Education on the Tobacco-Crime Link As Our Ancestors Knew It

Testimony In Support of That Portion of
the Proposed Detroit Ordinance to Ban
Cigarette Billboards Within 1,000 Feet
of Areas of Children's Activities

Table of Contents

     I. Publications and Actions
    II. Rebutting the Myth That Tobacco Companies
         Don't Want Children to Smoke
   III. Rebutting the Myth That Cigarettes Are Legal
   IV. Confederate Role
     V. The Rat Poison in Cigarettes Issue
   VI. Why A Crime Prevention Group Is Interested
  VII. References on Deleteriousness
        of Specific Cigarette Ingredients
VIII. The High Cigarette Death Rate
   IX. Michigan Leadership

I. Publications and Actions

          The author showed in

           (a) 26 Smoke Signals 4 (Oct 1980), that tobacco's cost to the nation is over $130 billion, triple the then estimate, thus led the way for the Attorney General litigation;

           (b) "Smoking as Hazardous Conduct," 86 N Y St J Med 493 (Sep 1986) and [Indoor Air Quality] Already Regulated," 3 Indoor Air Rev 3 (April 1993) that cigarette emissions are illegal pursuant to federal law29 USC § 651 - § 678 and 29 CFR § 1910.1000; and

           (c) "Alternative Models for Controlling Smoking Among Adolescents," 87 Am J Pub Health 869 (May 1997), that extant criminal law against cigarettes and poisoning people (with penalties up to life in prison for a first offense) is a currently available means to prosecute cigarette sellers and thus protect children.

          The author testified before the Warren City Council in June 1998 in support of its thereupon adopted cigarette advertising ban. He has testified before legislators, mayors, and anti-drug activists for crime prevention vs. prisons, and for enforcement of already extant laws and regulations (e.g., against poisoning people) that already ban cigarettes, thus avoid new, duplicative rules.

II. Rebutting the Myth That
Tobacco Companies Don't Want Children to Smoke

          Cigarettes are a Confederate product--from people who swore that their hatred of us is deep, enduring, and forever. In the Civil War, they mass slaughtered 600,000 of us. Cigarette ads target children to replace the 3,000 body count killed every day, as Warren Council President James Fouts says, "to find replacements for the adults they lose due to tobacco-related illnesses." Tobacco company intent/action when unrestrained by law is shown by this pre-restraint example of smoking--30% of 6 year old boys; 50% of "boys between 9 and 10"; 88% of boys over 11. See Dixon, On Tobacco, 17 Canadian Med Ass'n J 1531 (Dec 1927).

III. Rebutting the Myth That Cigarettes Are Legal

          You may be told--falsely--that cigarettes are legal, so restricting advertising is wrong or unconstitutional. The truth is, cigarettes are not legal. Cigarette ads are inherently fraudulent as they convey the false opposite impression. It is illegal to provide people the means--e.g., a deleterious substance or mind-altering drug--to injure or kill themselves. People v Carmichael, 5 Mich 10; 71 Am Dec 769 (1858); People v Kevorkian, 447 Mich 436, 494-6; 527 NW2d 714, 738-9 (1994). It is illegal even if death is slow, and takes years. People v Stevenson, 416 Mich 383; 331 NW2d 143, 145-6 (1982).

           A. Cigarette emissions exceed limits set in federal law, e.g., 29 CFR § 1910.1000. Cigarette ads aid and abet, and are accessory to, this. 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), lists examples of deleterious emissions in quantities far above the rule limit:

Cigarette ChemicalEmission Quantity
DOL 29 CFR § 1910.1000
Bans Average Quantities Above
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

(Due to acalculia, impairment of mathematical comprehension and reactivity,
and due to abulia, impairment of willpower, and self-defense, impulse and
ethical controls-- underlying 90% of crime--and due to anosognosia, lack of
comprehension of their impairments, smokers cannot understand the danger
that these numbers depict, in effect, going far above the chemicals' "speed limit.")

            B. Michigan law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, bans deleterious and adulterated cigarettes. Cigarette ads fraudulently solicit, aid and abet, and are accessory to, violations of that law. Cigarettes are inherently deleterious. The warning label admits it. Grusendorf v City of Oklahoma City, 816 F2d 539, 543 (CA 10, 1987). The Department of Health and Human Services book, 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:

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)
nickel (2,000+ ng)lead (8+ µg)radioactive polonium (.2+ Pci).

          Tennessee in 1897 saw the danger, and banned cigarettes. Its 1897 cigarette ban was challenged, and upheld, Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 48 SW 305; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) aff'd 179 US 343 (1900). Michigan saw, and passed its cigarette ban soon thereafter, in 1909.

IV. Confederate Role

           Many people still alive then remembered that Confederates--the source of tobacco--had fought for the right to torture and kill. That right, which underlay slavery, had been repeatedly upheld in southern courts, e.g., Com v Turner, 26 Va 678 (1827); State v Mann, 13 NC 263 (1829); Neal v Farmer, 9 Ga 555 (1851); and Com v Souther, 48 Va 673 (1851). So in 1909, there was prudent suspicion that "unreconstructed Southerners" wanted revenge, and would manipulate so as to torture and poison Northerners. There was (see § V) evidence of poisoning, rat poison in cigarettes--put there in revenge by the bitter Confederate soldiers who returned to tobacco farming and manufacture.

           Re the tobacco-crime link, known since the Auburn Report (1854), Confederates were inordinately interested. Why? to unleash a crime epidemic on the hated U.S. After Reconstruction, they manipulated southern state constitutions' crime clauses to disenfranchise blacks. See Shapiro, Confederates and Crime, 103 Yale Law J 537-566 (Nov 1993). To counteract abolitionist warnings to blacks not to smoke, they unleashed advertising targeting blacks (now at issue). Why? to hook them on the gateway drug, then other drugs (even tobacco antidotes) that they manipulated lawmakers to ban.

           Further manipulations:

  • (1) Denouncing prohibition of the gateway drug;

  • (2) supporting prohibition of post-gateway drugs;

  • (3) claiming prosecution of white violators of anti-gateway drug (cigarette) law burdens the judicial system, but prosecuting blacks for post-gateway drug use does not;

  • (4) infiltrating police departments with Confederates-in-attitude to obstruct enforcing anti-cigarette laws, focus only on post-gateway drug crime, thus disenfranchise targeted blacks, to impact elections. (Consider Budzyn-Nevers, no enforcement of MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, but only at the post-gateway drug stage).
  • V. The Rat Poison In Cigarettes Issue

              Confederates altered cigarettes to add coumarin, rat poison, from trilisa odoratissima plants. Cigarette ads fraudulently fail to reveal this.

    "[I]t is largely used as an adulterant of smoking tobacco . . . [for its intoxicating, addicting effect]. Hence . . . cigarette-smoking . . . is assuming the proportions of a great national evil." Laurence Johnson, M.D., A Manual of the Medical Botany of North America (NY: William Wood & Co, 1884), pp 170-1.

              Michigan quickly responded by banning cigarette advertising, MCL § 750.38, MSA § 28.227--banning ads showing any crime being committed, this, poisoning by a mind-altering product. The 1897 Tennessee cigarette ban was thereafter passed.

    "It] has been used commercially for many years--mainly in cigarettes . . . harvest of [it] is expanding . . . The composition of one flavoring extract that includes [it] was patented in 1961. . . . About two million pounds of cured plants are harvested annually. . . . Because [it] is a perennial and the roots are not harvested, maintaining populations is not a problem. A decrease in plant populations has not been noted." Source: Krochmal, Trilisa odoratissima, 23 Econ Bot 185-6 (1969).

    "Leaves of [the plant] . . . are used in the tobacco industry, particularly in cigarette mixtures. . . . It appears that the . . . constituent most desired by the tobacco industry is coumarin." Source: Haskins, et al., Coumarin in Trilisa odoratissima, 26 Econ Bot 44-8 (1972).

    "Leaves used to flavor pipe and cigar tobacco and cigarettes . . . and as a moth repellant . . . may cause hemorrhage and liver damage." Source: James A. Duke, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1985), p 491.

              In the cigarette litigation case, Mike Moore, Attorney General ex rel State of Mississippi v American Tobacco Co, et al, No 94-1429, Jeffrey Wigand, Ph.D., an ex-tobacco company scientist, admitted coumarin (rat poison) in tobacco. Flouting the above public domain data, tobacco company attorney Thomas Bezanson objected, not as untrue, but "on trade secret grounds." See Philip Hilts, Smoke Screen: The Truth Behind The Tobacco Industry Cover-Up (NY: Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1996), pp 161-163. Such attorney concealment appears to be misconduct, an attempt to fraudulently conceal the fact the data has long been published in the public domain.

    VI. Why A Crime Prevention Group Is Interested

              Cigarette billboards are already illegal pursuant to MCL § 750.38, MSA § 28.227, as they promote an illegal product (cigarettes) banned pursuant to, e.g., MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216. Cigarette billboards are inherently fraudulent, and fail to warn that tobacco leads to crime, 90% of criminals are smokers.

               A. Tobacco ads fraudulently fail to warn that cigarettes' toxic chemicals cause abulia, impair impulse and ethical controls. Cigarettes are the delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug on which children are first hooked (average age 12). Alcohol follows, 12.6; then marijuana, 14. See the DHEW book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, page vi; Fleming, et al., "The Role of Cigarettes in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use," 14 Addictive Behaviors 261-272 (1989); and the DHHS book, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: A Report of the Surgeon General (1994). Page 10 warns that "Illegal sales of tobacco products are common."

               B. Due to their toxic chemicals, cigarette use (even by so-called consenting adults in the privacy of their homes) causes physical disorders such as lung cancer, but worse, the now lesser known condition--abulia. Abulia's result is not private but public, a most prominent feature of which is crime. Effects such as tobacco-induced lung cancer were unknown in the 19th century, but tobacco-induced abulia (thus crime) was. It was a prime concern that 90% of persons in prison are typically smokers, a fact unchanged since 1854 despite the vast societal changes since then. Tobacco's role in crime has been cited many times by law enforcement officials, judges, and doctors since the Auburn Report (1854), e.g., by Hodgkin, 1857; Ellis, 1901; Lindsay, 1914; Torrance, 1916; Brum, 1924; Danis, 1925; Healy and Bonner, 1926; Crane, Dawson, Pollock, and Shaw, 1931; Wood, 1944, etc.

    "Nowhere is the practice of smoking more imbedded than in the nation's prisons and jails, where the proportion of smokers to non-smokers is many times higher than that of society in general." Doughty v Board, 731 F Supp 423, 424 (D Col, 1989).
    As smoking causes abulia, acalculia, and anosognosia, impairing impulse and ethical controls, most crime is committed by smokers.
    "Nationwide, the [ratio] of smokers [to non-smokers] in prisons is 90 percent." McKinney v Anderson, 924 F2d 1500, 1507 n 21 (CA 9, 1991) [affirmed and remanded, 509 US 25 (1993)].

               C. Due to advertising and selective locationing, minorities are sold cigarettes disproportionately, so targeted into drug use. See Klonoff, et al, Sales of Cigarettes to Minors, 87 Am J Pub Health 823-6 (May 1997), and the Surgeon General Report (1998). So, pursuant to the post-Reconstruction era Confederate racism and manipulations, whereas pre-Civil War, it was mostly white smokers in prison, it is still smokers in prison, but they are now mostly black. We need to stop the discriminatory targeting process. To protect both black and white, abolitionist Michigan banned cigarettes.

    VII. References on Deleteriousness of Specific Cigarette Ingredients

              A. Gosselin, Smith, Hodge, and Braddock, Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, 5th ed (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1984). Page II-4 lists toxicity levels of 1-6 (1, "practically non-toxic"; 4, "very toxic"; 6, "super-toxic"). Nicotine, item 772, pages II-237 and III-311-4 is rated a 6; coumarin, page II-257, item 861, is a 4.

              B. Robert Dreisbach and William Robertson, Handbook of Poisoning: Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment, 12th ed (Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange, 1983 and 1987). Pages 35 and 259-263 cover carbon monoxide poisoning; pages 130-2, tobacco and nicotine; pages 385-7, anticoagulants, e.g., coumarin and warfarin.

              C. Sondra Goodman, Director, Household Hazardous Waste Project, HHWP's Guide to Hazardous Products Around the Home, 2d ed (Springfield, MO: Southwest Mo St Univ Press, 1989). Page 99 covers poisoning by carbon monoxide, of which cigarettes emit 42,000 ppm , exceeding the 29 CFR § 1910.1000 average safe limit of 35 ppm).

               D. Jay Arena and Richard Drew, Poisoning, 5th ed (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Pub, 1986). Pages 216-217 cover nicotine; pp 308-312, carbon monoxide; p 999, which lists coumarin, says, ominously, "see Warfarin," p 1007.

    VIII. The High Cigarette Death Rate

              Due to cigarettes' deleteriousness, "Over 37 million people (one of every six Americans alive today) will die from cigarette smoking years before they otherwise would," Department of Health, Education, and Welfare book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, DHEW Publication ADM 78-581, page v (Dec 1977). Such deaths are "natural and probable consequences," a term defined in Black's Law Dictionary, 6th ed (St. Paul: West Pub Co, 1990), page 1026. Deaths from cigarettes' deleteriousness occur so frequently as to be expected to happen again and again, hence meet the definition.

           IX. Michigan Leadership       

              Our deleterious cigarette ban MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, follows the wise 19th century concept of criminalizing fraudulent sales, snake-oil sales, etc., not the buying. The concept was that criminalizing buying and use makes too many criminals, promotes disrespect for law, and punishes the victim of the fraudulent sale. This is especially true with children, below the age of maturity and consent to even make contract decisions. We criminalize leaving one's refrigerator outside with the lock on ( MCL § 750.493d, MSA § 28.761(4)), not unsuspecting children who fall prey to it.

              By banning the gateway drug, not a post-gateway drug such as alcohol, 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. Michigan's well-reasoned law is an example for all. Wherefore this proposed implementation, insofar as it deals with the gateway drug, warrants support.


    Subsequent Testimony On The Same Subject

    RELATED INFORMATION
    Cigarette Ads Are Illegal Everywhere
    Cigarette Ads Are Illegal In Michigan
    The Driving While Black (DWB) Issue

    Recommended Tobacco General Information Web Sites
    Cigarette Ingredients
    Cigarette Additives
    Definitions of Terms
    Example State Law
    Tobacco Deaths--Case Law
    International Law

    A Sample Handout To Serve On Cigarette Advertisers
           

              Governor John Engler and his staff have been supportive and profess opposition to cigarette smuggling, issuing five pertinent memoranda.

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

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