Let's stop the feigned ignorance of the effects of the War on Smokers. These are not isolated examples; they are common and they are the result of a decades-long, taxpayer-financed, state-sponsored crusade in which professional activists are paid to promote intolerance and hate. Read them and be informed about what is visited upon one in four Americans. It is, of course, only a partial listing and could go on... and on... and on... Many important
points - such as the their insupportable case against secondhand smoke - are not included, but that would have necessitated doubling or tripling the space needed.
(What follows is the work of a believer in truth and freedom who shall remain nameless. It is not pleasant reading but is worthwhile reading in the sense that it speaks truths often ignored, denied or laughed at by the fanatical crusaders of the anti-smoking brigade.)
* Nutshell Tavern, Rte 1, Biddeford, Maine closes its doors due to smoking bans
* Mingles Coffee Shoppe, Kitchener, closes after non-smoking bylaw passed--45% drop in business
* Twelve restaurants close in Brookline, MA, after smoking ban decimates business
* In British Columbia, 200 workers in 46 establishments have lost their jobs because of the smoking ban
* Hotelier Don Ritaller, Victoria, fired his entire staff of 12
* J. P. Malone's Pub in Richmond, laid off eight of its 20 employees
* Clyde's Restaurant Group, one of the most popular and successful restaurants chains in the Washington DC area since 1963, suffered a staggering loss of sales after smoking was banned
* A survey of 300 alcoholic beverage serving operations in California, selected at random from a list of 7,216 shows that 60% experienced a decrease in business averaging more than 30%; 7% showed increased business averaging 8%.
* 50.4% of the respondents indicated an increase in customer complaints/fights;
* 65.0% indicated a loss of regular customers;
* 59.0% indicated a loss of tips/gratuities for the bar and/or serving staff.
* The Duluth Grill has closed after 16 years due to the smoking ban
* 130 tobacconists in California have been forced to close since the 1998 smoking bans and punitive tax increases
* On average, sales at local bars, taverns and pubs have dropped nearly 30 percent since the enactment of the ban CA
* Thousands of employees have had their hours cut, and hundreds have lost their jobs because of the loss of the smoking customers who form a majority of their customer base
* A recent study from British Columbia pointed out major economic and job losses after a provincial smoking ban took effect in January: After 80 days of the bylaw, 730 employees were let go, 9 businesses closed and more than $16 million was lost
* A blind newsstand worker hired under a federal job program for blind people has been fired after selling cigarettes to a minor during a sting operation. Mike Redina, 44, was working at the Small Change newsstand at a state office building last week when he sold a pack of cigarettes to a 16-year-old sent in by the Suffolk County Health Department.
* Letter from a waitress in BC: "My livelihood is being jeopardized for
my own protection, and I never asked to be saved.
* Three more restaurants have closed in Weymouth, MA: Haijjar’s, in
East Weymouth, J.C. Grear’s in South Weymouth
and the Aloha in Hingham. A fourth restaurant said business is way
off.
* Corvallis, OR: Employment at the Peacock has dropped from 50 to
14. Owner John Carter says the business has lost 38 percent of its
lottery income and more than half of its basic bar revenue since the
law took effect State records support Carter's lament about lost
business.
* Bud's Place in Cambridge and said his sales have fallen 23 per cent
since the smoking ban was implemented. His staff has
shrunk to 12 from 17 and a full-time employee he's had on staff for
10 years has been cut back to three shifts a week
DOMESTIC TERRORISM--Paid for by the victims and condoned by our government
* Action On Smoking And Health (ASH) promotes a book, Gasp! A
Novel of Revenge, on its web site which contains a tested and
proven way to tamper with cigarette packages to insert cyanide.
* Four incidents of tobacco product tampering in Virginia, including
the use of explosive devices, was reported by the
Washington Post.
QUOTES FROM THE CRUSADE AGAINST SMOKERS No doubt many
among the paid professional anti-smokers agree with these verbal
assaults since many have said similar things.
* In October of 1991 Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr.
Louis P. Sullivan, labeled smokers and smoking "Public Enemy No. 1."
* Miami--A man attacked a woman for smoking inside a building.
America Mena, 30, was standing at the north side exit door on the
third floor of the building smoking a cigarette when a man in his 50s
came up to her and started screaming at her about smoking. He then
pushed her outside of the exit door and attempted to close it while
her hand was in the doorway.
* Cancer specialist Dr. Bill Evans believes many Canadian doctors
think it's a waste of time to treat lung cancer. "In many situations,
physicians have decided that lung cancer, being a self-induced
disease, is not worthy of the kind of effort that one applies to many
other health issues," Evans says.
* Some doctors have refused to perform transplants and other
lifesaving operations on smokers on "moral" grounds. At least one
person, a 56-year-old man, has died as a result.
* A 60-year-old New York City restaurant patron was set upon by
five waiters, kicked, punched, and thrown out into the street for the
crime of smoking. He has remained in a coma since the attack. His
attackers were not charged.
* A woman who was eight months pregnant was assaulted because
she was smoking at an Illinois shopping mall
* A Head Start instructor in Modesto, California, tortured and
physically abused her own daughter because she had tobacco
products in her possession
* A local radio talk show host in Seattle advocated that persons who
smoke outside sports arenas be assaulted and battered
* Three police academy instructors in Huntington Beach, California,
lost their jobs after ordering two cadets to eat cigarette sandwiches
as punishment for smoking. The cadets vomited. One collapsed and
was taken unconscious to a hospital.
* An unopened pack of cigarettes and an unused pack of matches
was reason enough for Carnival Cruise Lines to throw four people off
the Paradise in a foreign port and fine them $250. It cost them
thousands of dollars to return home.
* After lighting a cigarette 20 feet from the nearest spectator at a
Little League game, a Los Angeles father was detained by
authorities and his son beaten up by the rest of the home team, then
permanently kicked out of the League
* In Canada a reformed smoker attacked his wife of 30 years, with a
12-inch kitchen knife, repeatedly stabbing her in the
neck after finding out that she had broken her promise to give up
smoking.
* In Texas a high school student who went searching for her cat in
her own yard was stopped by a police officer who said he
saw her smoking. He told her to empty her pockets, which she did.
Finding nothing, he got down on his hands and knees, and he dug
around on the grass with a flashlight. Still finding nothing he told the
girl she was a minor in possession of tobacco and gave her a ticket.
* At an engineering company in Indiana, a secretary was fired for
failing a "drug test." Her crime? Smoking six cigarettes the
weekend prior to the test
* A 78-year-old Canadian senior who stepped outside on the balcony
of her seniors’ complex to have a smoke froze to death when the
door locked behind her and she couldn’t get back in.
* A 15-year-old Iowa boy caught with cigarettes in his possession
during a school trip to Texas was put on a bus alone for a
31-hour trip back to his home. During the first of the six stops and
layovers, his wallet was stolen, leaving him with no money
to buy food for the rest of the trip.
* In Wisconsin a 14-year-old girl, a grade A and B student who was
active in athletics and cheerleading and the choir, committed suicide
rather than tell her parents she had been caught with one cigarette
in her backpack at school
* Minnesota's 1984 PLAN FOR NON SMOKING: "Any means necessary
must be used to de-socialize smokers, smoking must be equated with
drugs sex and violence, the smoker must be isolated from the rest of
society."
* The "outside group of smokers is a great isolator and identifier of
the selected-to-be-loathed smoker." Kathleen Harty,
former leader of the Minnesota Department of Health's anti smoking
division, now an employee of the US FDA.
* "Round up all the smokers in California and truck them to a fenced
in area in Utah."
* "Place a bounty on anyone seen in a Joe Camel or Marlboro T-shirt,
baseball cap, etc. They may be shot on sight and a
$1,000 reward will be given when delivered to the state Capitol lawn
in Sacramento."
* "The state should require bar owners to furnish cellular phones and
Polaroid cameras to nonsmokers so that scofflaws can
be reported, identified and executed."
* "When smokers buy a pack of cigarettes, one will have an explosive
in it--so the smoker will be afraid to light up, fearing a
facial laceration."
* "If smokers are so eager to die, then the answer must be to
capture and exterminate them. The only solution is to remove
the problem; smokers."
* "You greedy bastards deserve the lung cancer, emphysema,
immune system deficiencies, cardio-vascular and stroke
problems you bring on everybody."
* Nothing makes me happier than to intubate a pathetic smoker with
an FEV-1 of less than 800 cc. Don't expect any morphine to relieve
your sensation of dyspnea, either."
* "Your bodies are a means of production, as such they belong to
society, and the state holds them in trust. You don't have the right
to engage in any behavior that could reduce the productivity of your
body."
* "We have to treat them like human beings, I suppose."
* "You filth. I'll rejoice the day the doctor sticks a traech tube in
your throat and you scream from the pain and agony of
chemo!! Burn in hell."
* "I vote to kill all smokers...perhaps then, and only then, will the
putridness of their disgusting habits be truly understood."
* "if Democracy allows poeple (sic) to throw away their lives (or at
least considerably lower the quality of their lives) by
smoking then democracy isn't a good thing."
* "So, not only justifiably taking their children away from them, we
could treat all smokers and defenders of addictive
nicotine as slave labor and legalize paying them wages of two packs
a day.until the remaining tobacco products are used up
and there are no more!"
* "You should see the segregated small glass rooms that the
Addicted Smoker Losers must sequester themselves into, by law, to
fix their wretched addiction. Like dirty monkeys in a cage on display,
their faces sullen and depressed with the pathos of their junkie
addiction."
* "May i see the day when those kids get over their forced addictions
and when grown look back at the parents, when the parents
themselves are on deaths door and in pain, may they laugh in your
face and tell you that you have gotten what you deserved and then
tell you to go to hell and walk out on you and leave you to
pathetically die in your bed. "
* "Nice restaurant you got here. Hate to see anything bad happen to
it." (Head of anti-smoker group ASH, John Banzhaf)