Smoke Nazis or 1930s Nazi: Little Difference in Tactics

Present-day anti-smoking forces are following the same blueprint that Adolph Hitler used in his hopes for a smoke-free Nazi Germany. Smoke Nazis' quest for control and regulatory power closely mirror the original National Socialists of 1930s Germany.

We list the Nazi anti-smoking accomplishments alongside of those of the Smoke Nazis.

It reveals where the Health Nazis are headed.




* The Nazis banned tobacco advertising and financed huge public relations campaigns to propagandize people into giving up smoking.

In April 1970, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio starting on January 2, 1971. The Virginia Slims brand was in the last commercial shown, with "a 60-second revue from flapper to Female Lib", shown at 11:59 p.m. on January 1 during a break on The Tonight Show.

* The first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party in every German university, post office, military hospital and Nazi Party office, under the auspices of Karl Astel's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself. Major anti-tobacco campaigns were widely broadcast by the Nazis until the demise of the regime in 1945.

In 1975, the U.S. state of Minnesota enacted the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act, making it the first state to ban smoking in most public spaces. To begin with, restaurants were required to have No Smoking sections, and bars were exempt from the Act. As of 1 October 2007, Minnesota signed into law a ban on smoking completely from all restaurants and bars throughout the state. This is the Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007. In 1990, the city of San Luis Obispo, California, U.S.A. became the first city in the world to ban indoor smoking at all public places, including bars and restaurants.

There are now 35 states with some form of smoking ban on the books.

* A ban on smoking in private vehicles was called for.

Gain for anti-smoking movement: No puffs allowed in private vehicles
BERKELEY, CAL--Some hospitals have banned smoking inside a person's own vehicle if it's on hospital property, a step viewed as logical by the anti-smoking movement but repugnant to its critics.

* The term "passive smoking" (Passivrauchen) was coined by the Nazi Anti-Tobacco League. Its author, Fritz Lickint, offered no supporting evidence to claim that smokers poisoned everyone around them, while also stating that drinking coffee caused cancer.

Fact: In 1995 The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a review of the EPA report [on second-hand smoke.] The CRS was highly critical of both the EPA's methods and conclusions.

Fact: According to the CRS "The studies relied primarily on questionnaires to the case and control members, or their surrogates, to determine EST [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] exposure and other information pertinent to the studies.

"


* The Nazi anti-smoking crusade was unleashed with the help of manufactured junk science on behalf of the medical and health establishment, one such example being that smoking caused "spontaneous abortions" in pregnant women.

Cherry-picked Science on Secondhand Smoke
In a recent paper entitled “Sorting Out Junk Science,” published by the American Council on Science and Health, a toxicologist notes that she most often sees junk science when a regulatory agency “puts political objectives ahead of scientific integrity.” It occurs, for example, when an agency adopts a political position and then “selectively seeks data that support and further that position, even to the point of actively excluding any results which are inconsistent with that position.”
Results that are inconsistent with the desired position (banning smoking) are simply excluded.

* Hitler attempted to price out smoking for Germans, levying huge taxes on cigarettes.

"On June 3, the state cigarette tax increased by $1.25, to $2.75. With the $1.50 city tax, the total retail price for a pack is now the highest in the country—around $9."
--NY Magazine: The Unsmokables

"More states that haven't (raised taxes) should do so. This will stop tax-skirting smuggling of cigarettes from low-tax to high-tax states and discourage youth smoking," Todd said.
--American Cancer Society: How to Fight Teen Smoking

Despite the Nazi propaganda crusade against smoking, tobacco sales increased in Germany, leading some history professors to hypothesize that smoking was an act of cultural resistance against fascism, until the late 1930's after smoking was banned in most public buildings and tobacco sales rapidly declined.

This war against smoking is being waged by the same types who were responsible for Prohibition. Smoke Nazis come in different flavors.

For some, it's a misguided attempt to remake society into a "better place"--and, of course, they get to define "better". The urge to feel morally superior to evil smokers is practically overwhelming for this breed of Smoke Nazi.

For others, it's all about control: nothing can quite duplicate the feeling of telling others what to do for this brand of Smoke Nazi. They are most like the Nazis of the 1930s: it was also about control for them as well.




If you smoke, then it's open season on your personal freedom of choice. Smoke Nazis had good teachers: the original Nazis had no use for choice; they wanted smoking gone at any price. However,smokers can take heart: they won't be the last to be singled out by the Health Nazis.

Sadly, many non-smokers stand on the sidelines, while their neighbors, friends and family are systematically demonized. They wrongly think that they have no side in this fight. They don't smoke, but smoking doesn't bother them, so they don't care who wins.

These non-smoking bystanders are dead wrong: it will affect them, sooner or later.

If smoking were outlawed (as happened to marijuana in the 1930s) completely, the Smoke Nazis won't stop their crusades to remake the world in their image. The overweight, the too-heavily perfumed, the junk-food eaters, the wearers of leather shoes and coats: these are next on the list of behaviors that some people find offensive. It's in the nature of the people calling the shots.

Once a Smoke Nazi tastes blood, they become insatiable.

by Mondoreb
Sources/images:
* Tobacco advertising
* Today's Anti-Smoking Purge Is Borrowed From The Nazis, Smoking is healthier than fascism
* infowars
* tommcmahon
*free-vegetarian.thumbnail.jpg"> myconfinedspace
* Smoking ban
* davehitt/facts
* Junk Science
* How to Fight Teen Smoking
* Higher cigarette taxes have smokers gasping

Nanny State: Personal Freedom Ends Where The Smoke Nazis Rule

Second-hand Smoke Caution Signs on WV Bars

Latest evidence of the Smoke Nazis

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty, and to protect us from all risks and especially from ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
--Preamble, U.S. Constitution

The Preamble to the Constitution really does not contain the words above in red. There is a segment of government and society, however, that is confused on this issue: those boosters of Big Government and the Nanny State.

Wikipedia defines The Nanny State as "a derogatory term that refers to state protectionism, economic interventionism, or regulatory policies, and the perception that these policies are becoming institutionalized as common practice."

It's a sign of how far down the road to Nannyism the U.S. has traveled that the Wiki definition includes the qualifier, "the perception that these policies are becoming institutionalized as common practice." Anyone who is older than 21-years-old can remember a time when their lives weren't bound by a steady stream of laws, regulations, edicts and criminal penalties churned out by the Nanny State's most recognizable stormtroopers: the Smoke and Health Nazis.

Anyone older than 30 can even remember when the words "A man's home is his castle" actually meant something in a court of law. And anyone older than 40 can recall when those five words--sure to a rile any Nannyist--were commonplace: "Ain't none of your business".

The incident that sparked these reminiscences was the appearance, on the door of the neighborhood tavern, of the sign pictured at the beginning of this post. It's a sign that has been ordered to be placed on every bar and tavern in the state of West Virginia.

It's merely the latest salvo in the on-going war against personal habits and behavior among consenting adults. On one typical evening at this same tavern, a count of the establishment's 22 patrons showed 18 of them participating in the cautionary act of smoking. The Smoke Nazis may not realize it, but the "CAUTION" sign had its expected effect: when warning signs proliferate and appear on the most mundane activities, there's a inclination to ignore all of them.

Smoking is not the only front in the war for a Euro-style Nanny State in America, but it's only the hottest one.

We won't delve into the dishonesty of anti-smoking officials and their manipulation of statistics and studies to further their agenda: that would occupy a roomful of researchers--working around the clock--for years.



Or, the fact that looking to the Lung Association and other anti-smoking groups for reliable, non-biased statistics and information is akin to depending on the Democratic National Committee for information and news about conservative causes.

As Reason's Jacob Sullum wrote in 2006:

According to Surgeon General Richard Carmona, secondhand smoke is so dangerous that you'd be better off if you stopped going to smoky bars and started smoking instead. "Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke," claims the press release that accompanied his new report on the subject, "has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer."

Among smokers, these diseases take many years to develop. So if you got your health tips from the surgeon general, you'd start smoking a pack a day as a protective measure.

But you may want to look elsewhere for medical advice. Carmona is so intent on promoting smoking bans—a key element of the government's campaign to reduce cigarette consumption—that he absurdly exaggerates the hazards of secondhand smoke, hoping to generate enough public alarm to banish smokers from every location outside the home.

As the report itself makes clear, there is no evidence that brief, transient exposure to secondhand smoke has any effect on your chance of developing heart disease or lung cancer.

So the report admits that, as far as bar patrons go, second-hand smoke is essentially what it always has been to the non-smoker in a social setting: a nuisance.

However, if second-hand smoke was merely a nuisance, there wouldn't be much need for the government to step in and regulate it. Citizens don't mind staying home if there's a quarantine. If a dire public health hazard threatens, most people don't mind giving up a little personal freedoms for a short while to combat it.

That's explains the never-ending, dishonest campaign against second-hand smoke. One would hope that there would be a great outcry if the government was seen as stripping people of personal freedoms in the name of a nuisance.

Hence, the "CAUTION" sign that's been slapped on bars and taverns all over the state of West Virginia: it softens up the populace for the next Smoke Nazi bid for more control. We have a real problem: the state wouldn't mandate "CAUTION" signs for a nuisance.

Would they?

The studies that link secondhand smoke to these illnesses involve intense, long-term exposure, typically among people who have lived with smokers for decades.

Even in these studies, it's difficult to demonstrate an effect, precisely because the doses of toxins and carcinogens bystanders passively absorb are much smaller than the doses absorbed by smokers, probably amounting to a fraction of a cigarette a day. Not surprisingly, the epidemiological studies cited by the surgeon general's report find that the increases in lung cancer and heart disease risks associated with long-term exposure to secondhand smoke are small, on the order of 20 to 30 percent.

It only takes two things for a focused campaign to strip people's freedoms to succeed: a over-zealous cabal who stand to profit by the changes (the Lung Association, American Cancer Society and other anti-smoking groups depend on donations of anti-smokers); and, an apathetic, ignorant or uninformed general public.

One day soon, there may be those too young to remember when people routinely went to bars and taverns to unwind with a beer and a smoke. That would be too bad; because the day the Smoke Nazis gain total victory and outlaw smoking completely--does anyone doubt that is where they are taking us?--is the day that they turn their undivided attention to another personal habit, another personal choice, another freedom.

The real hazard is not bar patrons unwinding--some choosing to smoke, other declining the opportunity.

The real threat to public safety and welfare are the dedicated minions of the Nanny State: the Smoke Nazis who KNOW what's better for you than you yourself do.

Some Americans live for the day when the only warning labels mandated by government would be those required for Smoke Nazis: that obnoxious, arrogant clique that spends their lives instructing everyone else on how to live theirs.



by Mondoreb




Sources:
* usconstitution.net
* Nanny State
* A Pack of Lies
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