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Welcome to The Crime Prevention
Group (TCPG) Home Page
This site has three functions, providing
(1) background information on smoking and laws,
(2) links to more detailed information, and
(3) letter writing samples for you to take action to promote safe
cigarettes by contacting government officials with authority to accomplish that goal.
TCPG presents this issue from multiple approaches, to enlist as broad a based community support for safe cigarettes as possible. Rather than the limited "health only" aspect others
focus on, TCPG recognizes that people have wider interests, hence,
identifies multiple examples of the ill effects of unsafe cigarettes, and places the subject in more comprehensive context than other sites.
The issue of safe cigarettes is both a smokers' and nonsmokers' rights issue. Others give the impression that the rights clash, but TCPG looks to the common ground: Everybody is entitled to safe products. Tobacco companies are the only ones regularly violating this consumer protection principle, by their discriminating against smokers, the only people denied normal consumer product protection against products laden with toxic chemicals that kill when used as the
manufacturers intend. Nonsmokers would not object to safe cigarettes that
do not emit hazardous emissions.
For admission to any of the medicolegal areas, please click on the
highlighted words of interest to you. Be advised that some of this
information from medical journals, law books, and court precedents (as it
is so very contrary to lay-mythology of the type typically in the media) may
be upsetting. (There was, in past eras, hostile reaction to information
that, e.g., the earth is not the center of the universe, and is so round
that one can go west and arrive east!! Myth-busters are not always
well-received!) So while the medical and legal information here is
suitable for all ages, discretion is advised.
| "Public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman."—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). |
Michigan's safe cigarettes' law is an example for the nation and
the world. It protects both smokers' and nonsmokers' rights by banning
deleterious and adulterated cigarettes while allowing safe cigarettes. It
avoids criminalizing children, as others do. Others' proposals, such as H.R. 1130, only require fire-safe cigarettes. Michigan leadership
since 1909 requires cigarettes to be ingredients-safe, comprehensively
safe, the same consumer product requirement as for all other products. For
more information, see TCPG's analysis of the law.
For those with interests in specific areas, pertinent data and sample
letters can be obtained by clicking on the item:
See also our activism site. Doctors have
long known how to ascertain substances' effects on the body. This skill
has been mastered, refined, and enhanced over the centuries, since at least the 1500's. So
tobacco hazards have been recognized for four
centuries. The fact that tobacco-hazards-knowledge is so ancient, is
unknown to moderns is due, primarily, to media
censorship and tobacco lobby
fraud.
Michigan's John Engler is one governor who, by Executive Order banned smoking in state buildings, tobacco sales on
state property, and production of cigarettes by state prisons due to
cigarettes' adverse impact. In an e-mail
message to this web writer, he identifies some of cigarettes' adverse
effects on the state. He has gone so far as to declare a cigarette smuggling emergency. In a 22 Jan 1999 letter, he advised TCPG that as requested, he asked the Michigan State Police
Director to look into enforcing the law. As the law remains unenforced,
more letter writing is needed.
The Director of Michigan's Department of Community Health, James K. Haveman, Jr., has verified the Michigan safe cigarettes law twice, in a July 1997 letter and in a follow-up September 1997 letter. The law was one of the four model laws cited by the website author, in the American Journal of Public Health, May 1997.
TCPG opposes the typical scam of blaming the victims, focusing attention, often hostile, on the individual, rather than dealing with the systemic aspect, which may involve resisting lobbyists of the rich and powerful. An example scam is post-gateway drug testing, as distinct from action to ban the gateway drug. It is much easier for corrupt politicans to say, 'do post-gateway drug testing,' than 'let's ban the gateway drug.'
Cigarette companies, for legal reasons, dare not admit that their
product is deleterious, hence, they do not on-the-record oppose the
Michigan type of clergy-influenced careful
wording. This wording cannot be denounced as prohibitionist, as it
officially allows safe cigarettes, if any. In this way, the law is like
any product safety law, safe items are allowed, dangerous ones are not.
Other less dangerous drugs are banned by the federal Controlled
Substances Act, 21 USC 801 et seq. Tobacco should definitely be deemed covered by that law in view of its meeting the 21 USC 811c
et seq. criteria. For details, see our website showing partial action as
unconstitutional, and our website urging
coverage of tobacco by the Controlled Substances Act.
This site urges you to write to
- (a) Michigan Governor Engler urging him to have the State Police enforce the Michigan law, using this sample letter; and to
- (b) Michigan Attorney General Jennifer M. Granholm urging her to take "cease and desist" action to enforce the Michigan law, using this sample letter.
- If you prefer shorter versions, here are some short sample letters to them.
As the safe cigarettes concept should be adopted in all states and
nationwide, TCPG urges writing to legislators and governors of all states,
and to U.S. senators, cognressmen, and the President, urging adoption of
the Michigan law concept everywhere. Here are addresses:
| Pres. George W. Bush | U.S. Senator _______ | U.S. Representative
_ | Governor __ |
State Senator | State Rep.
__ |
| 1600 Pennsylvania Ave | Senate Office Bldg. | House Office
Bldg. | State Capitol | State
Capitol | State Capitol |
| Washington DC 20500 | Washington DC 20510 | Washington DC 20515 | City St Zip | City St Zip | City St Zip |
The author of this website has published papers on the subject of
smoke-free work places pursuant to federal law 29 USC § 651 - § 678 and 29 CFR § 1910.1000, in the New York State Journal
of Medicine, Indoor Air Review, and American Journal of Public Health. He has also
shown cigarettes' high cost to society and taxpayers. Such data, dating back a century, helped lead to the Attorney-General and Department of Justice, cost recovery litigation.
Both smokers' and nonsmokers' rights advocates use words such as "choice," "consent," sellers' "intent," etc., words that have precise legal
meanings. For quotes and data from law dictionary definitions and court
case precedent analyses of such terms, click
here. Of course, for legal advice, consult an attorney.
But do not hesitate to familiarize yourself with a law dictionary at a
public library or perhaps at your local court house law library. Or read
the many court cases. All information here is
placed here pursuant to the necessity doctrine.
The famous inventor Thomas Alva Edison wrote
against cigarettes as long ago as 1914, in a letter published and
widely circulated nationwide. Louisa May Alcott's relative William wrote against tobacco in 1836. Many
others wrote about tobacco effects:
Rev. Orin Fowler, Disquisition on Evils of Using Tobacco (1833)
Rev. Benjamin I. Lane, The Mysteries of
Tobacco (1845)
Dr. John Burdell, Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse (1848)
Dr. Joel Shew, Tobacco: History, Nature, Effects on Body and Mind (1849)
Dr. John Lizars, The Use and Abuse of
Tobacco (1859)
James Parton, Smoking and
Drinking (1868)
Dr. Hippolyte Depierris, Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac (1876)
Dr. James Jackson, Tobacco: Effect upon Health and Character (1879)
Dr. G. Witter, Tobacco Effects Report to Wisconsin Board of Health (1881)
Prof. John Hinds, Ph.D., The Use of
Tobacco (1882)
Meta Lander, The Tobacco Problem (1882)
Rev. John B. Wight, Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse (1889)
Dr. Charles Slocum, Tobacco and Its Deleterious Effects (1909)
Dr. Abel Gy, L'Intoxication
Par Le Tabac (1913)
Henry Ford, The Case Against the Little White Slaver (1914)
Prof. Bruce Fink, Tobacco (1915)
Dr. John H. Kellogg, Tobaccoism, or, How Tobacco Kills (1922)
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The Michigan State Legislature had a report on cigarette hazards
in 1889. Both Iowa and Tennessee banned cigarettes in 1897, the same year a boy named Adolf was being expelled from school for smoking. The cigarette-cancer link was well-established by 1925. So officials cannot plead ignorance!!
Medical analyses of the death rate caused by tobacco range into the tens of millions. Are the mass numbers of tobacco deaths a holocaust as the Royal Society of Physicians alleged in 1971? For a case law analysis, click here. For an international law context for the tobacco genocide issue, click here.
That material is an introduction. Efforts at obtaining an international
law solution to problems with worldwide impact have long been attempted. In addition, for
data on extraditing those responsible for tobacco deaths pursuant to
established criminal prosecution concepts, including the United
States v Noriega precedent, click
here.
Tobacco issues go back to the slavery era. Slaves were used in tobacco raising. Slaves experienced tobacco-related family destruction. Tobacco still causes family destruction via mass disease, suffering, and death. As the various state, common, statutory, and international laws cited herein show, doing these things to people is illegal. This site offers a
perspective on tobacco raising as having a long history of illegality, due
to the fact that slavery was illegal and unconstitutional pursuant to case precedents and constitutional law analyses. Details and related materials were cited by abolitionists of the anti-slavery era such as William Goodell, Benjamin Shaw, Lysander Spooner, Joel Tiffany, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Wilson.
Analyses of slavers' immorality were provided by abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison, by Catholic activists, by
Parker Pillsbury, Theodore Weld, and many others.
Employers have a duty to provide safe coworkers, i.e., no smoking on the job. As long as cigarettes remain unsafe and create hazardous levels of toxic emissions, the common law duty against negligent hiring, the duty of employers to not hire persons dangerous to themselves, others, and property, will remain an issue. This fact makes enforcement of the safe-cigarettes law urgent, and passage of such a law where none exists. And see, for example, the precedent of getting a court injunction requiring safe coworkers banning smoking.
This concept (seeking injunctions) is also being used in condominiums and apartments.
Workers' rights to safe job sites were sought in a court
case by a worker, Victor Eskenazi, in the State of Washington. He was following the Donna Shimp and Leonard Perkins worker safety injunction precedents. He sought assistance
in the effort at his website, but his effort to set a precedent to
protect all workers was vehemently opposed by the Washington Attorney
General. Fortunately, another case in the state did succeed at the Washington Supreme Court. See also examples of smokers' worker compensation cases.
Tobacco was a Confederate product. After the Civil War, Confederate soldiers returned to their old occupations, including tobacco manufacturing. Their anger at the North for having won the War, led them to change the tobacco formula, to add adulterants including toxic substances including coumarin (for rat poison), and to raise the plant (trilisa odoratissima) producing coumarin in such vast quantities as to be able to produce millions of pounds of it.
Think of cigarettes as having a confederate label. This helps explain what may otherwise seem inexplicable: a "business" knowingly, intentionally, making unsafe products mass killing people, a business whose product placement practices enable a high rate of shoplifting.
No, it's not a "business," it's enemy terrorism, and linked to terrorism via the drug-money trail.
When an army places mines for enemies to be injured thereby, any and all methods of bringing them into proximity of the killing devices are standard practice. These practices include deception.
Are you surprised at a revenge motive among tobaccoists? Remember this fact: Others elsewhere have attitudes of revenge for past wrongs, real or imagined, even dating back centuries. (For example, think of the late 1990's war in Serbia around Kosovo, arising from events dating back six centuries, to around the year 1389). Was Confederates' anger against Yankees any different? The mass death rate evidence tells us, no. The last code between Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis (who had used chemical warfare against the U.S.) in 1865 was "come retribution." Yes, their last code was "come retribution." Rat poisoned cigarettes are retribution, indeed, murder.
Pictures with their smiling faces, standard military deception, are intended to deceive. They retained the widespread hatred of America, damn Yankees, blacks. Yes, hatred.
For those with an historical inclination, Michigan was (as a result of
knowing the foregoing) a leader in the nineteenth century
tobacco control movement. Also available is additional legal analysis and
a test of readers' knowledge on tobacco issues and a site on protecting
young people from tobacco.
As tobacco has a long record of being dangerous and/or adulterated, there have been many lawsuits on various aspects of the danger, for example, in Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and Iowa.
TCPG's writer of this site was the first to identify the high cost to society of cigarettes. Also available is his paper
supporting the Attorney General lawsuit seeking recovery of the taxpayers'
money spent on tobacco-caused health care.
While the Attorney General cigarette costs reimbursement lawsuit under former Attorney General Frank J. Kelley (1961-1998) was in process, there was a petition
to the judge to enforce the Michigan safe cigarettes law by issuing a
"cease and desist" the violations order. The deal was so bad that it does
nothing to meaingfully reduce cigarettes, and is being challenged even by
distributors. A bibliography of others' writings helps explain why the cigarette control law is unenforced. The media are involved too. For an example of a media writer being held responsible for her words, click here. So-called think tanks also periodically write pro-tobacco progaganda, for example, the Cato Institute, see exposé.
Michigan has suffered from so much cigarette smuggling via
cigarettes from other states, that our Governor declared an emergency over
it, see text of finding. Cigarette
smuggling has occurred elsewhere as well.
Cigarette companies have in essence aided and abetted cigarette smuggling,
even across country lines. For example, see the paper on cigarette smuggling in Italy, and one on German Cigarette
smuggling, entitled "The Nicotine Racket: Trafficking in Untaxed
Cigarettes. A Case Study of Organized Crime in Germany," a guest lecture
given at the Institute for Criminology of the Oslo University, Norway, in
May 1999 by Klaus von Lampe. (Hitler
smoked).
Much of the information herein has been filed in courts, for example, in the Alabama Fletcher case. Also, many of us have heard of Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the assisted suicide issue. The author of this website brought an otherwise overlooked context to this issue, the cigarette role in suicide, via a medical data and law analysis in a petition and brief in a 1997 Kevorkian case, and in the recent (August 1999) Georges Reding case.
Legal Aspects And Testimony
Federal Supreme and
Circuit Court Case
Indexes of
Cases
Containing the Word
Cigarette, Smoking, or Tobacco
The DOJ Racketeering Case
Against Tobacco Companies
Smokers' right to safe cigarettes is in essence and/or indirectly
supported by nonsmokers' rights advocates, although they don't say it that
way. Their message is protecting nonsmokers; but doing that involves
preventing the unsafe product that does the deleterious emissions--hence,
providing smokers a safe product, IS a smokers' rights issue. Examples of
such sites are:
Information Sites
Somewhat more elaboration on some of these sites is at TCPG's No-Smoke Home Page.
Activist Organizations
New Mexico
Wisconsin
See also a review of the 2007 Movie "Sicko."
The Airspace Organization is a Canadian activist group. Its "photo gallery" has examples of pictures that specifically say what tobacco does, it kills. Airspace is suing to enforce the right to pure air:
We also have an overview of the Kentucky youth activist group.
In contacting other groups,
please tell them about anti-tobacco activism
history,
including the great Iowa precedent of 1897,
a law banning cigarette
manufacturing. YES!
Encourage seeking that type law everywhere.
Egroups Discussion On
Preventing Named Conditions
Topica Discussion
The author is available to speak to your group - of whatever interest as
may be evident from the range of above topics - to encourage
letter writing to get the cigarette control law enforced, thus prevent the
many types of cigarette effects. (A letter writing meeting
involves members bringing envelopes, paper, and stamps, ready to write to
the various officials with the ability to get the Michigan law enforced:
the Governor, Attorney General, State Police Director, Prosecutors,
Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.) To send an e-mail request to the author,
click here.
Our site is
http://gonow.to/no-smoke
Get yours
now!
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