Environmentalists, Others, LOSE Big Time by "Smoking" Bans

international | environment | opinion/analysis Thursday October 23, 2003 22:00 by Watchdog

Beware the "Pretend Enemy" tactic.

The same corporate establishment that clearcuts the forests, pollutes air and water and food, paves open spaces, violates work safety laws, creates "FrankenFood" and so forth, pushes "no smoking". There is a LOT wrong with this picture.

(Some parts may be U.S. specific, but...)

A list of links to documentation about the Hidden Side of the "smoking" issue was posted at:
http://boston.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=17161

Unfortunately, the list does not seem to have made its way to legislators who have plowed ahead to SERVE "Big Tobacco" (yes) and the rest of the cigarette cartel by pushing the indoor "smoking ban". The old Pretend Enemy ploy rides again.

Big Cig, the supposed enemy, is served enormously. Legislation doesn't even acknowledge that the "smoke" they address has not yet been analyzed or described for content. Big Cig happily evades disclosure of its many toxic, carcinogenic, burn-accelerating, kid-appealling, and addiction-enhancing non-tobacco cigarette ingredients.

Legislators go as far as to MAINTAIN the advertising lie that typical cigarettes are just tobacco even though some products may legally contain no tobacco at all. How "tobacco smoke" or "ETS" (2nd hand tobacco smoke) can possibly come from something that doesn't contain tobacco is either a water-into-wine miracle, or impossible.
U.S. patents abound for processes to make "tobacco substitute material" out of industrial waste cellulose. Many patents are from Philip Morris. No WONDER they don't want any Ingredients Listing.

Of course, all the ingredients suppliers are happy that they are not implicated, charged or even QUESTIONED about their part in the industry. Big Pesticides (i.e., Oil and Pharms), for one, does not care to be linked to the most demonized product on the market.
All of the cartel's insurers and investors are, understandably, happy that they don't have to face disclosure, embarrassment, liabilities and profit loss by way of any talk of ingredients.

So...besides the secretly victimized smokers, and bar/restaurant owners who are being hit with laws to address a problem NOT of their creation...there are many who lose by this grossly fraudulent, distracting, scapegoating, and scientifically baseless "smoking" ban. Yeah...who wants smoke in their hair, but...for the tiny crumb of getting fresh smelling hair, a pile of important things are sacrificed, including justice itself.
Some losers are:

ENVIRONMENTALISTS...lose a golden chance to legitimately discredit the pesticide and chlorine industries that have done more damage to the planet than all the nuclear weapons and bombs combined. There are hundreds of pesticides registered for tobacco use. See the link above for info about lax gov't regulation of Pesticide residues on tobacco.
Big Oil is PART AND PARCEL of Big Cig via these pesticides. Their product's emissions do not just go into cars, and then into our lungs, they go into typical cigarettes (which THEY call "tobacco") and then into our lungs. Can't blame a natural plant for THAT. But legislators, collecting money from the petrochem biz, do prefer to blame tobacco.
Enviros fight the Genetically Modified crop industry...yet GM stuff, tobacco, spices and who knows what other crop products, has been added to cigs for a while. So...though the GM folks are PART of Big Cig, their credibility about "safety" concerns is not challenged. Further, GM producers like Monsanto make pesticides as well. How many show up as residues in typical cigs? That Marlboro cowboy may have more ROUNDUP involvements than he thought.
Agribusinesses, putting small farms out of business, dumping pesticides and radioactive phosphate fertilizers all over the map, contribute MANY non-tobacco agricultural cig ingredients. See the list at the link above. If these suppliers are Con-Agra, ADM, Cargil and the like, ought they not be brought in to TESTIFY about their part in Big Cig, and their part in making the smoke from typical cigs so toxic?
Enviros know that Big Sugar is one of the worst environmentally damaging industries. Wall Street Journal noted that a Marlboro contains a whopping 12.3% sugar. No wonder kids like them. Why anyone likes Big Sugar enough to not question the industry about its cig connection is a mystery. This "sugar" MAY be also corn and beet sugars...but that would just spread the indictment to the Ag-Biz firms as well.
Where does that chlorine bleached cig paper COME from? Ultimately, from logging, from the dioxin-belching paper pulp industry. No enviros, yet, have inquired into which logging/pulp/paper firms not-so-proudly supply dioxin-delivering paper to the cig biz.

It is very troubling that all these industries are allowed to get away with secretly poisoning millions of unsuspecting consumers...but the victims, who are STILL TOLD they are just using tobacco, will face fines and arrest for "smoking".
It is, in a way, MORE troubling that environmentalists...who oppose so many parts of the cig industry, refuse to publicize or address the matter.

Other interests lose in "smoke ban" cases:

CAMPAIGN FINANCE ACTIVISTS: Were it not for massive corruption of our regulatory system by Big Cig, all the cig ingredients' suppliers, and all their advertisers, insurers and investors, we may have had just plain, organic cigarettes all along...with the resultant less smoking and the inevitably lower, perhaps SIGNIFICANTLY lower, health problems...if any. How many "anti-smoking" Mass. legislators do NOT accept funding, or investment benefits, from parts of the cigarette cartel? Check for petrochemicals, pharms and insurance links.

HEALTH CARE/SINGLE PAYER ACTIVISTS...need only point out the information about top health insurers being multi-million dollar investors in (owners OF) top cigarette manufacturers. If activists demanded that insurers be absolutely clean of health DAMAGING insurance business and investment, there may likely BE no insurance industry to block a Single Payer system. If health insurers insure and invest in OTHER health damaging industries...bombs, nukes, pesticides, oil, chlorine, toxic waste, etc...all the better to know.

ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS...hey....that's Big Oil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in tobacco pesticides. We don't see Exxon/Mobil or Shell logos on cigarette packs, or warnings that say "WARNING: Contains Dioxin-Delivering Petroleum Residues!" but...we should.

MEDIA CRITICS...might note that more lies, distortions, and omissions show up in "smoking" articles and columns than in probably ANY other topic area. If reporters even absurdly refer to "tobacco manufacturers" (God? Mother Nature?), no critics say anything. If media talk about "chemicals in cigarettes", media critics don't ask if that means ADDED non-tobacco substances, or the natural chemicals that might be in any plant.

ORGANICS ACTIVISTS..., a branch of environmentalism, of course, fail to embarrass or indict the NON-ORGANICS industries for their part in cigs.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS...lose a chance to protect and defend the Constitutional right to DUE PROCESS, for one, in that judges and jurors in "smoking" cases are not asked to recuse themselves if they have economic links to the broad cigarette cartel (incl. Insurers, Pharms, etc.) or if they have religious bias against "smoking".

NATIVE AMERICANS...are having a traditionally-used plant taken from them by increasingly restrictive laws. Tobacco has been used for about 10,000 years for religious, medical (yes), cultural, agricultural and economic purposes. Unless actions are taken, the tobacco plant may end up as a
"controlled substance", for exclusive use by pharmaceuticals who crave the public-domain nicotine more than the heaviest smoker.

LABOR ACTIVISTS...havn't yet noted that many diseases that are linked to toxic/carcinogenic substances in the workplace are being described as "smoking related" if a worker also happens to smoke. This is widespread. It's theft of evidence of work safety violations by management, and it's an evasion of compensation responsibilities. The word "smoking" has no place in science or medicine UNLESS it's clear WHAT is being smoked. If it's just tobacco, that's one thing; if it's a virtual mini-toxic waste incinerator, as most cigarettes are, that is QUITE another.

ANTI-DRUG WAR ACTIVISTS...lose big time. The same industries that created, and still promote, the prohibition of cannabis (marijuana & hemp) are the ones here attempting to evade liabilities and prosecution.
Hemp was outlawed, largely, because it presented a big competitive threat to chlorine/petrochemical products... fabrics, building materials, plastics, fuels, lubricants etc...AND it threatened pesticides because hemp doesn't NEED pesticides.
So here, with the "smoking" deal, we have the old "Reefer madness" cartel creating Tobacco Madness....with the same corrupted "science" used to outlaw cannabis.

One reason, besides massive global media propaganda, that this "smoking" crusade is so successful is that, cleverly, it taps into our extensive hatred of the Corporatocracy, the industries that have robbed and poisoned us for so long. We have been convinced that we are "beating up" on a big bad corporation, so-called (SELF-called) "Big Tobacco".
We are not. We are beating up ourselves