The United Pro Choice Smokers Rights Newsletter


May 19, 2000 Issue # 68 The Smoker's Club, Inc.
CONTENTS

1. Is Being Hooked A Choice?

2. Sharp Rise Studied In Tobacco Tax

3. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grants & Contracts

4. "Zero Tolerance" Must End Now

5. Federal Rape Law Unconstitutional

6. Report Finds Cancer Rates Declining

7. Drug Giant To Face Lawsuit Over Ritalin

8. We Are Everyday People

9. From The Mailbag


Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

Is Being Hooked A Choice?
The act and the behavior of using or consuming a drug -- regardless of what it is -- is a choice, and people engage in those kinds of behaviors for reasons.

Sharp Rise Studied In Tobacco Tax:
Ottawa -- Finance Minister Paul Martin is proposing to raise tobacco taxes by as much as $15 a carton, restoring them to levels that existed before Ottawa and the provinces slashed taxes in 1994 to fight smuggling.


Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grants & Contracts:
List of Organizations, Institutions, Companies & Groups. Some of the tobacco-related funding promotes nicotine research and smoking cessation, which in turn benefits Johnson & Johnson, one of the biggest producers of smoking cessation products.

"Zero Tolerance" Must End Now :
It's the juvenile equivalent of racial profiling, where a group of people is deprived of their rights, their lives disrupted and perhaps ruined, based on an unfair perception of their probable guilt.

Federal Rape Law Unconstitutional:
Women do not have a civil right not to be raped.... The federal government can't prosecute the criminal on it's own; we can't sue the criminal in federal court; we can't sue the State for not prosecuting the criminal.

Report Finds Cancer Rates Declining:
...all cancers combined declined on average 0.8 percent per year between 1990 and 1997.

Drug Giant To Face Lawsuit Over Ritalin:
The first of what could become a barrage of lawsuits over Ritalin, the controversial medicine prescribed for hyper-active children, has been launched by American lawyers.


We Are Everyday People:

Smoking vs. Non-Smoking Poll

(800) 578-7453 Brown & Williamson Tobacco. Listen to the recording. (Funny stuff!)

Clinton Face Warp: Use your mouse to change Clinton's face

Carla Howell: for U.S. Senate 2000. Libertarian/Massachusetts

David Euchner: for Congress 2000. Libertarian/Massachusetts

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) -- In a major victory for cigarette makers, the state's highest court ruled Tuesday that Maryland smokers seeking damages from the nation's tobacco companies cannot join together in a class-action lawsuit.

From The Mailbag:

If the world were only 100 people, there would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from North and South America
8 Africans
25 smokers
52 female
48 male
70 nonwhite, 30 white
59% of the entire world's wealth would belong to only 6 people, all citizens of the USA
80 live in substandard housing
70 unable to read
50 suffer malnutrition
1 near death
1 near birth
1 has a college education
99 will not see this, 1 would have a computer.

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TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES

America: The Good Neighbor.

Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator, gave widespread but only partial news coverage recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them even an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."

Stand proud, America!