How to Prevent Drug Abuse:
Eliminate the Gateway / Starter Drug

"Partem aliquam recte intelligere nemo potest, antequam totum, iterum atque iterum, periegerit."
No one can rightly understand any part until he has read the whole again and again.

This site assists in opposing drug abuse by citing the role of the starter drug nicotine, specifically, the delivery agent, cigarettes, in the drug abuse process. The term that is used is "gateway drug" or "starter drug."

In other words, cigarettes regularly serve as the starter drug delivery agent. Cigarettes deliver the drug nicotine. Children are being hooked on cigarettes at an early age.

"Big Tobacco Planned on Big Pot Sales in the 70s—They Were Just Waiting for Legalization" (3 June 2014). The pushers "have been considering legalized marijuana as both a competitor and an opportunity,” says Prof. Stanton M. Glantz.

Note that "addiction has been recognized as a disease for decades," says Newsweek, 3 March 2008.

Nicotine has demonstrated dose-related euphoric effects similar to those of cocaine and morphine, say J. E. Henningfield, K. Miyasato, and D. R. Jasinski, "Cigarette smokers self-administer intravenous nicotine," 19 Pharmacol Biochem Behav (#5) 887-990 (1983).

Cigarettes cause "the worst of all drug habits, the smoking of tobacco"—Herbert H. Tidswell, M.D., The Tobacco Habit: Its History and Pathology (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1912), p 69.

"Addiction is a chronic, incurable disease, but it is preventable," and "Preventing addiction may prevent your family's destruction," says John C. Fleming, M.D., and his book Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction (Hannibal Books).

"The first step toward addiction may be as innocent as a boy's puff on a cigarette in an alleyway," said the U.S. Supreme Court in Robinson v California, 370 US 660, 670; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (25 June 1962).

This was repeating a starter/gateway drug fact already long known. The government already long knew that "all" drug addicts are smokers, say Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger and U.S. Attorney William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953), p 196.

           Cigarettes' toxic chemicals impair impulse and ethical controls, i.e., cause addiction, brain damage, abulia (impaired reasoning, ethical controls, willpower).

But there is some mythology out there among laymen as to which drug is the earliest used by children. Is it alcohol? tobacco, or marijuana? The solution is to read material that actually covers that exact point, the age of onset issue.

Here is what such analyses have found: It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point. They are delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age of first use is 12.6; then marijuana, average age of first use is 14. See Raymond Fleming, Howard Levanthal, Kathleen Glynn, and Joann Ershler, "The Role of Cigarettes in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use," 14 Addictive Behaviors (#3) 261-272 (1989).

         Re the cigarette-drugs link, Dr. Frank L. Wood cites a 100% factor,

"there would be no marijuana addicts . . . if people did not first learn to smoke cigarettes."—Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 143.

He also says, "all of those who became alcohol addicts, in the experience of this writer [Wood], were first tobacco addicts."

"Since the first line of battle in the war against narcotic addiction is prevention, we must look to the predisposing causes and attempt to remove them. The first of these is cigarette smoking.

"If no one smoked at all . . . there would be no marijuana menace, for few nonsmokers can be induced to experiment with marijuana cigarettes.

"[So] the efforts of all . . . should be directed toward preventing [smoking beginning]," Wood, supra, p 133.

           Analysts have also found that drug dependence does not suddenly occur overnight! A nonsmoker suddenly wants to use crack cocaine! Not so. Drug dependence develops in stages, over a period of years. People who do not use the starter drug, rarely proceed to later drugs in the sequence. Tobacco is an addiction, not a habit. —Ronald M. Davis, M.D., (a health authority during Mich. Gov. John Engler's first term), "The Language of Nicotine Addiction: Purging the Word 'Habit' From Our Lexicon," 1 Tobacco Control 163-164 (1992), opposing the tobacco lobby/media myth that smoking is merely a habit.

"Tobacco . . . holds a special status as a ‘gateway' substance in the development of other drug dependencies not only because tobacco use reliably precedes use of illicit drugs, but also because use of tobacco is more likely to escalate to dependent patterns of use of most other dependence producing drugs. . . .

"These observations have led growing numbers of researchers and policy makers concerned with illicit drug use to consider the role of tobacco in programs aimed at preventing other forms of drug abuse."—Jack E. Henningfield, Richard Clayton, and William Pollin, "Involvement of Tobacco in Alcoholism and Illicit Drug Use," 85 British J of Addiction 279-292, especially p 283 (1990).

Moreover, "tobacco use is associated with the initiation of use of other addicting substances, and . . . increasing levels of tobacco use are associated with increasing levels of use of other psychoactive substances.

"Furthermore, factors affecting initiation, abstinence, and relapse to the use of tobacco, alcohol, and opioids are similar in nature.

"In addition, there are similarities in the addictive processes underlying the use of these substances."—Henningfield, Clayton, et al., "Involvement of Tobacco in Alcoholism and Illicit Drug Use," supra, especially p 279 (1990).

"Goode demonstrated that college students who smoke were more likely to have used every kind of abusable substance, both legal and illegal, than were their nonsmoking classmates." [Goode, E, "Cigarette smoking and drug use on a college campus," 7 Int'l J Addict 133-140 (1972).]

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that daily use of marijuana is 20 times higher among high school seniors who smoke tobacco, and the daily use of other illicit drugs is 13 times higher among smokers." [Fishburne PM, Abelson HI, Cisin I, "National Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings, 1979" (1980)], cited by Joseph R. DiFranza, and M. P. Guerrera, "Alcoholism and Smoking," 51 Journal of Studies on Alcohol (#2) 130-135 (1990).

In U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse ("NIDA") Monograph 17 (1977), then Director, William Pollin, M.D., says at page vi. why NIDA gives "increased priority to" smoking. There are

"several reasons: the increasing identification of smoking as a prototypic addiction, the status of smoking as a gateway drug to use of stronger or illicit drugs, and our focus on substance abuse as a generic phenomenon that includes tobacco."

William Pollin's predecessor as NIDA Director, Robert L. DuPont, Jr., M.D. (1973 - 1977), in "Teenage drug use: Opportunities for the pediatrician," 102 Journal of Pediatrics (#6) 1003-1007 (June 1983), says at pages 1004-1005:

"all drug use is positively correlated with all other drug use, so persons who use tobacco, for example, are more likely to smoke marijuana than those who do not use tobacco . . . .

"these relationships are quantitative: those who use large amounts of marijuana are more likely to use heroin than are those who use marijuana infrequently, whereas those who have never used marijuana virtually never use heroin at all . . . .

"many who start with one drug do go on to other drugs. Conversely, decisions not to use a particular drug predict subsequent decisions not to use other drugs in the sequence. . . .

"Put simply, prevention means stopping the progression of the drug-dependence process at each stage, experimentation, occasional use, regular use, and dependent use."

           So professionals and people who are sincere about wanting to prevent drug abuse, recognize that intervention must needs be occurring at the earliest stage—cigarettes. (Think about it; they wouldn't be citing issues of intervention at early stages, if stages were not something that is occurring!) See, e.g.,

  • DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977);

  • Raymond Fleming, Howard Levanthal, Kathleen Glynn, and Joahn Ershler, "The Role of Cigarettes in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use," 14 Addictive Behaviors (33) 261-272 (1989); and

  • DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

    •            There was a serious article by Drs. Bruner and Fishman of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, "Adolescents and Illicit Drug Use," in 280 J Am Med Ass'n 597-598 (19 August 1998).   Its conclusion included these key sentences on p 598,

    "Adolescents need effective drug use prevention programs . . . Support for substance abuse . . . prevention . . . must come from all sides . . . policymakers."

             "When we take a thorough drug history, we are forced to admit that nicotine—not alcohol or cannabis—is the drug of entry for most young people."—Emanuel Peluso and Lucy Silvay Peluso, "The Challenge of Treating Teenagers," 9 Alcoholism & Addiction (#2) 21 (December 1988).

    "And . . . cigarette addiction undoubtedly leads to the use of . . . other habit-forming drugs."—Daniel H. Kress, M.D., The Cigarette As A Physician Sees It (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Ass'n, 1931), p 68, as "cigarette addiction leads to other pernicious habits" (p 72). He then gave examples such as morphine addiction and alcoholism.

    The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, is well aware, as shown by its voluminous material at its website of "Statistics on Drugs and Crime." See also David Boyum and Mark A. R. Kleiman, "Breaking the drug-crime link," National Affairs (Summer 2003).

    The bottom line is that tobacco is an "extremely harmful drug." See Wood, What You Should Know About Tobacco, supra, p 5.

    "Avant le . . . tabac, la folie était une maladie très rare dans l'humanité," says Hippolyte A. Depierris, M.D. Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p 346. Before tobacco, mental aberration was a rare malady among humans.

    Eliminate the cause; the effect disappears. "Sublatâ causa, tollitur effectus: Otez la cause, l'effet disparaît," added Dr. Depierris, Physiologie Sociale, supra, p 328.

    In the case of USA v Warren D. Turner, Case 96-3096 (CA DC, D DC, 25 July 1997), a marijuana and cocaine possession case, the visible presence of torn cigar tobacco was a factor deemed by the police observing it, consistent with marijuana use, hence they searched further and found additional incriminating evidence. And police are well aware of even so minor a thing as the odor of marijuana, see People v Kazmierczak, Case No. 113452; Mich; NW2d (10 Feb 2000). They know this, they definitely know the century+ link of tobacco and crime, a 90% factor. But . . . the preference is for dramatic adrenalin-raising door-busting action!, not for prevention.

    Michigan has a law banning the starter drug. Michigan law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans cigarettes, the starter-drug delivery mechanism. "A stitch in time saves nine."

    This is the same solution as to end, for example, lung cancer. Ban the cause = the effects don't occur. A stitch in time PREVENTS nine. Our great-grandparents, then children, were taught cigarette toxicity a century ago.

    In 1892, WCTU members during the term of Francis Willard, M.S., M.A., LL.D., (1879-1898) sent Congress thousands of petitions for banning cigarettes. Had Congress respected medical research and complied, this would have prevented the drug situation of the following century, and in turn, have headed off the "War on Drugs." Ban the cause = the effects don't occur. A stitch in time PREVENTS nine. Congress wasn't interested then in prevention, still isn't.

    Ban the starter drug (do the proverbial "stitch in time," "nip it in the bud"), there is essentially no post-starter drug problem (no need for nine stitches)! No need to spend vast amounts of tax dollars on drug control units! treatment! rehabilitation! Assign one officer to cigarette control. Arrest the cigarette sellers in your jurisdiction = ending the drug problem.

    Save taxpayer money. Close down your anti-drug unit, your treatment and rehabilitation centers, save taxpayer $$$$, once cigarettes are gone, driven out of all legitimate stores.

    And there is a long term benefit: no new youth smokers being made. So this is indeed the long-term solution to drugs.

    Yes, the Supreme Court is right: "The first step toward addiction may be as innocent as a boy's puff on a cigarette in an alleyway," Robinson v California, 370 US 660, 670; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (25 June 1962).

    "Brain scans show that the hippocampus and amygdala in 15 individuals who smoked five or more marijuana cigarettes daily for more than 20 years were smaller than those of nonusers, Reuters reported June 3. The two brain regions are involved in memory and emotion and fear and aggression, respectively." And: one commentator said, "The documented damage caused by comparably heavy use of alcohol or tobacco is just off-the-charts more serious, and you don't need high-tech scans to find it." Source: the article "Heavy Marijuana Use Shrinks Brain, Researchers Say" (4 June 2008), citing Murat Yücel, PhD, MAPS, et al., "Regional Brain Abnormalities Associated With Long-term Heavy Cannabis Use," Archives of General Psychiatry 2008;65(6):694-701.

    Cases Involving Cigarettes and Cigarette
    Packs Being Used To Conceal Drugs
    U.S. v Robinson, 414 US 218; 94 S Ct 467, 494; 38 L Ed 2d 427 (DC, 11 Dec 1973) SCB: 145 US App DC 46; 447 F2d 1215 (heroin in cigarette package)

    Michigan v DeFillippo, 443 US 31; 99 S Ct 2627; 61 L Ed 2d 343 (25 June 1979) SCB: 80 Mich App 197; 262 NW2d 921 (marijuana in cigarette package)

    Ybarra v Illinois, 444 US 85; 100 S Ct 338; 62 L Ed 238 (28 Nov 1979) SCB: 58 Ill App 3d 57; 373 NE2d 1013 (cigarette pack containing heroin)

    The result of cigarettes, the starter drug delivery agent, is post-starter-drug drug abuse: According to Hugo Black and William O. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court:

    "Commercial traffic in deadly mind-, soul-, and body-destroying drugs is beyond doubt one of the greatest evils of our time.

    "It cripples intellects, dwarfs bodies, paralyzes the progress of a substantial segment of   427our society, and frequently makes hopeless and sometimes violent and murderous criminals of persons of all ages who become its victims.

    "Such consequences call for the most vigorous laws to suppress the traffic as well as the most powerful efforts to put these vigorous laws into effect." Turner v U.S., 396 US 398, 426-427; 90 S Ct 642; 24 L Ed 2d 610 (20 Jan 1969).

    So prevention is crucial, by dealing with the starter drug, its delivery agent, cigarettes.

    Cigarettes establish "the worst of all drug habits, the smoking of tobacco"—H. H. Tidswell, The Tobacco Habit, supra, p 69.

    Banning the "worst" drug, tobacco, in this 1909 'controlled substances act,' = banning them all! as per the medical fact that eliminating the cause = eliminating the effects; here, eliminating the gateway drug = eliminating the post-gateway drugs. No need to ban all the rest!

    Ban the starter = the post-starter. Ban cigarettes = eliminate lung cancer, no need to ban that! One could pass a law banning, criminalizing, all cigarette effects, but why?

    How about doing as Iowa did, as Tennessee did, as as Michigan does? ban the cause?! ban the starter drug.

    People back then, unlike now, could understand this prevention concept; people were far better educated back then, as our Edison site shows. They then could understand, to prevent a problem = to pass only one law. Refuse to prevent; refuse to deal with the cause; result, the purported 'need' for multiple laws, covering multiple effects.

    These multiple laws set up multiple (expensive, labor-intensive) programs of punishment, treatment, rehabilitation, covering multiple effects. Such multiple laws dealing with multiple effects, not the disproportionate cause, constitute a vast budget-busting welfare program for so-called " law enforcers," for prosecutors and prison builders, for counselors, treaters, and rehabilitators -- ALL of whom without exception are well and thoroughly aware that if prevention were the law, if cigarette control were the law, if starter/gateway dreug control were the law, they'd be unemployed. Hence, decades of experience shows those occupations firm hostility to such prevention laws, to the extreme of refusal to enforce them when passed. Example: Michigan's deleterious cigarette ban law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, is never enforced.

    Nowadays, as education has been grossly dumbed down, ultra-deteriorated from that era's high level, numbers of people (especially in the media) cannot understand the 'prevention' concept.   If told, they say it's wrong!!! :)

    Alcohol is a drug too. You can track the data on the tobacco role in starting that portion of the drug process, the alcohol subdivision, back a couple centuries. See our alcoholism-prevention site. Note the data back to 1798, from Dr. Benjamin Rush (who'd been Surgeon General under Gen. George Washington!)

    For current research data, see the Center for Substance Abuse Research website.

    Drug Abuse $$$
    Cost to Nation
    1985  $44 billion
    1992  $76 billion
    2002$144 billion

    This information is from
    • a study of 1985 by Dorothy Rice, University of California--San Francisco;

    • a study of 1992 by Carolyn Parsons and Andrea Kamena, of the University of Southern California School of Business. They took into account such factors as drug-related crime, hospital costs, loss in job productivity, and the increasing number of drug-abusers with depressed immune systems leading to AIDS as per the HIV-virus. That latter cost increase was up 1,039% from 1985. The job productivity loss was about 64%, $28.6 billion (1985) and $49 billion (1992); and

    • a study of 2002 by J. L. Fellows, Ph.D., A. Trosclair, M.S., E. K. Adams, Ph.D., and C. C. Rivera, calculating a $7.00 per pack cost to society, with 22 billion packs sold.

    Drug abuse has another aspect, the money trail.

    The money trail involves a cycle starting typically from smokers, the population base of drug abusers. It proceeds through local to higher drug dealers, and on sequentially all the way to initial growers, in foreign nations such as Afghanistan, and can end up with indigenous terrorist groups.

    Rachel Ehrenfeld, Ph.D.See background data by Rachel Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., Director, NYC Center for the Study of Corruption & the Rule of Law,

  • Compulsory Treatment of Drug Addict Offenders in Israel (Ph.D. Dissertation, Criminology, HU, 1983)
  • Narco-Terrorism (NY: Basic Books, 1990) and
  • Evil Money (NY: HarperCollins, 1992); and
  • "U.S. ignored money trail: Bush is doomed to fail if he doesn't cut off financing of terrorists," Detroit News, pp 17A & 20A (30 Sep 2001).

    See also background data such as:

  • Radio Free Europe, "Tracking The Terrorist Money Trail" (16 November 2008)
  • Rosary Films, America's Drug Habit Funds Terrorism & Terrorists" (Video, 18 August 2007)
  • Sidney Weintraub, "Disrupting the Financing of Terrorism," The Washington Quarterly, Vol 25 Issue # 1 (Winter 2002) pp. 53-60
  • Jerry Stanecki, "Tobacco is form of terrorism, too," Macomb Daily, p 8C (14 Dec 2001);
  • theantidrug.com's data on drugs and terrorism (Jan 2002);
  • the ICIJ-CPI exposé of cigarette smuggling in terrorism context, "U.S. Tobacco Companies Accused of Terrorist Ties And Iraqi Sanctions-Busting" (22 Feb 2002).
  • the ASH exposé, "Trial Begins for Accused Cigarette-Smuggling Terrorists" (21 May 2002);
  • the second ASH exposé, "Cigarette Smugglers Linked to Hezbollah Terrorists" (21-3 May 2002); and
  • U.S. v Akhdar, et al, Indictment (ED Mich, 4 Feb 2003) (See cigarette smuggling details, allegedly aiding terrorism)
  • Sari Horwitz, "Cigarette Smuggling Linked to Terrorism," Washington Post (8 June 2004), page A01.
  • "DEA Says Many Terrorist Groups Raise Money Via Drugs" (10 September 2007). ("Drug trafficking funds 18 of the 42 groups considered terrorist organizations by the U.S. government, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says. The AFP reported Sept. 9 that DEA chief of operations Michael Braun said that terrorist groups turn to drug revenues because most states [nations] have ceased funding their activities, and because drug trafficking is so profitable.")
    It's clear, the tobacco-drugs-funds-terrorism link. So what is the problem? Answer: Government is massively dominated by tobacco lobbyists who OPPOSE acting on this data. So government failure to act on such data is systemic, part of the overall disregard of tobacco's adverse impacts. Note also the link to corruption.

    • On the record, former Governor John Engler and staff were supportive of cigarette control, for example, see

    Exec Order 1992-3 Pro-Law Letter # 1 Cigarette Smuggling Memo Pro-Law Letter # 2 E-Mail Overview

             But supportive as that material is, the starter (gateway) drug prevention law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, is still not being enforced.

    You can help fight this problem (cigarettes as the typical starting point into the drug lifestyle).

    Contact your local city and county officials. Ask them to order the local police to enforce the cigarette law, the drug prevention act. Explain that doing this will mean a huge savings to taxpayers, they can soon eliminate the anti-drug police unit. If they have already begun this process, e.g., closing down an anti-drug unit to save money, commend them. Government officials need encouragement too (they already get plenty of criticism!)

    If you are an official, assign the police to enforce Michigan law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

    And a state-wide solution is also needed. Perhaps your city or county officials cooperate. But not all will. Action is needed on a state-wide basis, even nation-wide. So here are four sample letters.

              Sample "A" is to Governor Rick Snyder asking her to have the State Police enforce the cigarette control law. Sample "B" is to Attorney General William Schuette asking him to take "cease and desist" action to enforce cigarette control 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 for the law to be enforced. Sample letter "D" is different, and is for you to send where the government still ignores the role of cigarettes as gateway drug delivery mechanism. It is to be sent, for example, to the President, Congress, other Governors, and state legislators.

    ***
    Sample Letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder
    Urging Her to Have Michigan's Cigarette Control Law Enforced
    The Letter is Short, Right to the Point,
    Says the Law Number, and Asks Him to Have It Enforced

    ***

    Honorable Rick Snyder
    Governor, State of Michigan
    P. O. Box 30013
    Lansing MI 48909-7513                   [By Fax to (517) 335-6863]

    Dear Governor Snyder:

              Thank you for your strong anti-cigarette record. Michigan has an excellent cigarette control law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. 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 drug prevention measure, assign the Michigan State Police to enforce it, and aid county sheriffs and local police departments to do likewise.

               It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point in the drug abuse lifestyle; they are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then marijuana, average age 14. See, e.g., DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977); DuPont, Teen Drug Use, 102 J Pediatrics 1003-1007 (June 1983); Fleming, et al., Cigarettes' Role in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use, 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

               All cigarettes are deleterious, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, avoids the error of Prohibition, and 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).

              All Michigan residents endangered by this deleterious and adulterated product, need enforcement to occur. Please assign the State Police to protect abulic smokers, children, and nonsmokers, by enforcing the cigarette control law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Please have them halt the rampant violations, and interdict deleterious and adulterated cigarettes.
                                                                                     Respectfully,

     

    ***

    Sample Letter to Michigan Attorney General William Schuette
    Urging Him to Have Michigan's Cigarette Control Law Enforced
    The Letter is Short, Right to the Point,
    Says the Law Number, and Asks Him to Have It Enforced

    ***

    Honorable William Schuette
    Attorney General, State of Michigan
    P. O. Box 30213
    Lansing MI 48909-7513

    Dear Attorney General Schuette:

               Please, as a drug prevention measure, take "cease and desist" action to stop violations of MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. That law 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 . . . ."

               It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point in the drug abuse lifestyle; they are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then marijuana, average age 14. See, e.g., DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977); DuPont, Teen Drug Use, 102 J Pediatrics 1003-1007 (June 1983); Fleming, et al., Cigarettes' Role in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use, 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

              All cigarettes are adulterated, their label admits they are, and most if not all are adulterated with additives. "Cease and desist" action is an action you take in other cases. 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 (1900); 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).

              All Michigan residents endangered by this deleterious and adulterated product, need enforcement to occur. Please take "cease and desist" action to protect abulic smokers, children, and nonsmokers, by enforcing the cigarette control law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Please take "cease and desist" action to halt the rampant violations.

                                                                                     Respectfully,

    * * * Sample Letter C * * *

    Col. Kristie Etue, Director
    Department of State Police
    714 South Harrison Road
    East Lansing MI 48823

    Dear Col. Eture:

             This is a request that, as a drug prevention measure, you assign officers to enforce the safe cigarettes law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

               It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point in the drug abuse lifestyle; they are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then marijuana, average age 14. See, e.g., DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977); DuPont, Teen Drug Use, 102 J Pediatrics 1003-1007 (June 1983); Fleming, et al., Cigarettes' Role in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use, 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

               This is especially true in Michigan. Violations of the safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, which bans unsafe cigarettes, are rampant.. That law 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 drug prevention measure at the gateway drug stage, work with prosecutors, 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 drug abuse at the gateway drug stage, 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 Barack ObamaU.S. Senator _______U.S. Representative __Governor ___ State Senator __State Representative __
    1600 Pennsylvania AvenueSenate Office BuildingHouse Office BuildingState CapitolState CapitolState Capitol
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             This is a request that you take action to get a law passed that will serve as a drug prevention law. Michigan already has such a law. It is law number MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. It deals with the cigarette role as the gateway drug delivery mechanism.

               It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point in the drug abuse lifestyle; they are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age 12.6; then marijuana, average age 14. See, e.g., DHEW National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p vi (Dec 1977); DuPont, Teen Drug Use, 102 J Pediatrics 1003-1007 (June 1983); Fleming, et al., Cigarettes' Role in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use, 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and DHHS, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Surgeon General Report (1994). Page 10 supports law enforcement, saying, "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

               The Michigan safe cigarettes act, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans unsafe cigarettes. Please, as a drug 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 drug 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 drug abuse, 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. Include cigarettes in the controlled substances act.

    Respectfully,

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    Text of A Letter By This Author to The Secretary of Labor Asking Her To Have A Federal Job Safety Agency (OSHA) Act Against The Gateway Drug

    Text of A Letter By This Author to The British Medical Journal On One of the Drug-Induced Symptoms (Stress Disorder) A Recent Study Found in Prostitutes

    A Foreseeable Defense in Drug Arrest Cases

    1. Drug abuse by smokers is simply one of the many effects of TSC.

    "Over 37 million people (one of every six Americans alive today) will die from cigarette smoking years before they otherwise would."
    Source: Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, page v (Dec 1977). Such deaths are "natural and probable consequences." As such, occurring so frequently as to be expected to happen again, they are intentional. Accordingly, to deal with the beam, not the mote, the underlying perpetrators, tobacco manufacturers and sellers, and their accessories, should be prosecuted for poisoning/murder as per pertinent case law.

    2. It is a "natural and probable consequence" that prosecutors' mass refusal to enforce anti-poisoning murder law and the 1909 drug abuse prevention law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, leads to drug abuse by smokers, hence, their being the typical group, pursuant to the aforesaid studies, to commit drug use disproportionately.

    3. Michigan tried to stop the drug abuse process from starting, by passing MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, which serves as a "Drug Abuse Prevention Act," but it is never enforced. Prosecutors of drug offenders lack clean hands as they and accessories, fellow prosecutors, have done, and do, nothing to enforce it. Said prosecutors are thus "accessories during the fact," a legal concept defined on pages 14-15 of Black's Law Dictionary. They actually or impliedly consent to TSC deaths ("consent" is defined on page 305).

    4. It cannot be deemed other than "entrapment" (defined on page 532) when prosecutors en masse refuse for 93 years to enforce the drug abuse prevention law, when the "natural and probable consequence" (drug abuse) results, and they seek to divert attention off their own beam, personal, immoral, habitual misconduct of refusing to enforce the law, by their hypocritical finger-pointing at the mote (individual drug abuser).

    5. MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, if enforced, would prevent most if not all drug abuse. However, the Prosecutor never files any cases re violations of the law, which are rampant.

    6. Accordingly, the court should dismiss drug charges as frivolous and moot; and/or, in the alternative, and preferably, enter an injunction directing prior mass enforcement of MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, as a condition precedent to allowing prosecution of anyone other than the Confederate tobacco company perpetrators, with respect to smokers' drug use.

    7. The continuing pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, mass refusal to enforce the 1909 law, precludes prosecutions at the latter end of the cause and effect chain. By law, MCL § 750.478, MSA § 28.476, the government (prosecutors) must set an example of enforcing and obeying the laws. Case law to the same effect, e.g., Service v Dulles, 354 US 363; 77 S Ct 1152; 1 L Ed 2d 1403 (1957), and Glus v Eastern District Terminal, 359 US 231, 232; 79 S Ct 760, 762; 3 L Ed 2d 770, 772 (1959), makes clear that a plaintiff cannot rely on its own wrongdoing at the starting point of a process.

    8. The government (prosecutor) cannot have the benefit of the provisions favorable to its/his side, while ignoring its conditions which it/he is to perform, obey, or enforce. Precedents show that no court should aid such a misconduct-committing party, e.g., BTC v Norton CMC, 25 F Supp 968, 969 (1938); and Buckman v HMA, 190 Or 154; 223 P2d 172, 175 (1950). "No one may take advantage of his own wrong," Stephenson v Golden, 279 Mich 710, 737; 276 NW 848 (1938). When starter-drug users, smokers, are using post-starter drugs, the wrong is prosecutors' pursuant to their 93 year pattern of refusal to enforce the drug abuse prevention law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

    9. Somebody should indeed be prosecuted--prosecutors--pursuant to MCL § 750.478, MSA § 28.476, for their protracted, brazen knowing, refusal to enforce the drug abuse prevention law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216.

    10. Such prosecutor conduct violating the rule of law, deprives the employer, the "People" in drug cases, of "honest services." Federal laws, e.g., 18 USC §§ 1341, 1343, and 1346, make fraud defrauding employer of "honest services" illegal.

  • The term “‘honest services’ can include ‘honest and impartial government.’”--U.S. v Brumley, 116 F3d 728, 731 (CA 5, 1997) cert den 522 US 1028; 118 S Ct 625; 139 L Ed 2d 606.
  • “A defendant may be prosecuted for deprivation of honest services [even] if he [the offender, e.g., prosecutor never enforcing the cigarette law] has [not a single illegal intent but] a dual intent, i.e., if he is found to have intended both a lawful [as they may allege] and an unlawful purpose to some degree.”--U.S. v Woodward, 149 F3d 46, 71 (CA 1, 1998), cert den 525 US 1138; 119 S Ct 1026; 143 L Ed 2d 37.
  • The Dept of Justice is currently prosecuting an "honest services" case, U.S. v James J. Smith.
    For an example of how this concept was applied in a Macomb County case, though another context, as these precedents have general application, click here.
    11. In states without a cigarette control law, the Legislature itself is the accessory, by refusing to deal with the gateway drug, only the post-gateway drugs. It is dealing not with the cause, but with effects.
    12. The Supreme Court in Robinson v California, 370 US 660; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (1962) ruled that it is unconstitutional to criminalize a disease. The various drug abuses are recognized diseases, as per the DHHS International Classification of Disease, 9th ed. (1980).
    13. Politicians circumvent Robinson by criminalizing drug disease symptoms! which include abulia (impulse and ethical controls impairment), hence the drug-transportation, drug-buying, drug-use, symptoms of the condition. This politician-approach is as unconstitutional as criminalizing, let's say, symptoms of lung cancer: coughing, vomiting, pallor, etc.
    14. Be aware, the 'War on Drugs' was begun by a scam, by government lying, by blaming drugs for tobacco-caused conditions. Details are at our anti-DWB site.
    15. Caveat: An immediate re-legalization of post-gateway drugs could well be a catastrophe as it is primarily smokers who use marijuana. That is because there are tens of millions of potential marijuana users, in view of the vast numbers of smokers. Nonsmokers rarely if ever get hooked on using marijuana, or any other post-gateway drug. Legalization of marijuana and other post-gateway drugs could safely only be done AFTER totally criminalizing tobacco pushing, after decades of no tobacco use, only after the gateway starter drug is gone for decades, only after the norm of everyone being a lifelong nonsmoker is restored, i.e., only after restoration of the pre-Columbus status of everyone being a nonsmoker, of nobody being a person who routinely regularly uses tobacco.

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