THE GREAT "SMOKING" FRAUD
Corporations, being non-living, abstract entities, cannot dream, but if they could, they would dream of such things as a labor force that receives no compensation and that retains no rights, the elimination of competition, requirements that consumers purchase their products or services, freedom to make their own laws, a powerful military to pave the way for expansion, guaranteed profits, secrecy in every detail, elimination of critical voices, and freedom from any and all forms of liability. Except for slavery and absolute freedom from liability, this dream has generally come true. Corporate dreams are the stuff of nightmares for the living.
For many years, corporations have paid their way through public officials and laws to minimize liabilities. In March 1999, the US Supreme Court ruled that judges can, for whatever reason, exclude expert witnesses for a plaintiff in product liability suits because absolute proof of a product causing harm is impossible. All other science is considered "junk science" to the Corporatocracy. Outside of a Chernobyl or Bophal here, and a Three Mile Island or Dalkon Shield there, nothing has really slowed the Tort Deform movement. One area has the potential to do so, however, and it seems that they know it all too well. Therefore, the move towards tort "reform" is gathering steam. What may be the biggest single area of corporate crime and irresponsibility, if you count the bodies, is the so-called "smoking" area. The recent "settlement" that was pushed through represents the overwhelmingly largest dodge of corporate responsibility in history. The only thing imaginably larger would be if chlorine and its deadly by-product, dioxin, was brought into an honest court of law.
Right now, the cigarette makers, by way of the incredibly fraudulent "settlements," are escaping HUGE liabilities. Do the math. How many victims are dead or diseased because of their mislabeled, chemical-saturated, radioactive (yes), toxin-containing synthesized products? It is said that it's about 450,000 a year in the US alone. How many years has this mortality rate existed? Shall we go back to when tons of pesticides entered the products? To when the paper became chlorinated? To when asbestos was put into Kent filters? To when the radioactive phosphate fertilizers came into use? Or should we give the cancers and other diseases ten or twenty years to develop? For the sake of a reference point, how about going back just 40 years--even though the chlorinated chemicals in cigarettes, DDT included, go back further? As for adequate compensation, $1.5 million seems reasonable to be paid per average killed victim of corporate misconduct. Conclusion: the cig "settlement" that just got shoved down the public's throat, SAVES the industry over TWENTY-SIX TRILLION DOLLARS. Of course, this represents an identical amount denied to victims and the public in general. The math:
450,000 dead per year U.S.
x 40 years
18,000,000 killed over 40 years
x $1,500,000 reasonable compensation per death
$27,000,000,000,000 Total penalty (compensation due
- $250,000,000,000 "Settlement" pay-out to States
$26,750,000,000,000 Savings to cigarette manufacturers
(LOSS to victims and the public)
If one wants to quibble on some details, even cutting this in half means a savings (and LOSS) of over $13 Trillion. By one-fourth? About $7 Trillion, etc. This would be enough to fund a Universal Public Health system for the next century, and folks wouldn't even NEED the care so much if the chemicals were properly regulated or removed.
The current "settlement" pay-out, $250 billion, sounds like a lot, but here's the math on THAT:
$ 250,000,000,000 "settlement"
÷18,000,000 killed over 40 years in US
$13,888 pay-out per US fatality
Well, people get more than that in suits against their barber for trimming sideburns too short. And, of course,
·not one victim or surviving family member will get a CENT from the industry;
·this only covers deaths in the US, not overseas;
·this only covers deaths, period--no diseases in the US or anywhere;
·the industry is not required to hand over profits made via the indicted products; no forfeiture of tools of crime, either;
·the industry is not required to REMOVE the known toxic and carcinogenic non-tobacco constituents;
·they are not required to show evidence that ANY non-tobacco additives or adulterants are safe in this use;
·the industry is not required to reveal any of the non-tobacco constituents to consumers, public health officials, congressional representatives, independent scientists OR to liability attorneys;
·the industry is not required to remove the chemical additives that keep the product burning and which, therefore, lead to thousands of fires each year and thousands of deaths and injuries;
·they are not required to remove (or disclose) the chemicals and other additives that make the products sweet, flavorful, smooth and appealing to young taste buds;
·they are not required to remove (or disclose) adulterants that are added specifically to accelerate nicotine processing into the body; and
·they are not required to stop suggesting (and even SAYING) that their products are tobacco.
As to that last point, the stuffing in a typical cigarette is no more tobacco than this paper is a TREE, although this paper is BASED on tree fiber. Typical cig stuffing is made like paper, from a vile mash of SOME tobacco leaf (if you're lucky or if you live in Europe), stems, roots, twigs, leaf waste, and sweepings. All of this is HIGHLY contaminated with any number of 450 "US-approved" tobacco pesticides, plus banned-in-the-US DDT from all the foreign tobacco waste that is used, plus radiation from the phosphate fertilizers. Into this soup goes any number of up to 1,000 or so UNTESTED, often known toxic and/or carcinogenic additives. It is all colored like tobacco, flavored like tobacco, scented like tobacco, given adjusted shots of nicotine-like tobacco, texturized like tobacco, and then cut into little shreds that look just like tobacco shreds.
That's not all. Some of this tobacco-like cig stuffing is not even BASED on tobacco but on:
a. Loblolly Pine cellulose
b. Paper manufacturing waste
c. Agricultural waste
d. Timber products waste
e. Municipal paper waste
f. Food processing waste
Reportedly, some top cigs don't even use tobacco in any form, but use just the other stuff because it's cheaper and because they are not required to tell anyone anything. Description of these processing tricks is in the US Patent Office. A lot of information can be found on the web site <http://rampages.onramp.net/~bdrake>. To evade marketing fraud laws, the cig makers tell us that the cigs give us "full tobacco taste," "great tobacco pleasure," or "rich tobacco aroma" or what-not. They never say it's tobacco. To call this the "tobacco industry" is to assist them by using THEIR marketing word. It is a LIE. Use of the word "tobacco" under oath is clearly perjury if it is knowingly used, without qualification, to describe the end-products. Laws or medical and scientific reports based on such lingo are inescapably invalid.
THE VICTIMS
We are told that the unwarned, uninformed, unprotected users of what they THOUGHT was tobacco were sufficiently warned. There is even a Federal Law forbidding challenges to the "warnings" on the grounds that they are insufficient. However, the trick resides in the fact that tobacco, like swimming or going down the stairs, is inherently risky to some degree. That is the risk every consumer believes the "warnings" are about. No one was warned that there was ASBESTOS in Kent Filters before it was removed to make a Safer Cigarette. And today, no one is warned that typical cigs deliver HIGH doses of chlorine-sourced DIOXIN or that they are contaminated with low-level radiation (very dangerous in its own way), or that many of the additives become cancer-causing when incinerated or that the combination effects of some of the adulterants are deadly. No one is warned that the charcoal in some filters sends dangerous levels of fine particles into the lungs, and that this is a cancer cause. No one is warned that fibers from other filters do the same thing.
The reason victims are not going to get any compensation (or protection, for that matter) is that "they were warned," but "they chose to smoke anyhow." Well, if you are warned that swimming is "dangerous to your health," this does NOT exculpate someone who dumped Anthrax into the pool or secretly stocked it with sharks. If you are warned that sharp knives are "dangerous to your health" but don't know that the blades are flawed and ready to break, the manufacturer is NOT off the liability hook. Cigarettes are indeed privileged characters among consumer products. This HAS to end. Organic tobacco, inherent risks notwithstanding, ought be the ONLY type available. This would save those farms too.
It is unacceptable that the dangerous stuff is in the products in the first place. The stage where a "warning" is necessary to advise about the dioxin, radiation, and other toxins and carcinogens ought to have never been reached. That's why US citizens pay and authorize regulatory agents to do the job of assuring maximally safe products. The stuff is in there because those in government chose NOT to work for the people, as is their sworn duty, but to work for non-human corporate entities instead. They are NOT working for the Government ("of, for and by the People") when they step OUT of this role to work for business interests. That is, it would be preposterous to sue or charge the Government (the People) for misdeeds, since this would, in effect, be suing or charging the VICTIMS. Every time some government official approved a deadly industrial chemical in a cigarette, he or she worked for a non-government entity, probably one that paid campaign contributions or which offered employment or one in which the official holds shares.
PRECEDENT
In May, 1998, the US Supreme Court hit Lorillard with a big punitive damage penalty for killing a California man with its Asbestos Filters. The family of this man already won high compensatory damages in California.
The total pay-out came to over two million dollars. That's for ONE DEATH by what they call "smoking." One down, 17,999,999 more to go.
The motive for hiding cig adulterants is said to be for "trade secret" reasons. See 1984 Comprehensive Smoking Education [sic] Act . Well, it would be a RICO statute issue of enormous proportions if the whole cartel of cig adulterants' suppliers were brought into court for their knowing contribution to the fatalities and diseases. It would do a real number on the Public Image of the adulterants' suppliers. It would reveal the extreme harms of chlorine and its by-product, dioxin, and reflect on ALL other uses of this deadly substance. It would reflect on the oil and petrochemical industries, the entire synthetic pesticide industry, plastics, synthetic fabrics, paper-making, pharmaceuticals and so on. It would indict and reflect on the agricultural corporations that supply so much of the adulterants, on the sugar industry, on the chocolate and candy industry, on pharmaceuticals for their cigarette ingredient contributions, on logging (for paper fiber), and on and on.
It is considered "incorrect" to use Third Reich analogies but, for perspective, I cannot help noting that the figure of 18,000,000 fatalities (in the US alone over 40 years) is THREE TIMES the number of those killed in more direct fashion by the Third Reich. Note that the word "Holocaust" means "burnt offering" and that cigarettes are things that burn.
Incidentally, many of those who dislike Third Reich and Nazi analogies are those in the corporatocracy who have good REASON to avoid such comparisons. These are the same conspirators ("just doing business") who dislike and ridicule "conspiracy theorists." All too understandable.
Clues that the entire "smoking" campaign is a FRAUD:
· The very insurance companies that claim to be "anti-smoking" (instead of anti-Poisoning-of-Consumers) are the ones that INVEST heavily in cigarette manufacturers.
· These insurers also INSURE the cigarette manufacturers.
· Insurers also insure and invest in probably ALL of the cigarette additive and adulterant businesses.
· "Anti-Smoking" Congress members and other officials are funded by: (a) the above-mentioned insurance companies, (b) investors in the complicit companies, (c) chlorine-intensive pharmaceutical firms (some being suppliers of cig ingredients like artificial sweeteners, preservatives, flavorings, etc., etc., (d) For-Profit hospitals linked to the above industries, (e) any number of cigarette ingredient suppliers themselves such as paper, logging, ag-biz, sugar, spices, etc, etc.
· Judges, regulatory officials, legislators and even juries do not recuse themselves even though they have economic links to the industries in question.
· The "scientists" and "doctors" who use the industry language re/"smoking" and "tobacco" are often funded by or otherwise linked to the cigarette ingredient cartel. To not so much as DESCRIBE the nature of the very product they study is to create fraudulent, dishonest, integrity-free "science."
· Although cig radiation peril was publicized widely in the mid-80's, the radiation is STILL there! Koop himself once warned that this radiation was the cause of MOST "smoking-related" lung cancer. Not "radiation-related"? One guesses Koop was advised by nuclear interests and their insurers, et al, to lay off. Silent since.
· Attorney, Ron Motley, the one who brought most of the cig suits, is the SAME Ron Motley who saved the Asbestos Industry by "settlements" and who screwed untold numbers of asbestos victims out of rights to just compensation. The cig cartel picked its "enemy" well.
· "Settlements" do NOT forbid cigarette company subsidiaries like RJR or Kraft foods from partaking in rewards via nutrition programs or the like. That is, the victimizers will be profiting from sin taxes, etc., on their victims.
· "Settlements" do NOT forbid cig advertisers (who LIED about the nature of the products for DECADES) from profiting from ANTI "smoking" campaigns funded by the victims via sin taxes and price hikes.
· "Settlements" do NOT forbid cig insurance companies (some also cig investors) from being "reimbursed" for health care costs that were caused by their own economic properties and/or their own insurance clients.
· "Concern for the Kids" is proven false by utter failure to remove the cig ingredients that most dangerously affect the young (dioxins, primarily) or the additives that make rough, bitter tobacco (or whatever is in a typical cig) appealing and acceptable to the young.
· Information about extreme harms of dioxin exposures is available at the US EPA and other agencies and independent groups. Utterly IGNORED by anti-"smoking" forces in spite of HIGH levels of dioxin in typical cigs.
· There is NO study in the entire US regulatory system of the negative effects of unadulterated TOBACCO.. the ostensible focus of all the legislation. It is, of course, a scapegoat. Also, biologists will explain that NO natural plant, even tobacco and even incinerated, is CAPABLE of causing the litany of diseases blamed on tobacco.
· Anti-"smoking" pharmaceutical firms (a) often sell competing synthetic nicotine delivery devices; (b) may be contributors to cigarette composition; (c) do NOT want their precious chlorine to be indicted or even linked to "smoking" deaths and disease (as it is linked to Agent Orange, Times Beach, Love Canal, DDT, PCBs, etc.); (d) often make drugs that COMPETE with nicotine for stress/anxiety relief, alertness, appetite suppression and digestive aid; (e) hope to get Exclusive Patent Rights to nicotine for use in the above and also Alzheimer's and Parkinson's drugs for the upcoming Baby Boom oldsters; (f) AND are often the same firms that make cig pesticides.
· "Anti-tobacco" and "anti-smoking" groups are often funded by trhe above complicit industries or related Foundations.
This cigarette thing is being used to undermine the US tort system and further get the public out of the way of Criminal Corporations and their employees in "government." The campaign, cleverly, as before, uses the religious, cultural, and instinctive bias against natural plant "drugs," demonization of the "disobedient" and the falsely-attributed health concerns to gain public support. It happened before, with ongoing devasting consequences, in the prohibition of Hemp/Marijuana which, of course, loosed a global flood of checmicals and chemical-contaminated products on everyone and every animal on the planet via the industrial alternatives to hemp and marijuana. Not to mention deforestation, mass imprisonment, health costs, loss of a benign medicine, loss of farm land and so forth.
Except for the liability areas, the similarities and overlaps between the Reefer Madness campaign and Tobacco Madness are numerous. In most cases, it's the same exact industries and the same exact corporations that are involved. In fact, the same corporations and industries are involved globally with an endless list of health and environmental disasters. One important part of the "smoking" campaign is, of course, to lay as much blame as popssible for industrial-caused death and disease (from cigs or elsewhere) on a natural plant or victims' behavior. Their supreme achievement in the "smoking" campaign is persuading the "health-conscious" public (even Lefties) that the Corporatocracy, including the corporate media, is suddenly a concerned Consumer Advocate "getting tough" on the tobacco plant "for our protection." The most unanswerable question is: which are the bigger liars? The industrial cigarette makers or their business partners who pretend to condemn them?
(Documentation available.)