Brainwashing succeeds again

  It's no surprise, in this nanny state of Minnesota, that a statewide smoking ban is now in place. Adolph Hitler is no doubt spinning in his grave, screeching that he should be getting credit for it.

Let's all understand what this smoking ban really involves.

Any establishment, since the beginning of time, could have declared itself a non-smoking area. Forty years ago, almost none did. All they had to say was "No Smoking". Very few did. I said "since the beginning of time" because smoking has been around just about that long, all over the world, in virtually every civilization. That wasn't because of the now-demonized "Big Tobacco" companies; it was because huge numbers of people simply enjoyed smoking. It made them feel better. It was relaxing, and helped them think more clearly. All that has since been scientifically explained, but who needed the proof when the experience was available?

Having a smoke together became a symbolic gesture of friendliness, often related to peace and cooperation. It was an integral part of many societies, including American Indians, whose elders smoked on many special occasions, and invited selected outsiders to smoke with them. In my own lifetime, it used to be polite to offer a guest a cigarette. Even those who didn't smoke usually had a pack around for visitors. Some even carried a pack, and matches, just so they could offer one as a gesture of friendliness. Wherever people gathered, smokes and lights were offered around, sometimes even passed from person to person, just as many of you still do with joints.

It's likely that the European colonies first established in America would have completely failed had it not been for the growing of tobacco as a farm crop. Many of our early Presidents not only smoked, but also grew tobacco as a cash crop. Later leaders of the "free world", such as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, were not only smokers but their choice of smoke became part of their public image. Comrades in wartime have always offered each other smokes, to ease tension or just to share as friends.

What changed? Most of you are thinking that we all became aware of the dangers of smoking, and gradually came to our senses. Unfortunately, for all of you who actually believe that, you are the victims of a long and profitable brainwashing. In a nutshell... the bad-mouthing of smoking began with the cancer societies who were having no success in identifying cancer causes (they still aren't) and needed a scapegoat to blame... some straw man to attack and rally donations to themselves. They succeeded in corrupting the political Surgeon General to their cause, and the anti-smoking campaign was off and running.

It became clear, after decades of proclamations, that the trumpeted "dangers" of smoking were not convincing people to stop smoking. Smokers weren't buying into the scam. Then someone (I wish I knew who) came up with the brilliant idea of claiming that "secondhand" smoke was damaging NON-smokers. No, that idea wasn't based on evidence, and still isn't, but a massive campaign grew... to declare smokers guilty of harming others.

Over time, every conceivable deception has been perpetrated, expanded, and disseminated widely. The big lie, repeated loudly and constantly, is now accepted as "common knowledge". Here are just a couple of examples of ugly techniques that demonstrate the brainwashing:

We've all seen photos of "smoker's lungs"... disgusting and black, enough to scare the bejeebers out of many people. One small problem... they weren't photos of smoker's lungs, but photos of cancerous lungs... lungs that could just as easily have been from non-smokers. Medical examiners cannot tell a smoker's lung from a non-smoker's lung. Smokers' lungs are regularly transplanted, a real indication of the truth.

Often, cause of death can't be clearly determined. For a long time, it has been required that, in "normal" deaths, if the deceased was a smoker, the cause of death has been catalogued as "smoking". Naturally, that skews the truth dramatically, and the numbers are used as "proof" that smoking kills.

Anti-smoking has become a big industry, with big profits. The shameful tobacco settlement that has extracted billions of dollars from tobacco companies who then raised their prices to compensate, has funded thousands of "non-profits", employing tens of thousands of employees, who sucker others into donating to "the cause" of eliminating secondhand smoke. These organizations have literally competed with each other, "cooking" false numbers, making some "facts" up completely, and deliberately misinterpreting data, to out-exaggerate other groups. What we're left with is a complete farce, with no public idea what the truth really is.

The public has been bombarded with so many conflicting numbers, with so much repetition and guilt-laying fervor, that we've just given up and accepted that secondhand smoke kills lots and lots of people, when in fact it kills not one. Even those who suspect the blatant deception are likely to assume something like "if even a tenth of what I hear is true, it's bad enough to be against".

Amidst all this anti-smoking furor, and at the risk of being attacked by organizations getting wealthy on anti-smoking, many scientific studies have clearly shown that there is no truth to the secondhand smoke claims. The studies get buried or ignored. The World Health Organization buried its own study showing no harm. Media won't cover a study showing that "no danger exists" when they can tout wild claims that will scare and shock people into reading more. No advertising revenue will be generated from a "secondhand smoke isn't dangerous" headline, but any scare story about smoking will gather anti-smoking or quit-smoking advertising revenue.

As the anti-smoking hysteria has been perpetrated, politicians naturally jumped on board. Hounded by lobbyists of organizations funded directly from the pockets of smokers, most have succumbed to an opportunity to proclaim that they've "championed" public health, while deliberately ignoring evidence to the contrary.

Who's hurt?

Smokers certainly are, but we're used to it. We are the pariahs of society now. I actually had one adult man tell me that I should be prosecuted for murder for secondhand smoke. Government gets rich from higher taxes on tobacco than any other product. Anti-smoking organizations get rich from settlement money and donations to support more lies. Who are the smokers? Go watch the people who enter smoke shops... get an idea who the lies are harming most. I can tell you that there is a high percentage of women, and a great many senior citizens. Those two groups alone demonstrate the lies. Women outlive men, and if what you've been told about smoking were true, there just wouldn't be many senior citizen smokers left alive. Smokers tend to be poorer than average... people who have few personal luxuries except smoking... people who smoke to alleviate their personal ills and problems.

You're not likely to believe it, or perhaps even care, but we have all been greatly harmed by the anti-smoking campaign. Science has been perverted. Media has been perverted. Politics has been perverted (although that happens so often that it barely needs saying). A majority of Americans evidently now believe the great deception... an INVENTED FEAR. It is comparable in scope and almost in severity to a deception of early America... that Indians are savages and must be destroyed to protect ourselves.

We've all lost a chunk of our property rights in the process. Government has declared that they will decide what we can do and where... even on our own property... and they've done it based on the shabbiest, most deceptive big-money campaign in U.S. history. In case you haven't noticed, government never stops expanding its power over us. Smoking bans represent a huge loss in liberty for all of us, not just smokers. The fact that a minority of about 25% of the population can be persecuted so badly that all of us lose rights in the process... should scare the hell out of each of us, because it will serve as precedent over and over again.

Someday, when it's far too late to make any difference, we will all face the rude shock of realizing just how completely we've been bamboozled... what a thorough job of brainwashing we all suffered. When all the smokers are gone, when more of our individual rights have been obliterated, and "public health" hasn't improved, perhaps the remaining suckers will get a clue that anti-smoking was a disastrous but profitable fraud.