "all clinical data indicates that the president is currently healthy and that he will remain so for the duration of his presidency," according to a memo released by the White House. The True Sin of Sin Taxes. The ironic truth hidden behind sin taxes is a particularly ugly one. If taxes are raised on such sinful products, no champion of any standing will rise to oppose them. Indonesia Refuses to Sign Tobacco Control Convention. The president also refused to sign FCTC as there is still no unanimity among the government agencies on the FCTC, he said on the sideline of his visit to the Barito cigarette factory in the village of Gondosari, sub-district of Gebog, Kudus, together with a group of legislators from the Commission VI of the House of Representatives. "Clove flavored cigarette industry is a heritage that has to be protected," he said. UK Nottingham cigarette factory closure threatens more than 500 jobs. Ten years ago, Imperial employed 1,000 people in Nottingham. Unite's national officer, Rhys McCarthy, said: "This is shocking news that will have a devastating impact on not only hundreds of workers and their families, but also on the local community. It's another nail in the coffin for UK manufacturing and a loss of revenue for the exchequer." Why doctors are now warning that sitting is the new smoking. With most of us now spending nine hours a day sitting down, Warren Manger looks at how our sedentary modern lifestyle is fast becoming a ticking health timebomb. Are you sitting comfortably? You might not be by the time you finish reading this, because spending too much time perched on your posterior could be seriously damaging your health. 
Gateway Hypothesis for Electronic Cigarettes All But Destroyed: Data Show Youth Smoking at All-Time Low. By Dr. Michael Siegel. Read: The Rest of the Story.
CASAA Update. Watch two new CASAA PSA Videos. Electronic cigarettes: time for an accurate and evidence-based debate. Evidence is urgently needed to inform the debate regarding the impact of electronic cigarettes on public health as national and international legislation moves forward. Current research and commentaries on electronic cigarettes/electronic nicotine delivery devices (referred to here as e-cigarettes) vary widely in quality, accuracy and objectivity. While these issues are not limited to the research community, we believe that researchers need to demonstrate better scholarship in this area. We illustrate our concerns with three examples below. The WHO Attempts To Censor Websites. By Dick Puddlecote. As well as being entirely unelected, it appears that the World Health Organisation also doesn't care much for openness and transparency. They are not happy with minutes which mention that the WHO views e-cigarettes as a threat - and which prompted a much-reported recent letter to the WHO by over 50 health professionals - reaching the internet, so are doing their best to make the document disappear. Wales e-Petition: We call upon the Welsh Government not to proceed with their proposed ban on the use of e-cigarettes in enclosed public spaces, substantially enclosed public places, and places of work in Wales. This proposal, if implemented, can only lead to fewer people using e-cigarettes and more people smoking cigarettes. |
Watch the music video fromThe United States of America: Foo Fighters - The Pretender A visually stunning video, complete with a red blood bath exploding wall, for freedom loving non-sheeple people. "What if I say I will never surrender?" Watch the music video from Ireland: Damian McGinty and Celtic Thunder A Place in the Choir "All God's creatures got a place in the choir - Some sing low and some sing higher..." |
Thursday, June 19, 2014
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June 20, 2014 - Issue #761 "Better a smoking freedom than a non-smoking tyranny" - Antonio Martino, Italiaanse Minister van Defensie |
CA: Ventura Update. These same organizations took business owners rights away when they banned smoking in bars and restaurants and now they want to ban the smokers from the street corners where they were forced to flee. Please, I beg of you to think of the well being of the downtown business owners, patrons and employees who may not have heard or have the time to respond to this preposterous proposal.
MA: Cambridge Citizens for Smokers' Rights. The Cambridge City Council voted to send a proposed broad new smoking restrictions to its Ordinance Committee to make a final vote. NY: Burn One Down. Smokers Triumph as Smoking Ban Goes Down At UWS Condo. After a protracted battle with the condo board, residents opposed to a proposed smoking ban triumphed with a vote on the issue earlier this week. 
U.S. lawmakers urge ban on e-cigarettes on airplanes. E-cigarette use should be banned on domestic flights and those to or from the United States, seven U.S. senators said on Tuesday in a letter urging the Department of Transportation to finalize rules proposed almost three years ago.
Glantz writes to the World Health Organization: The following letter, signed by 129 public health and medical experts from 31 countries, representing every WHO region, was delivered to WHO Director General Margaret Chan earlier today. One-on-One with Mitch Zeller. Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Watch - A Special Warner Series on FDA Regulation of Tobacco Products. CASAA Update. Third Call to Action for FDA Proposed Regulations - Demand Congressional Hearings Investigating FDA and CDC's Actions. Vapingpoint Liz. Most ordinary people don't care whether smokers smoke or vapers vape. It was ever only an issue with those who found they could earn a damn good living with a job in the new persecution promoting industry of Tobacco Control - all for the good of humanity and especially the children. I am sure, in the beginning, the motive was pure, but it is now a "business." 
Australia and UK: Health campaigners are being targeted with abusive, four letter emails and Twitter rants from a 'bizarre' online cult who oppose their stance on electronic smoking. He said he 'had no idea that the e-cigarette lobby was so well organised.' The e-cigarette 'lobby'? Well organised? What planet are these people from? These are ordinary people venting their hate on people who have built their careers on hating whole swathes of the population at once. What you give is what you get, and here it comes, Righteous.
Australia: National Preventative Health Agency. Federal Member for Dawson George Christensen speaks in support of the abolition of the Australian National Preventative Health Agency, which he says is an apparatus of the "nanny state." Nigeria: One product, multiple laws. The Federal Government is planning to introduce a new bill on tobacco regulation in the country. The bills planned to introduce punishment of up to N50, 000 for violators, jail others for up to six months, further restrict the sale and use of tobacco and ban all form of advertisement of the product among others. |
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Watch the music video from Russia: Big Difference Patiently, I Keep On Going Watch the music video from Bosnia: Emir Kusturica No Smoking Orchestra Unza Unza Time On the planet earth - There was no more fun... |
Thursday, June 12, 2014
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June 13, 2014 - Issue #760 "Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily." - Thomas S. Szasz |
This kid is fat. (According to the City of New York) Gwendolyn Williams is a pencil-thin, bubbly 9-year-old who is a perfectly healthy third-grader. But according to city bureaucrats, she's practically obese. "Fat-shaming," experts called the practice on Thursday, criticizing both the fallibility of BMI calculations and the mental-health effects of kids being graded on their size.
Bulletproof Blankets. Bodyguard Blanket the latest bulletproof product to protect US students during school shootings. The Bodyguard Blanket, which costs $1000, is the latest body armour product targeted at school students in the United States, where parents and schools can already buy bulletproof jackets, backpacks, and whiteboards. No Sunscreen Allowed at School. "Kids could drink it." Our country has grown delusional creative when it comes to thinking up new child dangers to be worried about. The latest involves a San Antonio, TX, school where kids were going on a field trip, but forbidden to bring sunscreen, which the school classifies as both a "medication" and "toxic." As usual, the real danger is looking at ordinary, safe, 2014 life through the Kaleidoscope of Death. But many school administrators seem to find this irresistible. Ontario School Nannies. School says no to canoeing, kayaking or archery, then cancels Grade 8 grad camping trip. Staff and Grade 8 students at an inner-city Toronto school were looking forward to the three-day graduation trip to an idyllic nature camp in Eastern Ontario - until they were informed they couldn't canoe, kayak or try archery. And swimming, rope activities and campfires? Only if "sufficient proof of safety" was provided ahead of time, along with "a script of safety routines and insurance in case of injuries." With the requested documentation and swim tests near-impossible to complete before kids were to leave June 10, the trip fell to pieces, staff say. Stop helicopter-parenting other people's kids. We've reached the point where parenting "mistakes" are being reported to the cops. A blog that argues against helicopter parenting, posted a story of cops being called on parents whose children were simply playing outside, unsupervised. The same site recently reported about a father who made his son walk one mile home while he thought about some misbehavior, which resulted in the father being given a one-year probation. The judge cited the mere existence of child predators as a reason for the verdict. It's an odd way to "help" a child who is unsupervised for five minutes to potentially inflict years of stress, hours of court appearances, and potential legal fees and fines on their parents. What is wrong with these tattlers? Using the tobacco fear to police our lives. Sugar, food, sunshine, sitting down - everything fun is now labelled 'the new tobacco'. What these promiscuous comparisons with tobacco show is just how fearful we have become of even the most trivial health or environmental threat, with academics, campaigners and politicians all willing to play on that fear to further their own ends. Chapstistics! I'm not sure what is most astonishing; that Chapman expects nobody to question this methodology, or that he even thought of it in the first place. Either way, to present data in this fashion is nothing short of shocking. Not to mention thoroughly unprofessional and downright dishonest. Dual use of ecigarettes and cigarettes. We therefore know that dual-use is a very good thing: it leads to reduction in smoking, smoking cessation, and total cessation. All these are a positive for the individual since (a) all have health benefits, and (b) they are voluntary and self-motivated positive choices, whichever is chosen. Australia: Plain Packaging. Libs are going to have a crack at repealing the plain packaging laws. On top of that they are also going to roll back other nanny state laws. UK: Plain Packaging. Bob Blackman MP - just another ASH clone. |
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Watch the Video - Frank Turner - Sons of Liberty Stand up sons of liberty, and fight for what you own - Stand up sons of liberty, and fight, fight for your homes - So if ever a man should ask you for your business or your name - Tell him to go and f* himself, tell his friends to do the same - 'Cause a man who'd trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep - Doesn't deserve the both of them and neither shall he keep. |
Thursday, June 05, 2014
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June 6, 2014 - Issue #759 "The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." - Winston Churchill |
EU's Chief Scientific Advisor Says Eurocrats Twist Evidence, Distort Facts to Suit Political Imperative. Prof Anne Glover, appointed in 2011 to provide the European Commission with independent scientific advice, said in a speech in Brussels that political manoeuvring over evidence has reached into "countless examples" of EU policy, including on the safety of nanoparticles, the impact of biofuels on food prices and chemical substances with hormone-disrupting effects. She said she found it difficult to disentangle the commission's evidence-gathering processes from what she calls the "political imperative" that is behind them.
Glantz finally loses his mind. I can tell you now, any move on his part against any one of those great institutions will be answered by an attack on Stan's favorite cookie jar. He won't like that. The house of cards is beginning to fall apart. McKee is fully in the throes of self destruction. Hastings is moving further off the reservation with each and every single thing he has to say. And now Glantz has descended into what can, surely, only be self parody. The desperation that is born of exposure is driving them to ever greater heights of insanity and foam mouthed accusation.
UK: Poo Sticks. By Dick Puddlecote. Public health researchers say the Government's next step after introducing plain packaging for tobacco should be to make cigarettes ugly by changing them to a dark green or brown colour which made young people think of "slime, vomit or pooh". A tobacco control lobby group told a parliamentary committee that cigarettes themselves were the "new canvas" for anti-smoking initiatives. plain white is seductive and therefore evil and must be changed to pea, ash, tan or sand colour ... which are good.
Popularity of e-cigs expected to surpass that of traditional cigarettes: "Those individuals just want a taste and a feel that is as close to a traditional cigarette as they can get," Hardy said. "I've tried the nicotine replacement therapy, the prescription medicine, the patch, and nothing has worked," Barker said. "From what I'm sensing so far, I think not only will I be able to cut down on my nicotine consumption, but end it and eventually quit cigarettes altogether."
USA: Multiple measures fail due to adjournment of state legislatures... MN, AL, IA, KY, LA, MD, MD, MS, NC. While several state legislatures meet year round, the vast majority of state legislative sessions will be adjourned by June 30. GA: Augusta will work on new smoking law. For the third time in the last three years, supporters of a smokefree workplace law approached the commission about passing it. Augusta is under a statewide law that bans smoking in places like restaurants where there could be children, but allows it in places that don't admit anyone under age 18, which includes bars. MA: Hingham: Should you be 21 to buy tobacco products? "Changing the age would help eliminate that supply route," Hingham Health Agent Bruce Capman said. "[The premise is that] young people 21 and older would be more mature and less likely to sell tobacco products to minors." NV: Las Vegas Macau bans smoking on floors. Macau's six casino operators - including MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. So with the world's largest gaming market by revenue going smoke-free, will Strip casinos ever embrace a full-scale smoking ban? Gaming insiders laugh at that notion. Any change in attitude toward smoking would defy the "do anything" mantra that is Las Vegas. NY: Raises minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21. The measure - unprecedented among America's big cities - raises the legal age to buy cigarettes from 18. It also applies to other forms of tobacco and to e-cigarettes. TX: San Marcos cracks down on smoking in public, 'E-Cigs' included. Ray says she hopes more studies can be done to prove the benefits of e-cigarettes but in her opinion, smoke and vapor couldn't be more different. She's hoping the city will someday see that. |
Australia: Smokers flout ban in Perth city malls. "But there should be designated smoking in the alleyways," she said. "People work here, they don't want to walk all that way to have a smoke. "It's ridiculous given they can sell cigarettes [in the malls] but we can't smoke them." David Bullpit, 67, said he had been smoking for 30 years and giving up now would be hard. "It's a free country, isn't it?" he said.
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