Pipe Smokers Intelligencer

THOUGHTS FROM A SMOKING STETHOSCOPE JANUARY 15, 2010

The Doctor Is In

I am a pipe smoking family physician as well as a pipe carver (DR BOB PIPES) and I am appalled and angered by the anti-smoking propaganda that we pipe people have to labor under these days.

I plan to have articles like this one appear in the Intelligencer to help build facts that we all can use in some way. I applaud Craig Tarler and Fred Brown who are giving all of us some basis to use our freedom of speech to protest this anti-smoking nonsense.

Many of ushave sat around in our rooms at the pipe shows and dream of ways to fight our cause. Often we conclude we cannot do much because we feel powerless because of the lack of legal defense we could muster, primarily because of huge legal costs. Also what forum would we use?

I spoke to a pipe smoking attorney a few years ago and asked him why no attorneys would jump into this arena as it seems there would be plenty of legal cases. His answer was “Bob, there is no money in that for attorneys.”

One obvious way to fight would be to smoke in a banned place, get arrested, and then take it to court and win because of constitutional violations. This would set a precedent much like the victorious case won a few years ago in that restaurant in Pittsburgh, Pa. But who would be that sacrificial lamb and who would be that attorney who would step up to the plate?

In the meantime here we are starting to do our part and thus the Intelligencer. The antismokers (henceforth simply “anti’s”) are quite a group are they not? They use any and all means to promote their cause.

The followingare just a few of their twisted methods of operation • crusade • hypocrisy • political compromise and stunts • lies • unconstitutionality • stupidity. The crusade is a term I have used often and is so appropriate. Think about the old crusades. They were won by a group of passionates about a cause. They mustered all the power they could find by forging great instruments of destruction and enlisting those with strength and skill. They went forth to win AT ANY COST!!!! So go the anti’s as they will attempt to win at any cost.

Their cause is not really about stopping smoking but hating the smoker (like crushing the smoker as you would crush the butt of a cigarette). Yes, most of this is about cigarettes but kid not yourself as they are already drawing a bead on those of us who smoke a pipe or cigar; i.e.,the 2 reps from Tennessee who have proposed a bill to increase tax on pipe tobacco to as high as $25/lb .

So if we are to engage the enemy in this crusade, we must be informed and know truth, become informers or teachers to those close to us at home or in the workplace, be zealous and uncompromising, and willing to work hard and make personal sacrifices.

THE STUPID AND THE LIARS

Let us look at some of the distortions, stupidity and lies out there; this reminds me of a tornado-twisting to destruction everything in its path! The crusader knows how to distort facts and even produce outright falsification of facts especially in the medical science arena. We call it junk science.

The crusader knows how to use press releases giving false information before published data is available. A hot topic lately is the e-cigarette (ec) which is a device that vaporizes a liquid that has nicotine in it. It is a great invention that should save more lives as people will get primarily nicotine delivered and not the other 4,000 ingredients.

The ec is successfully being used in Europe. Well there are plenty of anti’s attacking. How about a look at stupidity. Two senators from New Jersey are asserting that ec’s are more dangerous than regular cigarettes and that this is a ploy by Big Tobacco (BT) to deceive people into thinking that ec’s are safer than regular ones. Ec’s have a trace of carcinogens plus nicotine while regular cigs have over 40 know carcinogens.

 And BT has nothing to do with ec’s, in fact they don’t even make them nor do they market them!!! So, what are the senators really saying? That real cigs are safer than ec’s?

These stups need a course in basic science. Recently the FDA tried to stop the import of ec’s coming into the U.S. because they were a device/drug. But a U.S. District Court ruled against this and stated it was a tobacco product and thus would fall into that category.

A device or drug would have to go through tight clinical and/or epidemiological trials which could take 20 years before they could say this product decreases diseases. Obviously this would be a fatal blow to the device (ec’s) for it could be taken off the market because it had not conducted those trials. If left to be a tobacco product, then the tobacco act precludes the FDA from regulating any tobacco product.

One of the militant crusaders is The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and they argue that the FDA should regulate ec’s because they represented a clear blow to public health. So those dummies are saying that smoking cigarettes is healthier than ec’s.

Ec’s represent a great way for current cigarette smokers to quit and to prevent former smokers from relapsing back into regular cigarettes and those 40 carcinogens. And would you believe that some of the stronger voices against ec’s (as being health hazards) are the Big Pharma companies that make stop smoking products like the pills or the patches? Gee would getting into their financial pockets possibly be motivating them?

The lies are astounding especially from the standpoint of the scientific standards that are to be followed by research groups. There have been multiple smoking bans initiated by many countries and then a year later, these groups have published false outcomes. They all showed a considerable drop in heart attack rates.

One study is from Swiss Medical Weekly in which they showed a 22 percent drop in heart attacks after the ban started. The problem with that study is that there were no comparison groups. There should have been studies in other towns of similar size as the decrease may have been from a general secular downward trend secondary to controlling cholesterol and hypertension and improved medical treatment of heart attacks.

That Swiss town has a large transient population of vacationers and the rate of heart attacks were the same among residents and none residents. If the rate truly dropped then it should have been much lower in the residents as one would not expect it from transients staying there for a week or two.

Another lie came from the Institute of Medicine Committee on Second Hand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events in which they reported they conducted a comprehensive review of published and unpublished data on the effects of smoking bans on the rate of heart attacks.

In a separate communication they even said they did not look at the unpublished data which included the countries of the United States, Scotland, England, Wales, Denmark and the states of Florida, California, New York, and Oregon. This latter list of studies from these countries and states showed NO EFFECT ON HEART ATTACK RATES FROM THE SMOKING BAN.

So the IOM could not resist some lying. There is so much out there nowadays regarding info relative to smoking that it is hard to keep up with it.

Hopefully these summaries of crusader tactics will be helpful and will give us all something useful to see the truth.

 More crusader stuff latter…. Dr. Bob