Pubdate: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA) Contact: 707/895-3355 Copyright: Anderson Valley Advertiser Author: John Jonik 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