Pubs Rebel Against Corporatocracy's Smoking Ban

national | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Friday July 09, 2004 01:56 by Watchdog jejonik at juno dot com

Oppose the Next Plant Product Prohibition NOW.

News is all over U.S. media about Irish Pub Owners fighting the "smoking" ban. No current input on this at this site yet. Since this is not about health (except as packaging) it is hoped that toxics, consumer, environmental, health and other activists realise that this topic IS about their interests.

Here is a description of one news story (Associated Press) in the US about opposition to the seemingly wholesome "smoking" ban in Ireland.
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"Fuming over a smoking ban, some Irish pubs flout the law.
The smoke of rebellion rose across Ireland yesterday as a handful of pubs let customers puff away in defiance of a government ban."
( By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press, 07/08/2004 03:01 AM EDT)

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/9102140.htm?1c
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If you don't want to "register" at the paper's site, send e-mail and I'll forward the whole article.
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Some things to think about:

* Pub owners (and their lawyers) don't seem to realize
that they are unjustly made to bear the burdens of law and costs to "solve" a health problem that is and was NOT of their doing.
Those who did cause the problems, by adulterating tobacco with so many of the world's worst INDUSTRIAL substances and hosts of untested ingredients, are getting off Scot Free.

* Tobacco smoke, by itself (without the additives/adulterants) has not yet been shown to cause the problems cited as reasons for the smoke ban. No matter, officials persist in saying "tobacco" smoke and "tobacco" diseases. Why? It's better for them to blame a public-domain natural plant instead of displeasing (or indicting) the corporations that contributed to the toxic/carcinogenic nature of typical cigarettes. It's also better to blame the unwitting, unprotected, insufficiently-warnd victims...and pub owners etc.

* There have been urine tests of pub visitors that ony tested for nicotine. No tests were for increased dioxin levels or radiation levels. No. That would indict some big powerful industries...and their friends in gov't. Nicotine is about Mother Nature...who has no money to give to public officials.

* It's NOT about tobacco. It's about products adulterated with the psychopathic help of Big Oil, Pesticides, Pharmaceuticals, Chlorine, Radioactive Phosphate fertilizers, Burn Accelerants, Adhesives, Sugars, and a long list of (non-organic) agricultural products. We are talking about Shell, Uniroyal, Dow, Monsanto, Bayer, Novartis, Aventis, DuPont and on and on. We are talking about hundreds of tobacco pesticides and their residues. We are talking about DIOXIN, which, for all practical purposes, ONLY comes from man-made Chlorine...as found in cigarette paper and many pesticide residues. Ireland DID sign the POPs Treaty to globally ban dioxin, did it not? Why don't Irish officials start off by banning it in cigarette smoke? After all, most if not all "smoking related" disease are IDENTICAL to effects of dioxin exposure. Such diseases are IMPOSSIBLE to be caused by tobacco or any plant...even burned and inhaled. Case closed?

* Noting the drop-off of pub customers...take-out business notwithstanding...it's easy to imagine that this "smoking" thing is also about "Crack Downs" on drinking. This reeks of Insurance Industry ideas...to eliminate all possible harms done by individuals, while ignoring the massive harms done by corporate interests. The difference is...Big Insurers INVEST in the industries. It's not some moralistic fundamentalist Taliban coming into our lives...it's Bizness Uber Alles.

* No doubt, what many officials really want is to cut public health spending. This is why The WTO is all "anti smoking" too. They dare not do this by banning untested and known deadly cig adulterants, so...voila!... the "smoking ban". Officials COULD get billions for public health programs etc from the complicit industries in liabilities and penalties, but...well...those industries are their friends. Check their economic links if possible.

* The claim of protecting workers' health is a sick joke...literally. Workers who are now nicely "protected" from "smoking" (even their own cigs!) are being DENIED compensation for maybe years of exposures to the secret parts of cigarette smoke...the parts that do not and can not come from tobacco. Workers STILL aren't told or warned about what's IN a typical cigarette. Workers are not even tested for dioxin or rad levels...which they could not get from beer fumes, but from contaminated cigarettes. Workers elsewhere are protected from almost nothing. Funny it's just in the "smoking" area. No protection from auto fumes, paints, solvents, industrial toxins, printing emissions, radiation, toxic cleansers, bio-organisms, etc. is done because THAT would burden the corporations. The "smoking" restriction just burdens the victims....the so far informationally deprived victims. Cig manufacturers don't really care; they are evading enormous liabilities, NOT for the tobacco, but for the TOXIC and CARCINOGENIC and addiction enhancing and burn accelerating things they viciously ADDED to the products, in secret from consumers. Whatever happened to Informed Consent?

* What kind of law is it that demands no proof of harm, demands no face to face confrontation with harmed accuser, and which fails to so much as DESCRIBE the alleged instrument of "crime"?

* Compare the fines for secretly adding known toxic/carcinogenic elements to fraudulently advertized consumer products....ZERO...to the fines for using the products or allowing their use in a pub....about $3000 [U.S.]. Justice?
Oh...and fines on Public Officials for allowing this? Also zero.

* This is a Golden Opportunity for Environmental & Toxics Activists to approach Pub Owners and...yes...even Evil Smokers, to talk about the industrial pollutants in cigs and elsewhere. Don't care for Big Oil's invasion of Iraq? One use for the oil is to make toxic and cancer causing tobacco pesticides. Big Oil has NEVER been even politely ASKED about this let alone being dragged into court.
Those who note big problems with pharmaceuticals re/ the costs, minimal and fraudulent testing, denial of AIDS medicines, and so forth ought have some interest in the fact that Big Pharma is PART of the so-called "Tobacco" indusry via tobacco pesticides AND cigarette ingredients. Pharms are ostensibly a HEALTH industry. Not so in many cases.

* Those who despise or are affected by the "war on pot" ought realize that this smoke ban thing is a virtual TWIN of "Reefer Madness" that got marijuana prohibition going...with all the devastating effects.

* Any laws or news stories that fail to qualify "tobacco" as being Industrially Contaminated Tobacco are fraudulent. Any talk about the harms of "smoking" without noting the extreme harms caused by Manufacturing Techniques is talk that blames the uninformed, secretly poisoned victims while ignoring the ones who did the poisoning.

Though even the purest tobacco, like everything, has some risk elements, it's quite another thing to intentionally poison consumers with known industrial toxins, to deceive consumers that they are just using tobacco,and to evade liability and criminal responsibility for doing so.

There are other "smoking" items posted at this site. Search them out with word "smoking". Google search terms like "smoking radiation", "dioxin tobacco", "tobacco pesticides", "cigarettes burn accelerants", etc. There's material enough to throw a good sized wrench...or spanner....into the corporate gears of this bogus "smoking" ban fraud. Let your pub owners know.

To your health.