TOBACCO WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE A HEALTH ISSUE

by Jane Gaffin

WHITEHORSE, Yukonslavia - People shouldn't be nearly as scared of contracting cancer from moderate use of tobacco or so-called "second-hand" smoke as they should fear the invincible amoeba spreading unchecked throughout every government body down to the infestation of the smallest organ in our city council.

The health hazards are not tobacco but government bureaucrats turned loose off their leashes to stick their noses where they don't belong.

The real victims of laws that attempt to govern moral values are the honest, clean-cut residents and the honest, hard-working entrepreneurs.

The proper function between government and the people should be "hands off". Otherwise, a slave-to-master system materializes.

The Marxist-Leninist tribe wants the "free-market economy" buried underground where it will transform into a sleazy "black-market economy" by prohibiting what is a legitimate product and practice.

The United Nations demonized tobacco by brainwashing the public with fradulent "health issue" propaganda in order to launch a crusade against the rich, powerful tobacco corporations to strip their legal rights. Tobacco manufacturers are merely a stepping stone to breaking the back of capitalism.

Anti-tobacco laws are directed wherever too much "democracy" still lingers in industrialized nations for the likings of the mafioso institution that harbors a Communist mindset to establish a One-World Government.

Tobacco lawsuits have set the precedent for a perilous legal pattern in which common law protections have been systematically stripped away. Both the U.S. and Canada governments have accomplished their goals by passing laws that specifically trash tobacco.

By extracting the common law protections for a certain class, governments were able to ensure that no tobacco company could receive a fair trial in any court.

Also on the hit list are mining corporations, petroleum producers, gun manufacturers, book publishers, Internet, food producers, cattle ranchers, dairy and poultry farmers, restaurant chains, distillers and brewers of alcoholic beverages, to name a few.

The automobile manufacturing industry has been a tougher nut to crack.

No loud overtures have been made about the pharmaceutical corporations. Their dangerous drugs will undoubtedly be needed to subdue the masses so they'll be easier to control.

Governments of all levels have taken up the fascist chant to prevent private enterprisers from effecting the best rules for running their businesses.

Smoking bans drive away business from cafes and bars where people like to socialize. Communists don't like people socializing. When people socialize, they secretly plot vigilantism and rebellions.

The United Nations and other bureaucracies don't have the legitimate right to stop people from smoking. But they have been getting away with dictating what's best for you because nobody stopped them.

In any nanny-statism culture, there is no end to bureaucrats--armed enforcers, connivers, snivelers, environmental-influence peddlers and politicians--who act as though every person's body belongs to the state. They think its their God-given rights to have a say over your physical well-being.

People's birthrights to think and say and do what lives in their hearts and minds as right have been hijacked by a force called too many damned laws penned by too many brainwashed bureaucrats and passed by too many vote-hungry politicians who have joined the United Nations' crusades.

The Ottawa government sent out gun cops to effect firearms confiscation on the pretense of "safety". Now health cops are out to prevent tobacco smoking and the consumption of alcohol, fats, sugar, salt and meat.

Prohibition of anything doesn't work.

Books went underground in the Soviet Union, as did alcohol in the United States during the 1920s. The present-day War on Drugs hasn't worked and neither will the War on Tobacco.

Tobacco manufacturers are moving factories to hotter climes of developing countries where peasants will happily grow their crops year round for cheaper wages.

Tobacco will go underground, taking billions from Canada's already skimpy tax base. It will be added to the list of other goods smuggled by an organized industry for lordly profits. The money will feed the nests of terrorists who hide out in the U.S. and Canada at the behest of the United Nations.

Hypocritical governments are hooked on tobacco like everything else they prohibit.

To hold onto a monopoly of crime, a government has to make more laws to feed the public purse through fines and turn more people into criminals with charges.

Both measures keep enforcement officers, judges, lawyers, the penal system--and all the attendant bureaucrats employed in ever-expanding bureaucracies--busy and off the streets.

If by some miracle, the government won the War on Drugs (fat chance) or the War on Tobacco (fat chance), the overstock of bureaucrats could go home.

But the government can't. It would short-circuit the whole unemployment, welfare and pension system.

Bureaucrats fight to keep bad laws in place and aid and abet the passage of additional bad laws to continue expanding their bureaucratic kingdoms.

The Whitehorse city council can't see its way clear to operate a good transit schedule, nor keep rutty streets clear and the slippery intersections graveled.

Neither are the bylaw officers enforcing the rule that owners are supposed to clear sidewalks in front of their properties.

So, why would anybody pay heed to yet one more bylaw that the city passed just to rejoice in its ability to concoct new crimes?

It would cost a bundle to hire a new contingent of health cops to inspect every restaurant and hotel lobby within the city limits in search of sinners.

So, the city placed the onus on owners to do the policing, just as owners already provide free tax collection service for every level of government.

As per the Whitehorse Star's Feb. 4 editorial, the owner of Global Taxi Service told council that his drivers have endured several bad incidents from angry passengers who aren't supposed to smoke in cabs any more.

Why not? Global Taxi is not a public transit but rather a privately-owned conveyance that invites the public to subscribe to its services.

If drivers and passengers want to smoke in the confines of a car, smoke. A fine is better than being beat up by a belligerent passenger. Bylaws of this nature that haven't been thought through properly can cause violence. When the smoking ban came to New York restaurants, an enraged customer killed the in-house enforcement officer, ala bouncer.

Most assuredly, it was not smokers of legal tobacco products who escalated crime to biblical proportions in this community. But now the city council is aiding and abetting the crime rate by going after smokers.

It gives the illusion that city council tightened controls on a politically-correct "health" issue. The "health" issue that should be addressed relates to the defenseless victims who are mugged, beaten and raped on public streets and in their own beds--or murdered--and elderly pedestrians who are injured trying to negotiate treacherous city streets on their canes and walkers.

Now, frustrated smokers will exacerbate the crime rate brought about as a "health" issue.

The city seems not to have learned that laws must be sensible to the people on whom they are enforced and must always be grounded in principles of rights.

As the late U.S. Senator William Borah said in 1917: "No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Copyright 2004 diArmani.com