HOW TO PREVENT
LUNG CANCER

This site assists in opposing lung cancer by providing educational information from medical journals on tobacco's overall adverse health effects, and provides an overview legal context as well.   (For information on tobacco role in other lung diseases, click here.)   At this site, let's start by looking at data on the role of cigarettes in lung cancer.

Cigarettes contain toxic chemicals including radioactivity and a record of containing coumarin. The term is "Toxic Tobacco Smoke" (TTS). These toxic substances impair the immune system. This combination makes cigarettes a risk factor in lung cancer.

"Those first few puffs on a cigarette can within minutes cause genetic damage linked to cancer. . . . In fact, researchers said the 'effect is so fast that it's equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream,'" says "Smoking causes gene damage in minutes" (15 January 2011).

"Contrary to [myth] that it takes years of smoking before the toxins in tobacco cause damage to the DNA in the cells -- possibly leading to lung cancer -- researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that such genetic damage occurs within minutes," says "Study: Damage from smoking appears within minutes"—Judy Siegel-Itzkovich (16 January 2011). "Researchers at University of Minnesota call their findings a 'stark warning' to those tempted to start smoking, already lighting up."

By 1836, pursuant to doctor's centuries of experience analyzing causation data, it was well-established "that thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking. . . . How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison. A man will die of an infusion of tobacco as of a shot through the head." —Samuel Green, New England Almanack and Farmer's Friend (1836). You read the year right, 1836.

Normal Lung
Smoke-Damaged Lung
Normal Lungs
Damaged Lungs

During the nineteenth century, a number of physicians had observed TTS-induced lung disease, even lung cancer, incidents. Sort of hard to not observe it, eh?! Contrary to tobacco lobby disinformation to the public.

Of course, the tobacco lobby, as its internal documents show. The tobacco lobby had "evidence clearly linking smoking and lung cancer was available decades before the American medical establishment publicly affirmed that link. The archive reaches back more than 200 years." See the article "Doctor, collector holds 'smoking gun' on tobacco and health at University of Alabama center" (Monday, 1 September 2008).

By 1900 lung cancer had become the most common organ cancer in men. Soon there were so many such incidents that in 1912, a book elaborating this was published by Dr. Isaac Adler, Primary Malignant Growths of the Lungs and Bronchi: A Pathological and Clinical Study (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912).

Thousands of articles on the tobacco link to conditions including lung cancer have been published since. This site references the most pertinent as an overview.

First, let's note that "Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer . . . the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking far outweighs all other factors," a fact referenced by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW), Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, PHS Pub 1103, p 31 (1964). "The risk of developing lung cancer increases with duration of smoking and the number of cigarettes smoked per day . . . Cigarette smoking is much more important than occupational exposures in the causation of lung cancer in the general population."

"Repeated exposure to tobacco smoke makes lung cancer much worse, and one reason is that it steps up inflammation in the lung," say Steve Benowitz, Hiroyuki Takahashi, Hisanobu Ogata, and Reiko Nishigaki, in "Tobacco smoke causes lung inflammation and promotes lung cancer growth," Cancer Cell, 19 January 2010.

In addition to the evidence that one's own TTS exposure causes lung cancer, modern medical evidence also "provides compelling confirmation that breathing other people's tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer."—A. K. Hackshaw, M. R. Law, and N. J. Wald, "The accumulated evidence on lung cancer and environmental tobacco smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (18 Oct 1997).

Lung cancer typically involves impaired breathing, the same factor in children who die of SIDS. Cigarettes, when lit, emit deleterious emissions, e.g., carbon monoxide, 42,000 ppm, even though it is unsafe above around 100 ppm. See the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) book, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, PHS Pub 1103, Table 4, p 60 (1964).

"Carbon monoxide is a dangerous substance. The molecule binds more strongly to the hemoglobin in the blood than does oxygen. A person breathing air that contains even a small percentage (one part in 250) of carbon monoxide may die of suffocation."—Gordon P. Johnson, Bonnie B. Barr, and Michael D. Leyden, Physical Science (New York: Addison-Wesly Pub Co, Inc, 1988), pp 298-299. Note that 1/250 = 40,000 ppm; cigarette smoke contains more than that (42,000 ppm), i.e., is not "fresh and pure air."

Impaired breathing increases the workload—to keep the tissues supplied with oxygen and removes wastes—on the heart, so increases heart disease and SIDS.

Data linking TTS and cancer have long been known. Here are pertinent words from Drs. Herbert L. Lombard and Carl B. Doering, "Cancer Studies . . . Habits, Characteristics and Environment of Individuals With And Without Cancer," 198 New England Journal of Medicine (#10) 481-487 (26 April 1928). They published a 1925 chart showing already then existing data on premature deaths among smokers at a higher rate than among nonsmokers. Here are key words they reprinted from the 1925 chart (Table 19, p 485):

TYPE OF CANCERPREMATURE DEATH
Bladder
   60%
Cheek
100%
Esophagus
   77%
Intestines
100%
Jaw
100%
Leg
50%
Lip
92%
Lung
100%
Miscellaneous
60%
Neck
83%
Pancreas
33%
Prostate
100%
Rectum
88%
Stomach
82%
Throat
54%
Tongue
100%

"The use of tobacco has long been considered a factor in the incidence of cancer of the buccal cavity . . . Heavy smoking is more common in the cancer group than among the controls," Lombard & Doering, 198 N Eng J Med 485, 487, supra.

Contrary to myth that the "ultrahazardous" danger of second hand TTS is new, the fact is that TTS' deleterious effects on nonsmokers were known over a century ago. As a result, for example, the City of New Orleans banned smoking in street cars (enclosed spaces). When challenged, the TTS ban was upheld in the case of State v Heidenhain, 42 La Ann 483; 7 So 621; 21 Am St Rep 388 (1890).

Old data helps to rebut various myths about the timing of when the cigarette lung cancer link was learned. Those myths are in, essence, different styles of claims that allege extreme recency of the discovery. Not so. See for example a recent article citing data back to 1910: Giles G, Hill DJ, Silver B, "The Lung Cancer Epidemic in Australia, 1910-1989," 15 Australian Journal of Public Health 245-247 (1991).

Underlying the adverse impact of cigarettes' toxic chemicals on the body, damaging the immune system, is the fact that cigarettes contain well-established deleterious ingredients. This fact is so well-established in medicine that an appellate court took judicial notice of the fact, in the case of Banzhaf v Federal Communications Comm'n, 132 US App DC 14, 29; 405 F2d 1082, 1097 (1968) cert den 396 US 842 (1969).

For details, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking: 25 Years of Progress: a Report of the Surgeon General, Publication CDC 89-8411, Table 7, pp 86-87 (1989), lists examples of deleterious ingredients including but not limited to:

acetaldehyde (1.4+ mg)arsenic (500+ ng)benzo(a)pyrene (.1+ ng)
cadmium (1,300+ ng)crotonaldehyde (.2+ µg)chromium (1,000+ ng)
ethylcarbamate 310+ ng)formaldehyde (1.6+ µg)hydrazine (14+ ng)
lead (8+ µg)nickel (2,000+ ng)radioactive polonium (.2+ Pci)

             Re the issue of coumarin as a "lung-specific carcinogen," there is now revealed a formerly secret document, "Project Coumarin - Top Secret." It reveals Philip Morris' concern that public health officials might learn of coumarin as an additive in cigarettes. It advised how to obstruct public health investigations. A copy is at the Philip Morris Document Site, reference "Bates Number" 2501046314/6317, URL, http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2501046314/6317.

          Actually, judicial notice of cigarettes' TTS deleteriousness was taken as long ago as pursuant to an an 1897 Iowa law. An 1897 Tennessee law did likewise, see the case of Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 566-7; 48 SW 305, 306; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) affirmed 179 US 343 (1900). Michigan soon thereafter (1909) passed a law banning unsafe cigarettes, law number MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

          Due to cigarettes' deleterious nature and ingredients, they, when lit, emit deleterious emissions constituting "Toxic tobacco smoke" (TTS). The pertinent legal adjective is "ultrahazardous."

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW), Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, PHS Pub 1103, Table 4, p 60 (1964), lists examples of cigarettes' deleterious TTS emissions (contrasted to the chemicals' "speed limits" [official term, "Threshold Limit Value," "TLV"] set by the safety rule 29 CFR § 1910.1000) including but not limited to:

Substance
Quantity
"Speed Limit/TLV"
acetaldehyde 3,200 ppm
200.0 ppm
acrolein 150 ppm
0.5 ppm
ammonia 300 ppm
150.0 ppm
carbon monoxide 42,000 ppm
100.0 ppm
formaldehyde 30 ppm
5.0 ppm
hydrogen cyanide 1,600 ppm
10.0 ppm
hydrogen sulfide 40 ppm
20.0 ppm
methyl chloride 1,200 ppm
100.0 ppm
nitrogen dioxide 250 ppm
5.0 ppm

          In view of the above data, we now know that an underlying factor in the massive adverse effects cigarettes cause, is that their vast quantities of toxic chemicals impair the immune system. The underlying fact about TTS is that its massive quantities of toxic chemicals cause

"mutations of cellular genetic structures, deviation of cellular characteristics from their optimal normal state [leading to] a body-wide spectrum of disease."—R. T. Ravenholt, M.D., M.P.H., writing in 307 N Engl J Med (#5) 312 (29 July 1982).

"Loss of activation of [normality] leads to a variety of immunologic disorders characterized by autoimmunity or immunodeficiency . . . Major immunologic abnormalities result from alterations in the mature T-cell subsets."—Ellis L. Reinherz, M.D. and Stuart F. Schlossman, M.D., "Regulation of the Immune Response—Inducer and Suppressor T-Lymphocyte Subsets in Human Beings," 303 N Engl J Med 370-373 (14 Aug 1980).

All regular smokers are harmed; all do and/or will get lung cancer unless they die of something else first. "No man who smokes daily can be said to be at any time in perfect health."—John I. D. Hinds, Ph.D., The Use of Tobacco (Nashville, Tenn: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1882), p 100.

"In 1963, Dr. [Oscar] Auerbach and his associates reported the results of an investigation that should settle the controversy of smoking and cancer once and for all.

"[They] collected 100,000 slides of cells from the bronchial tubes of . . . men and women who had died . . . from various causes . . . it was specifically established that the greatest cell damage occurred in the people who had been the heaviest smokers for the longest periods.

"Not only were precancer cells identified on the slides of heavy smokers, but actually cancer cells were found on slides of people who had died from something else. Had they lived, they would have developed lung cancer in addition to their other ailments."—Alton Ochsner, M.D., Smoking and Your Life (New York: Julian Messner Pub, 1954 rev 1964), p 23.

Dr. Ochsner himself "first began to notice the relationship between heavy smoking and lung cancer in 1936, and . . . reported [his] observations to the profession. So consistent was the relationship that, upon learning a new patient's smoking habits, I could foretell his type and extent of cancerous damage which surgery subsequently revealed," p 22, supra.

          The bottom line is this: "There is no such thing as spontaneous generation. Nothing comes from nothing. Something causes cancer to appear," Ochsner, supra, p 20. We know what that "something" is. See also the article, "Smoking turns on genes -- permanently" (29 August 2007): "'Those genes and functions which do not revert to normal levels upon smoking cessation may provide insight into why former smokers still maintain a risk of developing lung cancer,' according to Raj Chari, first author of the study." (See also tobacco and birth defects data).

Note that "tobacco companies continue to knowingly slaughter their customers, seeking to replace those who die with gullible young substitutes. Conferences on lung cancer . . . would be almost unnecessary if cigarettes, cigars, hookahs and other nicotine "delivery systems" had not been invented," says Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, "Suicide (and murder) by cigarette" Jerusalem Post (25 November 2006).

"Lung cancer in older women has doubled since the 1970s" (7 March 2011). "Experts say the disease is occurring amongst those who started smoking in the 1970s and 1980s, many of whom never" [recovered from the addiction and brain damage].

          There is a marked contrast between smokers and nonsmokers. Smokers ALWAYS get lung cancer as above stated. As shown next, nonsmokers NEVER do.

          Due to the prevalence of others' TTS, so-called nonsmokers are in fact regularly poisoned with cigarettes’ illegal massive, "ultrahazardous," toxic chemicals.

"It has rightly been observed that, if a 'non-smoker' is strictly construed as one who has never had any contact with tobacco-smoke, non-smokers in any . . . urban society are virtually non-existent. Not only, in such societies, is practically everyone exposed to passive inhalation of tobacco smoke, but a very considerable number of 'non-smokers' have once tried . . . smoking before renouncing the practice."—Paul S. Larson, Ph.D., H. B. Haag, M.D., and Herbert Silvette, Ph.D., "Measurement of Tobacco Smoking," 88 Medical Times (#4) 417-429, at p 425 (April 1960).

          To find “the purest nonsmoking population that can be obtained in the USA,” one researcher analyzed lung cancer data on “the Amish population . . . in Lancaster County [Pennsylvania].” “The study was initiated to [ascertain] the incidence of lung cancer among a pure nonsmoking population . . . .” The result: no lung cancer, none, zero, “no reported cases of lung cancer for the nonsmoking Amish population.—G. H. Miller, Ph.D., “Lung Cancer: A Comparison of Incidence Between the Amish and Non-Amish in Lancaster County,” 76 J Indiana State Med Assn (#2) 121-123 (February 1983).

          Such data refutes those who pretend that nonsmokers get the same conditions as smokers, alleging that the only difference is a somewhat lower rate. What such advocates are committing is fraud. The true rate in nonsmokers is zero (0).

          Genuine nonsmokers, people NEVER exposed to second-hand smoke, never get lung cancer. "Dr. Oscar Auerbach, professor of pathology at New York Medical College and senior medical investigator at the Veterans Administration Hopsital, East Orange, N.J., has repeatedly stated that he has never seen a case of epidermoid or undifferentiated bronchogenic carcinoma in a nonsmoker."—Alton Ochsner, M.D., Smoking and Your Life (New York: Julian Messner Pub, 1954), pp 22-23.

          Additional studies showing the risk that TTS poses to so-called nonsmokers in terms of causing lung cancer include but are not limited to the following:

Trichopoulos D, Kalandidi A, Sparros L, MacMahon B, “Lung Cancer and Passive Smoking,” 27 Internat’l J Cancer (#1) 1-4 (15 Jan 1981) (“Estimates of the relative risk of lung cancer associated with having a husband who smokes were 2.4 for a smoker of less than one pack and 3.4 for women whose husbands smoked more than one pack of cigarettes per day.”)

Hirayama T, “Non-smoking wives of heavy smokers have a higher risk of lung cancer: a study from Japan,” 282 Brit Med J (#6259) 183-185 (17 January 1981) (“Wives of heavy smokers were found to have a higher risk of developing lung cancer and a dose-response relation was observed.”)

          Correa P, Pickle LW, Fontham E, Lin Y, Haenszel W, “Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer,” 2 Lancet (#8350) 595-597 (10 Sep 1983) (“Nonsmokers married to heavy smokers had an increased risk of lung cancer, and so did subjects whose mothers smoked.”)

          Miller, GH, “Cancer, Passive Smoking and Nonemployed and Employed Wives,” 140 Western J Med (#4) 632-635 (April 1984) (“. . . long-term passive smoking leads to excess cancer deaths in exposed nonsmokers . . . almost two-fold increase in the mortality.”)

Miller, GH, Gerstein, D, 98 Public Health Reports (#4) (July-August 1983) ("virtually all the increase in the difference between male and female longevity since 1930 is attributable to the effects of cigarette smoking”).

         Garland C, Barrett-Connor E, Suarez L, Criqui MH, Wingard DL, "Effects of Passive Smoking on Ischemic Heart Disease Mortality of Nonsmokers: A Prospective Study," 121 Am J Epidemiol 645-650 (1985).

         Brownson RC, Alavanja MC, Hock ET, and Loy TS, "Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer in Non-Smoking Women," 82 Am J Public Health 1525-1530 (1992).

Hackshaw AK, Law MR, Wald NJ, "The Accumulated Evidence on Lung Cancer and Environmental Tobacco Smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (1997) (issue of overlooking TTS risk caused by other exposure (e.g., in childhood, social situations, workplaces), e.g., the error of misclassifying spouses of non-smokers as non-exposed, contaminating the referent group, and attenuating the risk estimate).

Wells AJ, "Lung cancer and passive smoking at work," 88 Am J Public Health 1025-1029 (1998) (a recent meta-analysis on increased risk due to workplace exposure, increasing it about 39%).

Repace JL, Jinot J, Bayard S, Emmons K, and Hammond SK, "Air Nicotine and Saliva Cotinine as Indicators of Passive Smoking Exposure and Risk," 18 Risk Analysis 71-83 (1998) (citing overlooked data on the TTS-lung risk, not limiting it to workplace exposure, the real risk was not 20% worse, but 75% worse (numerics: 1.75 vs a mere 1.2). When not overlooking data, average 1980's relative risk was 2.0 for U.S. office workers. And don't overlook that these are averages. Some nonsmokers being killed by TTS (those at the so-called 95th percentile (high smoker density and low air exchange) have exposure, risk, up to four times as high as those at the median).

Bennett C, Alavanja MCR, Blomeke B, Vähäangas KH, Castrén K, Welsh JA, Bowman ED, Khan MA, Flieder DB, and Harris, CC, "Environmental Tobacco Smoke, Genetic Susceptibility, and Risk of Lung Cancer in Never-Smoking Women," 91 J Nat'l Cancer Institute (#23) 2009-2014 (1 Dec 1999) (offering data fitting the legal doctrine of "taking victims as they come" (a legal concept detailed in §§ 10 and 13 of our site on unlawful death as all persons are protected by law however diverse genetically).

The Internat'l J of Cancer (28 June 2001) says, exposure to second-hand on a regular basis, foreseeably triples the risk of getting lung cancer.


In fact, during the nineteenth century, a number of physicians were noticing lung cancer incidents. By 1900 lung cancer became the most common organ cancer in men. In 1912, the above-cited book elaborating this was published, by Adler, Primary Malignant Growths of the Lungs and Bronchi. Thousands of articles on the tobacco link to conditions including lung cancer have been published since.

           For example, the study that many have heard of was in 1950. It was by Ernest L. Wynder and Evarts A. Graham, "Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma," 143 J Am Med Ass'n (#4) 329-338 (1950). Think about it. That was a half-century ago. Don't be conned into thinking the data is new.

A 1930 report in The Lancet by Dr. H. H. Sanguinetti cited smoking and lung cancer. A 1932 report said that "one is certainly led to believe that cigarette smoking is an important factor in the increase of cancer of the lungs," Dr. William McNally, Am Journal of Cancer (1932). A 1936 German study found that 94 percent of lung cancers were in heavy first-hand smokers. A 1939 report by F. H. Muller cited 86 lung cancer cases, 83 of them in first-hand smokers. See F. H. Muller, "Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom," 49 Zeitschrift für Krebsforschung 57-94 (1939).

Edward Cuyler Hammond, Sc.D., “The Effects of Smoking,'' Scientific American, Vol. 207(1), pp. 39-51, July 1962, says: “In 1936 . . . two New Orleans surgeons, Alton Ochsner [M.D.] and Michael E. DeBakey [M.D.], observed that nearly all their lung cancer patients were cigarette smokers. Noting that lung cancer seemed to be on the increase and that it was paralleled by a general rise in cigarette smoking, they suggested a causal connection between the two phenomena. In 1938 Raymond Pearl, the noted Johns Hopkins University medical statistician, reported that smokers had a far shorter life expectancy than those who did not use tobacco. The effect was so great as to indicate that smoking must be associated with diseases other than cancer” and in addition to cancer. Moreover, “for every 10 cases of lung cancer reported for smokers, there is only one case for nonsmokers,” with “no reported cases of lung cancer for” “the purest nonsmoking population that can be obtained in the USA,” says Gus H. Miller, Ph.D., The J. of the Indiana St. Med. Ass'n., Vol. 76(2), pp. 121-3, February 1983.

On 16 May 1962, at the Annual Meeting of the Ontario Medical Association, Windsor, Ontario, Norman C. Delarue gave a presentation to this effect:
  • "The causal relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer remains unchallenged.
  • The dangers of cigarette smoking have been detailed . . . .
  • The inability to cure symptomatic lung cancer in any significant number of cases . . . is stressed. . . .
  • Attention must be directed, therefore, at the prevention of the disease.
  • This is possible if cigarette smoking can be stopped.
  • It is the duty of the medical profession to take the lead in this 'crusade.'"
    —Norman C. Delarue, "Cigarette Smoking and Lung Cancer," 4 Applied Therapeutics (#10) 919-927 (Oct 1962)
    Famous Smokers Murdered by Tobacco: Actor John Wayne, Newsman Peter Jennings
    Sad Mother Dying of Lung Cancer (13 Sep 2007)

    We know how to stop tobacco pushing:

  • enforce the common law "right to fresh and pure air"
  • prosecute the pushers for murder
  • prosecute for the holocaust level of deaths
  • prosecute everywhere including internationally
  • adopt cigarette bans as Iowa did
  • adopt cigarette sales bans as Tennessee did
  • adopt cigarette manufacture and sales bans as Michigan has
  • have smokers' and their relatives file smokers' rights lawsuits for deaths and injuries.
  • Some people feel that the tobacco link to lung cancer is a new discovery. The old data helps make the point, "When something 'new' in medical literature is published, it is a wise precaution to read previous literature on the subject—that 'something new' may not really be new," a quote from Alison B. Froese and Prof. A. Charles Bryan, "High Frequency Ventilation," 123 Am Rev Resp Dis (3) 249-250 (March 1981). This is especially so in view of the politicians' and media mass censorship and/or disinformation that conceals so many tobacco effects.

    Smokers' rights cases by smokers, or their survivors, e.g., Wilks v American Tobacco Co, 680 So 2d 839, CCH Prod Liab Rep ¶ 14743 (Miss, 12 Sep 1996), do occur. They correctly raise the issue that there is no smoker "choice" or "informed consent," no assumption of risk of using dangerous tobacco when the tobacco companies themselves deny it.

    There are also cases by lung-cancer-ridden nonsmokers, or more likely, their survivors, as in Buckingham v R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, 713 A2d 381 (NH, 29 May 1998). That case raised the issue of supplying others (i.e., smokers) a product not made safe. But such cases, meritorious as they are, are inadequate as a solution.

    Solution = prevention. (See E. Bertarelli, "Prevention of Smoking," 18 Pensiero Med 64-69 [15-28 Feb 1929] .) Civil cases, even winning ones, do not force tobacco companies to stop killing people, do not protect others. So future additional deaths are foreseeable, i.e., are natural and probable consequences of continued TTS, so yet additional newly created future widowers and widows will foreseeably be suing. The appropriate solution is in criminal law, criminal penalties for supplying the dangerous product leading to death on a large-scale basis.

    In 1889, the Michigan Legislature had a report on some cigarette hazards. In 1909, during the administration of three-term activist Governor Fred Warner, the Michigan legislature passed a law forbidding manufacture, giveaway, and sale of deleterious and adulterated cigarettes. (As with any other product, safe ones are allowed. The idea of the safe cigarettes law is to halt the fact that smokers are discriminated against by being the only people regularly sold a known deleterious ingredient. Other deleterious products are taken off the market as soon as deleteriousness is known. Smokers are thus the only group denied the benefit of standard product protection law.) The safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans
    "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ."

    Of course, due to cigarettes' other adverse effects, the law has the side benefit of potentially eliminating other cigarette adverse consequences as well, effects detailed at other sections of this website.

    "Most smokers do not view themselves at increased risk of heart disease or cancer."—John P. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., Paul J. Cleary, Ph.D., "Perceived Risks of Heart Disease and Cancer Among Cigarette Smokers," 281 J Am Med Ass'n (11) 1019-1021 (17 March 1999). Wherefore they do not see the danger that smoking poses to nonsmokers. TTS exposure causes Increased Risk of Death, referencing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the subject.

    "Researchers and scientists think that lung cancer develops slowly. They believe that 20 or more years pass from the time a person starts inhaling the cancer-producing substance and the time lung cancer actually develops. However, changes in the lung begin almost immediately upon exposure to the carcinogens or cancer-causing substances. With continued exposure, more abnormal cells appear that may be on their way to developing cancer cells," says Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

    Why Smokers Don't Associate
    Tobacco Effects With Tobacco
    ". . . the immediate effect of smoking . . . is a lowering of the accuracy of finely coordinated reactions (including associative thought processes)."—John H. Kellogg, M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S., Tobaccoism, or, How Tobacco Kills (Battle Creek, MI: The Modern Medicine Publishing Co, 1922), p 88.
    "Smokers show the same attitude to tobacco as addicts to their drug, and their judgment is therefore biased in giving an opinion of its effect on them."—Lennox Johnston, "Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine," 243 The Lancet 742 (19 Dec 1942).
    And note other pertinent factors:
  • pusher fraud
  • pusher crime
  • non-enforcement of pure air rights
  • tobacco-news-censorship
  • widespread pro-tobacco disinformation
  • corruption in government
  • addiction
  • brain damage
  • abulia
  • smoking constituting a disease
  • time frame involved combined with smokers'
    time disorientation
  • Wherefore nonsmokers'-—children and adults—only advance protection is enforcement of pertinent cigarette control laws, including prosecution of the pushers on murder charges pursuant to the transferred intent doctrine. To protect YOU, seek prosecution for the deaths of smokers and other nonsmokers killed by cigarettes.

    After-the-fact prosecution of the killer(s) is too little, too late for those already deceased, but it can serve to protect you. Providing money damages to survivors, while essential and better than nothing, does not vindicate the laws against intentional poisonings and killings, does not fully protect YOU.

    To protect yourself, it is essential that your area prosecutors be caused to enforce the laws against poisoning and murder.

    Smoking Skull
    Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
    Vincent van Gogh, 1885-1886

    The Lung Cancer and Cigarette Smoking Web Page by Frederic W. Grannis, Jr., M.D., has a significant amount of additional information, including data on the death rate in excess of 160,000 in 1998 alone. The site also has numerous links to sites with more details.

              A study entitled, "Lung Cancer: Risk from Second-hand Smoke," originally published in Medical Sciences Bulletin (August 1994), has been posted on the Internet by Pharmaceutical Information Associates, Ltd., and provides valuable information on the risk to nonsmokers, including the number of involuntary deaths.

    Nonsmoker women have a 30% percent greater risk of developing lung cancer if their husbands smoke in the home. At highest exposure, women whose husbands smoked two packs a day for 40 years faced an 80% increased risk of developing lung cancer, says Elizabeth Fontham et al., "Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Nonsmoking Women," 271 J Am Med Assn 1752 (1994).

    Toxic tobaccco smoke also relates to impact on birds. See Alfredo Morabia, "Pet Birds and Lung Cancer," 306 Brit Med J (#6869) 60-61 (2 Jan 1993).

    Be assured that contrary to their decades of denial, the pushers know the tobacco-cancer link very well, long before you ever did. The recent litigation by the various State Attorney General offices forced open many formerly secret tobacco lobby files.

    You too can look at the secret documents, for example, the 2 Feb 1953 R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company "SURVEY OF CANCER RESEARCH with emphasis upon POSSIBLE CARCINOGENS FROM TOBACCO" at the R.J. Reynolds Document site, ID No.: 501932947-2968, using search term SURVEY OF CANCER RESEARCH.

              Cigarettes contain toxic chemicals. The pertinent legal adjective is "ultrahazardous." Deaths are "natural and probable consequences." Pursuant to standard lawbook definitions, nonsmokers' involuntary foreseeable TTS-caused deaths constitute murder. The high number of deaths is a "holocaust" according to the Royal Society of Physicians' 1971 criteria, and is part of the total cigarette genocide problem.

              An example of a cigarette-caused lung cancer death in a 33 year old man who had smoked since age 13, was published in an article "He Wanted You to Know," by Reporter Susan Landry, in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) 15 June 1999.

              The Airspace Organization is a Canadian activist group. Its photo gallery has examples of pictures that specifically say what tobacco does, it kills. Here are three examples:

    Empress

    Protest Sign: Benson & Hedges Kills

    Protest at Imperial Tobacco

              A Michigan law seeks to ban the underlying factor in the lifestyle of death. Michigan Governor Engler [1991-2002] and staff were paper supportive of action to enforce it, issuing five pertinent memoranda.

    Exec Order 1992-3
    Law Support Letter # 1 Anti-Cigarette Smuggling Finding Law Support Letter # 2 Governor's Overview

             What this site is asking is your help in (a) getting the Michigan safe cigarettes law enforced, and (b) getting all other governments to pass the same law in their areas. Please help us save lives, prevent premature deaths, by preventing unsafe cigarettes and their posing a risk factor in lung cancer.

             To fight this problem, here are four sample letters. Sample "A" is to Governor Jennifer Granholm asking her to have the State Police enforce the law. Sample "B" is to Attorney General Michael Cox asking him to take "cease and desist" action to enforce the law. Each has the authority to help. As both the Governor and Attorney General are lawyers, the letters are written in "legalese." Sample letter "C" is to the State Police Director asking his agency personnel to enforce the law. Sample letter "D" is different, and is for you to send where the government still ignores the cigarette-lung cancer link. It is to be sent, for example, to the President, Congress, other Governors, and state legislators.

    * * * Sample Letter A * * *

    Honorable Jennifer Granholm
    Governor, State of Michigan
    P. O. Box 30013
    Lansing MI 48909-7513

    Dear Governor Granholm:

             This is a request that, to help prevent one of the risk factors in lung cancer, you assign the Michigan State Police to enforce the safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

              Cigarettes are a risk factor in lung cancer. Cigarettes' deleterious chemicals depress the immune system. So cigarettes are not only the general No. 1 cause of premature death, they also have a role as a risk factor in lung cancer. Medical evidence "provides compelling confirmation that breathing other people's tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer," see A. K. Hackshaw, M. R. Law, and N. J. Wald, "The accumulated evidence on lung cancer and environmental tobacco smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (18 Oct 1997).

              The cigarette-lung cancer link occurs because of cigarettes' numerous toxic chemicals. The safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans unsafe cigarettes. It forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ." Please, as a lung cancer prevention measure, assign the Michigan State Police to enforce it, and aid county sheriffs and local police departments to do likewise.

             All cigarettes are deleterious, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, puts personal responsibility on those with most knowledge of the contraband substance (manufacturers and sellers), not on unwary consumers, often children.

             State Police enforcement action is a normal action that they do in other state-wide law violation situations. There are precedents as well. Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 48 SW 305; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) aff'd 179 US 343 (1898); Shimp v N J Bell Tele Co, 145 N J Super 516; 368 A2d 408 (1976); Commonwealth v Hughes, 468 Pa 502; 364 A2d 306 (1976); and Smith v Western Elec Co, 643 SW2d 10, 13 (Mo App, 1982).

             As a matter of preventing lung cancer, the Michigan safe cigarettes law needs to be enforced. Please help. The law against this deleterious and adulterated product needs to be enforced. Please assign the State Police to protect abulic smokers, children, and nonsmokers, by enforcing the safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Please have them halt the rampant violations, and interdict deleterious and adulterated cigarettes.

    Respectfully,

    * * * Sample Letter B * * *

    Honorable Michael Cox
    Attorney General, State of Michigan
    P. O. Box 30213
    Lansing MI 48909

    Dear Attorney General Cox:

    This is a request that, to help prevent one of the risk factors in lung cancer, you take "cease and desist" action to stop violations of the safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

    Cigarettes are a risk factor in lung cancer. Cigarettes' deleterious chemicals depress the immune system. So cigarettes are not only the general No. 1 cause of premature death, they also have a role as a risk factor in lung cancer. Medical evidence "provides compelling confirmation that breathing other people's tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer," see A. K. Hackshaw, M. R. Law, and N. J. Wald, "The accumulated evidence on lung cancer and environmental tobacco smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (18 Oct 1997).

    The cigarette-lung cancer link occurs because of cigarettes' numerous toxic chemicals. The safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans unsafe cigarettes. It forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ." Please, as a lung cancer prevention measure, take "cease and desist" action to stop the rampant violations of the law. "Cease and desist" action is an action you take in other state-wide law violation cases. Please, as a lung cancer prevention measure, do that in this situation.

    All cigarettes are deleterious, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, puts personal responsibility on those with most knowledge of the contraband substance (manufacturers and sellers), not on unwary consumers, often children.

    "Cease and desist" action is a normal action that you do in other state-wide law violation situations. There are precedents, for example, Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 48 SW 305; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) aff'd 179 US 343 (1898); Shimp v N J Bell Tele Co, 145 N J Super 516; 368 A2d 408 (1976); Commonwealth v Hughes, 468 Pa 502; 364 A2d 306 (1976); and Smith v Western Elec Co, 643 SW2d 10, 13 (Mo App, 1982).

             As a matter of preventing lung cancer, the Michigan safe cigarettes law needs to be enforced. Please help. The law against this deleterious and adulterated product needs to be enforced. Please take "cease and desist" action to protect abulic smokers, children, and nonsmokers, by enforcing the safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Please take "cease and desist" action to halt the rampant violations.

    Respectfully,

    * * * Sample Letter C * * *

    Col. Peter C. Munoz, Director
    Department of State Police
    714 South Harrison Road
    East Lansing MI 48823

    Dear Col. Munoz:

             This is a request that, to help prevent one of the risk factors in lung cancer, you assign officers to enforce the safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

              Cigarettes are a risk factor in lung cancer. Cigarettes' deleterious chemicals depress the immune system. So cigarettes are not only the general No. 1 cause of premature death, they also have a role as a risk factor in lung cancer. Medical evidence "provides compelling confirmation that breathing other people's tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer," see A. K. Hackshaw, M. R. Law, and N. J. Wald, "The accumulated evidence on lung cancer and environmental tobacco smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (18 Oct 1997).

              The cigarette-lung cancer link occurs because of cigarettes' numerous toxic chemicals. The safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans unsafe cigarettes. It forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ." Please, as a lung cancer prevention measure, work with prosecutors on this subject, assign officers to enforce the law, and aid county sheriffs and local police departments to do likewise.

             All cigarettes are deleterious, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, puts personal responsibility on those with most knowledge of the contraband substance (manufacturers and sellers), not on unwary consumers, often children.

             State Police enforcement action is a normal action that officers do in other state-wide law violation situations. There are precedents as well. Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 48 SW 305; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) aff'd 179 US 343 (1898); Shimp v N J Bell Tele Co, 145 N J Super 516; 368 A2d 408 (1976); Commonwealth v Hughes, 468 Pa 502; 364 A2d 306 (1976); and Smith v Western Elec Co, 643 SW2d 10, 13 (Mo App, 1982).

             As a matter of preventing lung cancer, the Michigan safe cigarettes law needs to be enforced. Please help. The law against this deleterious and adulterated product needs to be enforced. Please assign officers to protect abulic smokers, children, and nonsmokers, by enforcing the safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Please have them halt the rampant violations, and interdict deleterious and adulterated cigarettes.

    Respectfully,

    * * * Sample Letter D * * *

    President George W. BushU.S. Senator ________U.S. Representative _Governor ___ State Senator __State Representative _
    1600 Pennsylvania AvenueSenate Office BuildingHouse Office BuildingState CapitolState CapitolState Capitol
    Washington DC 20500Washington DC 20510Washington DC 20515City State ZipCity State ZipCity State Zip

    This is a request that you take action to get a law passed that will serve as a lung cancer prevention law. Michigan already has such a law. It is law number MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. It deals with the cigarette link to lung cancer.

    Cigarettes are a risk factor in lung cancer. Cigarettes' deleterious chemicals depress the immune system. So cigarettes are not only the general No. 1 cause of premature death, they also have a role as a risk factor in lung cancer. Medical evidence "provides compelling confirmation that breathing other people's tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer," see A. K. Hackshaw, M. R. Law, and N. J. Wald, "The accumulated evidence on lung cancer and environmental tobacco smoke," 315 Brit Med J 980-988 (18 Oct 1997).

              The cigarette-lung cancer link occurs because of cigarettes numerous toxic chemicals. The Michigan safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans unsafe cigarettes. Please, as a lung cancer prevention measure, get a copy of that law, which in essence forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ."

             All cigarettes are deleterious, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, puts personal responsibility on those with most knowledge of the contraband substance (manufacturers and sellers), not on unwary consumers, often children. Michigan's well-written lung cancer prevention act deals with one of the key risk factors, unsafe cigarettes, and bans them. We need the same law for the protection and benefit of everyone. Smokers should not be discriminated against by being the only people regularly sold a deleterious product. Other deleterious products are recalled and taken off the market.

             As a matter of preventing lung cancer, everyone needs you to take action to get a safe cigarettes act passed. Please take action to copy the Michigan safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, so all of us can benefit from its wise prevention-oriented approach.

    Respectfully,

    * * * * *

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    For text, see ETS & Health Effects

     

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