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BOARD OF HEALTH MEETINGS

By Terry Gray

As plumes of smoke rose from the World Trade Center Towers on 9-11, the Board of Health in New York and the EPA assured people that it was only smoke and contained no toxins.  I don’t doubt for a second that people in that building smoked cigarettes, and I know that cigarettes were sold there.  So, discounting any other toxins emitted into the air by burning debris that day, we know that tobacco was burning.  From this we can logically deduce that the EPA and the New York Board of Health essentially admitted on 9-11 that tobacco smoke isn’t toxic.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE AROUND SMOKE, DON’T GO AROUND IT!

I was going to report the Sept. 18 hearing as a journalist, but only a few minutes into the meeting I quit taking notes.  I decided to write it from the perspective of an angry patriot and activist who knows that eventually his side will wear down.  These Antis have nothing to lose in continuing pursuit of their own agenda.  Real Americans on the other hand, have nothing to gain in fighting them.  Our fight is to keep what we already have; we can only break even.  I just don’t understand why our everyday Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones blindly follow the Antis that are hell bend on taking EVERYONE’S freedom.

Have you ever tried to argue against emotion?  It is an effective tool on many levels.  No amount of logic can break it down.  No amount of reason can strategically turn the one wallowing into a reasonable listener.  In the event of a crowd, the logical arguer will emerge as the bad guy for not understanding the pain of the poor, put-upon crier.

One could term this hearing Thursday night as logic-versus-sympathy.  I couldn’t stand to hear one more tale of how second hand smoke had ruin someone’s life when the real cause was more than likely genetic defects due to simple heredity.  I was by no means feeling sympathetic, so I went home and watched a show about how the Beatles brought down the Soviet Union.

The following are some examples of the people who testified:

ANTIS

Sharon Something (I told you I quit taking notes), a musician, can’t play the bars anymore because of the smoke.  (Can’t or Won’t?)  Every cold she gets turns into bronchitis or worse.  It seems odd to me that other people that have a problem with smoke don’t develop bronchitis with every cold.  She said that people won’t stop going out if there is a smoking ban.  (See, she hasn’t done any research.)  In fact, they would stay longer because they would be more comfortable.  Logic:  Smokers won’t be comfortable; therefore they aren’t people.  Most people that go to bars are smokers and if they are not smokers, they accept that smoking is going on there and they go anyway.

Marilyn is a cancer victim.  She said that second hand smoke is not just an inconvenience, it is deadly.  Sounds like someone has been listening to the Smoke Free Louisville spout 11 year old EPA statistics from an invalid study.  She said that non-smokers have a right to breathe clean air.  First, show me where that is written, and then show me how smokers are trying to take your clean air.

In the same breath, these Niconazis scream about their rights they say that smokers have no rights.  They say that smoking is a privilege, not a right.  Show me something that says that having clean air wherever you choose to go is a right. This is propaganda, pure and simple.  And I tell you something else, Niconazis are lazy.  I did not hear one original thought at the hearing from the anti-smoking people.  They spouted off what they had been told.  It is easy for them to take the propaganda that Smoke Free Louisville feeds them and accept it as fact.  They hear what they want to hear.

Let’s see if you hear this:  There is no difference between what smokers consider our rights and what would-be parents consider their right to have a child.  Show me where either are guaranteed.  This time let’s use “The Children” to justify something that makes sense.  YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD.

Amy harped on the health of our children.  I was one gulp away from throwing up.  I’M TIRED OF HEARING, “IT IS FOR THE CHILDREN.”  Talk about not having any rights.  Kids have no rights, people.  They have no rights until they are 18 and only limited rights then.  So don’t put your “For the Children” routine up against my constitutional rights.

She almost cried when she talked about kids not being able to go to bowling alleys and bingo halls.  “Kids can’t have fun,” she sobbed.

She also said that there have been a few discredited studies concerning second hand smoke.  Amy, there have been a lot of studies and more studies indicate that second hand smoke is NOT a big health issue.  The biggest DISCREDITED study is the EPA’s 11 year old study that all the Niconazis quote as gospel.

She wanted to know why smoking wasn’t banned under the fire department’s fire codes.  That’s fine Amy; let’s outlaw smoking under that law.  Now we need to remove the stoves, grills, ban flaming entrées and sizzling dishes, and in general close down all restaurants.  What a moronic idea.  Not only do they present junk science, but they spew out junk ideas, too.

Maybe these people should do a little work and find out about rights.  But then they would be using facts and logic instead of emotion, and that would be too out of character.

Heart-strings versus logic and truth?

Peggy Ward, and I use her name because I remember her from a news spot spouting off Socialist ideology.  She works in a restaurant, and she says she has a right to work in clean air.  Once again, no you don’t.  Don’t mistake desire with right.  She said that finding another job where there is no smoking shouldn’t be her burden.  WHOSE BURDEN SHOULD IT BE LADY?  Were people smoking there when you took the job?  You want to move in and change the way things are done to accommodate you?  She said the place where she works is small.  Guess what, Peggy - that means that it probably doesn’t have the resources to survive a smoking ban.  So Peggy, it looks like the burden of finding another job WILL be on you.

She also said that Councilman Hawkins’ statement that this ban could eventually extend to private homes was ignorant.  No, Peggy, you are ignorant.  Councilman Hawkins has researched and is knowledgeable on how this system works.  You are the one that has no facts.

Speaking of Peggy Ward, I have a problem with her credentials.  In several anti-smoking appearances, she has claimed to work in a restaurant on Bardstown Road.  The Patriots in this fight know most of the restaurants on Bardstown Road, and no one seems to know Peggy Ward.  Let’s use a little logic here.  Ms. Ward says that she can’t afford to change jobs to a place where there isn’t any smoking.  Ms. Ward claims that her co-workers are scared to speak out for the smoking ban for fear of losing their jobs.  Ms. Ward won’t disclose where she works.  No one in the restaurant business that I’ve talked to knows her.  Put all of this together, and it would seem that Ms. Ward, though she can’t afford to lose her job and in the face of that threat to her co-workers, speaks out anyway.  Something is amiss.  Can someone tell us where Ms. Ward works?

Dr Adams wants us to know that tobacco has 4000 substances.  Thank you sir, I thought I was only getting 3200.  Just think; I’m getting 800 more substances than I thought I was paying for.  Life is good.  He wants us to know that passive smoke is the 3^rd leading cause of death in the U.S.  He wants us to know that smoking complicates the flu virus by “22 fold.”

Okay, life 101 begins right here Doc.  You are using open ended data gleaned from, once again, the discredited 1992 EPA study.  Your use of data is kind of like holding up one arm and saying, “I caught a fish this big.”

Even the invalid EPA study doesn’t boast that passive smoke is the 3^rd leading killer in America as you say.  The EPA did attribute 6000 deaths annually from passive smoke, but that statistic couldn’t be proved.

Coffee contains 800 substances.  Twenty-one have been studied, and 16 of those cause cancer.

Fruits and vegetables contain antiparasitics, hormones, and pesticides.  Some of the pesticides are Dieldrin, Dioxin, Alar, and Methyl Parathion.  The USDA rates the presence of pesticides from 0 to infinity.  One hundred is high.  Peaches came in at 4,848 on a “toxicity index rating.”  Spinach has been found to contain 14 pesticides.  Obviously, smoking just one peach can kill you in seconds.  Why, oh why weren’t we told? 

Seventy-six million Americans are poisoned every year by the foods we eat.  Five-thousand die from that poisoning.  Dr. Paul Meade, a bacteria specialist says, “It is important that people not be alarmed by these statistics.”  I’m alarmed that Dr. Meade isn’t alarmed.

Dr Donna Shalala (Come on, everybody sing along) says, “Odds are 1 in 4 that you’ll get sick this year from the food you eat.”  I can’t recall a time when I’ve said, “That cigarette didn’t taste right.  I think it poisoned me.”

A suit is underway right now by New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey against your beloved EPA over pesticides in food affecting children. “OH NO, NOT THE CHILDREN!” 

“Smoking complicates the flu virus by 22 fold.”  Twenty-two fold of what?  The good doctor makes no comparison.  This is the way that junk science works.  What else are flu suffers told to stay away from, Doc?  Well, they are told to stay away from people, smokers included, to keep from spreading the disease.  So, if you have the flu and you go around smokers, you are asking for trouble for yourself, and you are also risking their health by contaminating them.  Stay home, mind your own business and get well.  And stay away from Zanamivir, it is as common flu medication and can kill you.

Did you know that according to a California study Lesbians have a higher heart disease risk?  How’s that for junk science Doc?  My fish is this big.

PATRIOTS AND ACTIVISTS

 John Dant of the Louisville Hospitality Coalition spoke and made some interesting points.  One point was that in all his years of business he never had a customer complain about smoke.  Which brings a question to my mind:  Who instigated this fight?  We know that our Mayor opened the door in Louisville but from where are its roots?  I don’t recall any kind of public outcry.

Donna Mancini called for an outright ban of cigarettes, fast food, trees and flowers, pets, and the weather.  Personally, beets make me sick to look at.  Let’s add them to the list.  Donna’s proposed “laws” were made tongue-in-cheek and to make a point and make one pause and think, “What WILL be next?”  I’ve been witness to many people that religiously watch the television weather to see the next day’s pollen and smog forecasts so they can plan.  If it’s bad, they won’t leave the house.  These same people will brave the pollen and smog so they can go out to a restaurant and complain about smoke.

Victoria Lee said that she is a polite smoker and would never push her smoke on someone else.  Most smokers don’t, yet we are lumped together as the scum of the Earth out to poison everyone else.  In all actually, we just want the Antis to leave us alone and go to your non-smoking places while we are allowed us ours.

We had a doctor on our side that cited a study done by two professors.  Sorry but I didn’t catch his name either.  The study had been conducted over a 39 year period and studied 35,351 people that had never smoked.  The non-smokers demonstrated no “causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality.”  Here’s the link:  Modbee.com | the Modesto Bee

I just want to add something here.  The anti-smoking campaign is being funded mostly by grants from the Kentucky Department for Public Health and The Louisville Metro Health Department, which has already pledged $88,000.  This money comes from a $450,000 national tobacco settlement that is supposed to be used for programs designed to help people combat their smoking habit.  I’m sorry folks, but funding anti-smoking legislation is not a program designed to help people combat their smoking habit.  It is a blatant misappropriation of taxpayer money, and I’m looking for some resignations and some jail time for these people that have used our money to strengthen and promote their agenda to deny me my rights.  *Good new on that front; use of taxpayer money is now being investigated in NYC.  Butt-Ban Bombshell

You bars and restaurant owners know that “when” this smoking ban is adopted that you must get rid of your ashtrays don’t you?  May I suggest that you place little crosses in each of them and leave them on the tables and in the entry ways?  Refuse to remove them for religious reasons.  See how fast your religious freedoms come under fire.  Then let Peggy Ward tell you that smoking restrictions will stop before other rights are infringed upon.

PART TWO

I missed last week’s deadline for the above article so now you get to read both at the same time.  Fun, huh?

Last Tuesday was another Board of Health public meeting.  I don’t know why I bothered to attend.  The Antis had no new information.  They still wallow in that stupid 1992 EPA report that quickly became the joke of the scientific community and still is.  I do want to comment on a few things though because that is what I do.

ANTIS

Nancy Walker is tired of standing in long lines to eat because there are two lines, one for smokers and one for non-smokers.  She wanted to know why smokers can’t wait a couple of hours to smoke while in restaurants, when they wait on airplanes, theatres, churches and etc.  So, Ms. Walker, you want to take the last bastion do you?  Don’t you think that smokers are restricted enough?  Do you eat while you sleep?  If you can wait 8 hours to eat when you are sleeping, why can’t you wait while driving a few minutes longer to a smoke-free restaurant?

Ms. Walker uses the same argument that ALL anti-smoking people use when she says this, “…and you know without us telling you what second hand smoke is doing to us.”

She wants to know what kind of message we are sending our children when we tell them not to smoke and they see it all around them.  Hello?  Do we let them engage in sex or drinking?  Do we let them drive cars or cook dinner?

Then she used “For the Children.”  Her 10 year old niece wanted if know if all of this anti-smoking stuff meant that she would be able to go bowling again.  “Yes, darling, you could if this thing goes through.”  Hello again?  First of all, the bowling alley will probably go out of business.  Then what will you tell the kid?  “Sorry darling, we made those people go broke and they had to close?”  You want the desires of a 10 year old to dictate what adult business people do?  Give me a break.

Carl Rose (?) wanted us to know that his wife has breast cancer and it wasn’t self inflicted though she started smoking when she was 12.  Thank you sir for your inadvertent help with our cause.  She hadn’t known that smoking was bad for her.  Read the pack of cigarettes or a newspaper once in a while will you?  He also wanted us to know that “…we all know the results of second hand smoke, the medical research is clear…”  I keep hearing this “We all know” garbage but the only proof that I’ve seen gives no indication of second hand smoke being evil.

Andre Gordon said that when he and his wife found out that his wife was pregnant they chose at that time not to frequent smoking establishments.  Still, though having the wisdom to make that choice, he is in favor of removing his right to make that choice by legislating this ban.

Amy Eisenbach has Asthma and can’t go to places where there is smoke.  She talks of the desperation she feels when trying to breath around smoke.  Then don’t subject yourself to smoke!  She said that she “…has made the conscious choice to protect my lungs by not smoking.  However, those that are permitted to smoke around me are infringing on my right… since I have no control over the environment.”  You do have a choice and control Amy.  Why are you in a restaurant where there is smoke?  The people in the restaurant didn’t go there to torture you lady; you chose to go there.  Once again, there are over 300 smoke-free restaurants in this county.  Go to one of them. 

Julie Brackett works for the American Heart Association, and she represents nearly 7000 volunteers.  That’s nice.  She says that there are 35,000 deaths by heart attacks yearly and her choice of wording would lead one to believe that these are second hand smoke related.  She also wants us to know that “…there are no ventilation systems that effectively remove all the dangerous chemicals from second hand smoke.”  Here we go again.  Listen to me Julie; we can filter our air against biological hazards of nominal microns in size.  Who told you that we cannot filter smoke?  Remember being told to put duct tape and plastic over your windows in the event of a bio terrorism attack?  I feel sorry for you if you’ve been made to believe that smoke is more dangerous and more insidious than Anthrax.  She also wants us to know that 5 minutes’ exposure to second hand smoke is the same as smoking a cigarette.  Twenty minutes has the same effect as what a pack-a-day smoker receives.  Hmm?  If one lights-up one cigarette after the other and goes through the whole pack it takes about 6 minutes per cigarette, or 2 hours for a pack.  A cigarette burning on its own in an ashtray takes about 11 minutes, or 3^1/2 hours for a pack.  Where do they come up with this stuff?  Do they stop to think about what they are saying?

Julie, honey, you can only breathe so much air in at one time.  Your lungs only hold so much.  If you smoked two cigarettes at once, you would get no more “stuff” in your lungs than if you smoked one at a time.  How can a non-smoker possibly get more “stuff” from second hand smoke than a smoker unless his lungs are huge and he is hurriedly sucking in the smoke?  That would seem self-inflicted.

I really only want to do one more Anti because this could go on forever, as the sources of propaganda are never ending.

James Greenly gets the award for his tear-jerking portrayal of a true emotional propagandist.  Before I make my non-emotional remarks about his statements, I want him to know that I sympathize with his losses and my statements are meant to be no more personal toward him as his attacks on my rights are to me.

His father died a couple of years ago of cancer.  He had started smoking when he was 5 and smoked for 70 years.  Living to be 75 sir, is a long life for anyone.  Doesn’t it sound silly that Mr. Greenly is complaining about his father’s death from cancer when the man lived for 75 years?  Does he think he would have lived forever otherwise?  His mother died, too.  She had one lung removed because of lung cancer and the other lung was damaged from smoking.  Dude, they chose to smoke.

Sir, my mother died too only 4 years ago.  She smoked.  If she could come back today knowing that smoking contributed to her death, she would be on the front lines to blast you and Smoke Free Louisville for trying to forcibly restrict the rights of Americans.  She was a lady to the max, but what I am saying here is child-talk compared to what she would have to say.

Do you know any real Americans?  Do you know how many people since before 1776 have died to guarantee us the right to make our own decision in this Land of the Free?  Do you know how many people, smokers and non-smokers, are fighting you and your organizations to continue the American way of life?  Sir, you and all of your pals in crime are what the people of this country have fought against for 2 centuries – tyranny.  You, like all of the other James Greenly’s in this country, are traitors.  There is not another word to more accurately describe you.

PATRIOTS AND ACTIVISTS

Nick Karem (non-smoker) said let the system work and let supply and demand dictate to business owners how to cater to their customers.

Name Unknown (non-smoker) encouraged smokers to quit as he had.  He went on to say that the proposed ban is absurd and wrong.  He is also upset with the Board of Health for “…using taxpayer money set aside for smoking cessation programs to purchase legislation.”  I love his choice of words.  He is also upset that “…the council and many neighbors of the neighborhood, the community, do not think that we have the intelligence to discern what is good and what is not good for us.”

Greg Holmes (non-smoker) says that “...he doesn’t expect the world to cater to our sensitivity.  I loathe the smell of fish…but I don’t tell the restaurant owner, ‘no fish’.”

He also cited the study done in California and published in the British Medical Journal.  He is the 3^rd Activist I’ve heard quote this study and no Antis have touched it.  See it right here:  THE "PUBLIC HEALTH" ANTISMOKING SCAM: A PAPER OF DISSENT - A Manifesto for a Time of Change.  

Tina Johnson owns a bar.  She pays a lot of taxes and licensing fees.  “If the government doesn’t get that money from me, who are they going to get them from?”

Vernon Stubbs (?) (Non-smoker) says, “Let me tell you something.  If you smoke or don’t smoke, if you let this thing go through; if you let the government get in your homes, your business, and your property then you are in trouble, and that is exactly what we are headed for.  I don’t believe at all that this is about banning smoking.  This is about getting a hold of your life…you can’t do anything without them being right there.  I think we’ve missed the point of all of this.”

I agree Vernon.

There were other Patriots and Activists there as well; Theresa Camoriano and Donna Mancini,  among them.  Donna and Theresa always do a good job in making us think.  They, as well as the rest of the Patriots and Activists, are highly dedicated to freedom, pure and simple. 

I’m done for now except to provide readers with one potent piece of hypocrisy.

Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland has found a way to silence the loudest critic of his new cigarette tax: He pays for her smokes.  Forces Connecticut Home

I hope you enjoyed this article and your freedom while it lasts.  I do encourage all Patriots and Activists to look through Forces Kentucky and Forces International Homepage - Welcome for information concerning smoking bans elsewhere and many other issues pertinent to our freedom.

Here are some links for you:

Butt-Ban Bombshell 

Kentucky Smokers

Forces Kentucky

THE "PUBLIC HEALTH" ANTISMOKING SCAM: A PAPER OF DISSENT - A Manifesto for a Time of Change

FORCES International - Let's kill them FOR THEIR OWN GOOD

Health Department Threatens...

Our society is crossing an unprecedented path of perceptional distortion, where health and security-driven considerations outweigh any other value of liberty and self-respect. Armed with this farce of reality, North America wants to present itself to the new century with a new order, cleansed of the sins of tolerance and common sense.  Forces – Theatre of the Absurd.

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