DEMONIZING CIGARETTES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Extinguishing Civil Rights in the "Smoking" Brouhaha.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher writes, concerning the
proposed cigarette "settlements," that:

a) details cannot now be released, but

b) the "settlements" *will* include the right to *individual* suits
against the cigarette manufacturers.

It seems clear that Fisher and the other states' attorneys general
mean to *eliminate* citizens rights to class action suits.

Since Class Action suits are the only way all but the wealthiest can
seek redress for grievances against wealthy corporate entities, then
an entire class of citizens would essentially *lose* guaranteed rights.

Further, wealthy citizens may often not feel inclined to file suits,
thus further limiting corporate liability risk *and* the benefits to
the public derived from individual suits that make precedents or
revelations that protect the public from industrial harms. Reasons for
this syndrome may be:

a. Wealthy people have good insurance and do not *need* to see
compensation from liable entities to get needed care;

b. Wealthy folks are probably invested up to *here* in some parts of
the cigarette cartel such as the cig company's insurance company, the
investment banks and brokers, the cigarette manufacturers themselves
and any of the *many* cig additives and adulterants firms, from paper
(and logging and pulp), petrochemicals (pesticides galore in typical
non-organic cigs), fertilizers (radioactive phosphates contaminate
typical cig tobacco), sugar (lots of refined sugar in cigs), ag-biz
(where the sugar and a lot of other ag ingredients come from,
chocolate (it's one of 1,000+/- cig additives... Nestle? Mars?
Hershey?), pharmaceuticals (several cig additives like preservatives,
artificial sweeteners, flavorings, etc. *Plus* pharmaceuticals do not
care to have bad words publicized about cigs' chlorine/dioxin since
they *too* use a *lot* of it)... and so forth.

c. Wealthy folks may *work* for any of the above industries.

d. The wealthy often support political forces *funded* by the above
industries.

e. Well-to-do persons would be ostracized if, by opening up the cig
contaminants can-of-worms, they threatened the very basis of a very
profitable, corrupt system.

"Allowing" individual suits will essentially keep reckless and harmful
industries safe from liability courts to a great degree. The problem,
which affect *all*, are less likely to be corrected via civil court
precedents and rulings. Denying class action suits can be said to be a
massive threat to public health, not to mention the threat to
everyone's civil rights.

Most "smoking" legislation so far *has* involved areas of civil
liberties and constitutional principles but, maybe because few care to
*seem* to be defending an "evil" habit, or because some believe a
greater good is gained by allowing some rights to be lost (after all,
it's only those darn smokers), no effective voices have been raised to
question, adjust or condemn the proceedings.

Here are just some areas of "smoking" legislation that seem very
problematic from a civil rights standpoint.

1. Attempts to eliminate rights to *redress of grievances* via removal
of the right to class action suits and "caps" on corporate liability.

2. *Rights to redress* are also denied via an existing *law* that
forbids suits based on the "inadequacy" of cigarette warning labels.
One US Supreme Court case was just *won* by kin of a California man
killed by asbestos in Kent Filters (discontinued in 1957). If his case
were to go forward *now*, it would have been dismissed immediately due

to the "inadequate warning" law. Neither Lorillard *nor* the
"regulatory" agencies warned that deadly asbestos was in the
cigarettes. Clearly inadequate warning (i.e., *no* warning) was given
by the Surgeon General or the firms responsible even though it is
another legal requirement that firms *must* report real or likely
endangerments.

Current "legal" warnings do *not* warn about cig dioxins, pesticides,
radiation, other *known* toxic/carcinogenic additives *nor* about the
deadly effects of the incineration or combinations. Nothing warns that
*none* of the substances nor combinations have ever been tested for
this use; smokers have been offered by government agencies, on a
golden platter, to the cigarette cartel as guinea pigs.

3. Most, if not all, legislation from the US Congress has sought to
violate Native American sovereignty by imposing "smoking" laws on
Tribal lands. At the same time, there are absolutely no provisions to
protect Native American *religious* use of tobacco, part of ceremony
and ritual for *at least* 10,000 years. Perhaps the peyote decision of
a few years ago applies, but no legislative proposal acknowledges it.

4. *Right to Due Process* seems to be threatened in that those who
grow and sell *organic* or even additive-free cigarettes are growing
and selling products that have *not* been studied or analyzed to
determine any public interest health hazard. What *has* been studied
extensively are *undefined, unanalyzed, undescribed* "cigarettes"
that, one presumes, contain some of the industrial world's *worst*
carcinogenic and toxic substances like the above -mentioned dioxins
and radiation.

The "tobacco" and "cigarette" and "smoking" terminology pervades all
legislation. People will be fined, jailed, or otherwise prosecuted and
denied business and the right to use public domain plants on the basis
of flagrantly unsound if not intentionally deceptive, ommissive
"science." "Intentionally" because of motive to hide the complicity of
ingredients' industries and the degree of recklessness by cigarette
assembly industries, and to protect their insurers and investors.

One *cannot* have due process with such arbitrary, ambiguous, and
*blatantly* incorrect language.

Of course laws, penalties and prohibitions are being applied to
uninformed, unprotected *users* of these products thus denying
consumers right to due process as well.

Further, failure to incorporate revelation of additives and
adulterants denies litigants the right to due process by denying them
the ability to determine bias in judges or jurors who may have
economic interests in the additives/adulterants industries or their
insurance or investment companies. A judge with holdings, in for
instance, Prudential Insurance has holdings in *five* out of six of
the largest cigarette manufacturing companies! Failure to recuse would
constitute an unfair trial or hearing.

5. The "takings" clause: The government is taking, for an ostensible
public interest purpose, business opportunities from many businesses
that have no involvement with the secret poisoning of the typical
tobacco-based products. These include store owners, shippers, vending
machine operators, and growers and vendors of unindicted organic tobacco.

The government's interest in "health" is flatly fraudulent as proven
by its *tolerance, *facilitation* and hiding of the toxic/carcinogenic
industrial non-tobacco cigarette constituents. The government
"regulatory" agencies (funded by Congress members who themselves are
funded by the complicit industries) have , in fact, *violated* their
duty to protect the consumers from *exactly* this sort of industrial
harm. They now seek to blame and burden the victims and to *pretend*
to condemn the cigarette makers.

Another takings area concerns taking the public domain nicotine *from*
the public for "controlled," exclusive use by pharmaceutical firms
(some contributors of cigarette additives) for several known medical
uses *and* to eliminate natural, unpatented competition to their

synthetic drugs for appetite suppression, digestive aid and
stress/anxiety relief. Competition to synthetic nicotine "delivery
devices" is also eliminated or minimized.

This amounts to a *privatization* of a natural, public domain plant
for the benefit of *private* interests. All done "for our protection,"
as usual.

This seems, basically, to be an illegal takings with the purpose of
exempting the cigarette cartel from exposure and liability and to
maximize profits from certain industries, not remotely legitimate
public interests. It is also to avoid constitutional necessity to
*pay* the public for the taken substances.

(A *legitimate* takings, *without* compensation, because of the
criminal nature of the activity, would be the taking of all untested
tobacco additives and adulterants from the industry *and* all tools of
crime and profits *made* by this crime, with interest. Tangible assets
to be used to make *organic* tobacco products to minimize public
poisoning, minimize the addictive nature of the product and to prevent
the costly and devastating effects of a prohibition of another
traditional, basically natural, plant-based element. Money assets to
fund universal health care for about the next 500 years, after
compensating victims.)

6. A grave *misuse* of "takings" principles may be occurring in the
Massachusetts case where cigarette manufacturers have so far stopped
implementation of a state law to compel revelation of all non-tobacco
cigarette constituents. Their argument is that the law constitutes a
"taking" of their right to have "trade secrets," even though many of
those "trade secrets" are toxic and cancer-causing cigarette
adulterants. The Constitution does not permit one right to deny other
inherent rights.

7. *Religion*: As it was with alcohol and cannabis prohibition, the
"smoking" opposition within public government is being greatly
influenced, inappropriately, by religious bias against "sin"
components of life. Even the taxes are called "sin taxes." Religious
influence on governing is as unacceptable as corporate influence.

8. The problem area of legitimate *police stops and searches* of
citizens is greatly exacerbated by "smoking" laws concerning age
limits. It is already the case that all of those who *look* (to
untrained eyes) to be "under 27 years old" must "show us your papers"
when purchasing either tobacco or the typical cigarettes that use
tobacco as base material. Already, some police forces are filming and
stopping those who are smoking but who *look* "under-age." This is to
"protect the kids." Yet no one proposes protecting them by removing
the known and untested dangerous chemicals from either typical
cigarettes or many other products.

It is as problematic as, say, seat belt laws (also "for our
protection") which can and are all too easily used to stop those in
racial groups who fit a "profile."

Police, ostensibly searching for illegal cigarettes (!), have greatly
expanded their powers to search for whatever else they want.

9. Since there are no studies of *organic* tobacco nor studies of
other cigarettes that contain herbs besides tobacco, any searches for
such tobacco or herbal cigarettes must be considered *unreasonable.*
That is, there must be a public interest *reason.* One does not yet
exist relating to tobacco, herbal cigarettes or, for that matter,
cannabis, another plant taken from the public domain purely for
*private* commercial reasons and to illegitimately increase controls
over the public. (When will we hear the first case of a minor, or
someone the police *think* looks "under age," being stopped because a
white lollipop stick *looked* like a cig?)

10 *Free Speech*: Advertisers who knowingly promoted typical
chemical-intensive, multi-ingredient, highly-processed tobacco-based
cigarettes as "tobacco" (a grotesquely inadequate, non-descriptive,
omissive, colloquial term) ought *not* to be granted protections of
"right" to defraud and contribute to the secret endangerment of consumers.

However, there are several business entities, including some that are

Native American, which provide organic cigarettes or additive-free
cigarettes. These products contain no asbestos, no added sugars, no
chocolate, licorice, artificial sweeteners nor hundreds and hundreds
of things that, in many cases are known to be dangerous when heated or
incinerated. Organic tobacco does not contain dioxins,
fertilizer-sourced radiation, pesticide residues, charcoal (from some
filters) or even the adhesives that cold cig paper together.

Despite this, vendors are forbidden to even suggest the products are
safer than other products. Their right to speak is denied *as is* the
right of the public to *hear* the information in order to mitigate
dangers. And, of course, they are forbidden from advertising at all in
many forums even though their specific forms of tobacco product have
not been studied to determine public interest purpose for prohibitive
legislation.

There may be more Constitutional problems in the current "smoking"
legislation arena. All civil rights interests are advised to
scrutinize the proposals and existing law with this in mind. It is a
notorious and historically successful ploy by authoritarian
governments to wrap rights deprivations in laws that are "to protect
the kids" or "for our protection." Otherwise no one would tolerate
them. When they *say* "we want to protect teens from cigarettes," they
*mean* they want to protect a cartel of hugely powerful and wealthy
industries from exposure, competition, liabilities, and prosecution...
and they want to tighten controls over the public for the sake of
private corporate entities. The fewer rights people have, the more
that are held by the abstract, non-human corporate system.

Lest anyone still believe this campaign is about health and not about
money uber alles: do some math. How much is a life "worth" in an
average liability suit? How much will the cigarette makers pay out in
even the "toughest" "settlement"? How many victims over the years? My
calculations conclude, conservatively, that the cigarette cartel saves
tens of *trillions* of dollars, and it will still be allowed to make
and sell secretly-contaminated products! For "feeling good" about
(seeming to) bust the cookies of one big bad corporation, to show
greater "enlightenment" than those darn disobedient smokers and to
have "fresh air" in bars and restaurants, the price is inordinately,
disastrously, high -- to everyone.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady