Prevention would involve cigarette control, as Michigan did in the administration of conservative Governor Fred M. Warner, by law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Real conservatives recognize that reducing suicide or crime by 90% as the literature shows can easily be done, could essentially moot pressures for assisted suicide or gun control legislation.
Conservative leaders such as Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, etc., have a record of selling out their PROFESSED conservative goals -- in favor of Big Tobacco. See material on the subject, e.g., the expose by Peter Taylor, The Smoke Ring: Tobacco, Money, and Multinational Politics (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
Ronald Reagan at least has a defense, his Alzheimer's disease. His acalculia -- impaired arithmetical ability -- called "voodoo" (by gracious George Bush) was evident to the medically-trained eye in 1980. But conservatives voted for Reagan because he talked the talk.
Solution: Conservatives who oppose abortion, drug abuse, assisted suicide, and gun control, should adopt the Michigan approach of a real conservative, Governor Fred M. Warner:
Doctors are rarely accused of flaming liberalism. On the contrary, there is a record of past accusations against them of being too conservative! Conservatives would do well to use the pro-values medical data that that occupation has so laboriously developed over centuries of research.
Conservatives had a coalition that brought success in the era of Gov. Warner. Each coalition member had its own interest -- which may not even have agreed with each others! -- except in the one aspect, prevention of the underlying common factor in the evils they variously opposed.
To resume the old successful approach, conservative need to resume getting used to citing pro-values medical data on subjects of interest to themselves, issues such as abortion, drug abuse, assisted suicide, and crime, get used to letter-writing to officials using pro-values medical data. And, pursuant to the old coalition concept, coalesce with the concerns of other coalition group members. Examples with sample letters include:
Abortion | AIDS | Alcoholism | Alzheimer's
Crime
| Drugs
| Heart Disease
| Lung Cancer
| Mental Disorder
| Seat Belt Disuse
| SIDS
| Suicide | |
Astute readers who read the above, notice that there is a significant Michigan flavor to the material. That is because, to this web-writer's knowledge, only Michigan has retained the law passed due to the old medical-data-based values coalition.
Conservative Governor John Engler and his staff have been paper supportive of action to enforce that law, issuing five pertinent memoranda:
Exec Order 1992-3 | Law Support Letter # 1 | Anti-Cigarette Smuggling Finding | Law Support Letter # 2 | Governor's Overview |
But let's pretend that such are "sincere." The point of this website is to aid conservatives in resuming old-style letter-writing citing values-based medical data, the old successful approach. Please scroll up, find a subject (or subjects) in which you are interested, click on it (them), and try writing medical-data-based pro-values advocacy letter(s). (Or use the sample material). And encourage others to do likewise. As Michigan still has the old medical-data-based values-oriented law, here is an opportunity to set a precedent on an underlying common factor in abortion, assisted suicide, drug abuse and crime, that can then be used nationwide.
Definitions | Government Crime | Medical Statistics
Michigan Law
| Murder
| Toxic Chemicals | |