Dear Forces:

I admire your website as a refreshing alternative to the garbage perpetuated by the antismoking, antifreedom, and antiscience health Nazis. I visit Forces daily to see the latest news in the war against those tyrants. However, there is one question that puzzles me. Is "additive-free" tobacco better for smokers?

I know any studies on the subject would be affected by the flaws in epidemiological research. The antismoking Nazis howl about the various additives that can be found in cigarettes. Yet they howl even more when additive-free brands like Winston and American Spirit are advertised as such; they claim the tobacco companies are implying that no additives mean a safer cigarette when the only ones to imply such were the health Nazis themselves.

Furthermore, my can of Bugler tobacco does not contain any surgeon general's warning, just a vague warning from the People's Republic of Kalifornia. Does this mean that the federal health bureaucrats consider home-rolled cigarettes harmless? Surely they would never endorse such a claim, yet they neglected to insist on the same warning labels that appear on my packs of Camel filters.

I know the tobacco companies could never say additive-free cigarettes are safer (or that any cigarette they made was safer) even if there was evidence to support such a claim, because they would only open themselves up to further lawsuits from greedy trial lawyers. The scumbag lawyers would take it as an admission that "Big Tobacco" was selling cigarettes that were "unsafe."

Perhaps someone in your fine organization could shed some light on this murky subject.

Keep up the good fight!

Shannon

Dear Shannon,

Thanks for your support. You bring up an interesting point. One of the cards the health Nazis play in their propaganda is, in fact, the additives one. One has to admit that the health Nazis (thanks largely to their limitless funds) are as clever as they are ruthless. The issue of the mysterious "additives" sparks, indeed, the imagination of the masses. When coupled with the hate campaign and the ad hominem attacks against the tobacco industry, it is easy to see how people imagine sinister laboratories, filled with sadistic chemists commanded by slimy tobacco executives who, modern plague spreaders, enjoy stirring deadly chemicals in their steamy bouillon to poison their victims.

As I have pointed out recently, this intriguing picture is a contradiction in terms, because even the most sinister exploiter wants to keep his victims in good shape (even slave drivers did so), because a corpse makes money to no one but once for the undertaker. But that simple reality is not sparking the public imagination, so we’ll put it aside.

How are things in reality? Are there manipulations of tobacco? Of course there are – they are necessary.

Tobacco contents must be kept constant for nicotine, tar, and other variables. If that is not done, you have ever-changing taste, and the industry would be promptly accused of making a defective product. I am no expert in tobacco curing and manipulation, but I recommend that you read this letter, written a few years ago by the now defunct Canadian Tobacco Manufacturing Council. The letter was written in response to the accusations of the British Columbia minister of health on additives. As you know, the ministries of health are sold to the campaigns of disinformation and falsehood on tobacco, since their goal is to control and change the behaviour of people according to the wishes of both the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical White Mafia, who MUST hide fifty years of failures in the fight against cancer and other diseases. A scapegoat/smokescreen (to prevent the public opinion from focussing on that blatant reality) is badly needed, and tobacco satisfies that need perfectly. No matter if not even one death can ever be proven to be caused uniquely by tobacco - no one among the millions claimed; let us just attribute them to tobacco; we have computers!

In the letter of the CTMC, the mystery of tobacco "additives" is explained in detail. To give you an idea of the level of ignorance of "public health" advocates (those are the antitobacco "experts" that people trust so much, because they say what the public hysteria wants to hear), this letter also answers the latest allegation of the time. Those monstrous tobacco manufacturers put radiator antifreeze in cigarettes (the allegation never explained why they would do that, but that’s beside the point), and that absurdity was even supported by the BC minister of health herself! But the poor, ignorant minister confused the poisonous ethyl glycol (radiator antifreeze) with propylene glycol, a harmless flavour enhancer used in food, and indeed used in cigarettes. It is interesting to note that the various Canadian medical associations, so vociferous against tobacco (and claiming that they want to inform the public), stayed silent when this nonsense was circulated. Obviously, if engine mechanics know the difference between ethyl and propylene glycol, the body mechanics should know even better. But – what the hell – they are both glycol, aren’t they, and as long as that hits the tobacco industry, hey, that’s all right – anything helps!

The story of additive-free tobacco (or foods, or drinks) is to be considered very carefully. Yes, today’s fashion is that everything has to be "additive-free," simply because the industry of fear has been so successful in agitating the imagination of the ignorant masses while waving the scarecrow of disease at every turn. That is also thanks to irresponsible media (that would not exist, economically, if they couldn't create a new scare every minute). Health scares sell; a paper that says "...all is quiet on the health and safety front" would not sell much. When additives were not used in foods, for example, food would spoil quickly, and food poisoning was more common. Nowadays, as we are sooooo worried about additives, smoking, foods, electromagnetic radiation and all the other thousands of "threats" to our health, we have never lived so long, and we have never been so healthy. That is another unquestionable reality that no one wants to hear, as it knocks whining and, once again, it does not suit either commercial interests, and/or public hysteria.

So, the tobacco industry is damned if it puts additives in tobacco, but it is damned if it does not. It is damned if it writes "light" on cigarettes that are actually lighter -- and after the health Nazis wanted them in the first place; the industry, in fact, was damned before, when it wrote nothing. The tobacco industry is damned if it finances studies that demonstrate the scientific frauds of antitobacco "science;" it is damned if it promotes its legal product, but it is damned if it makes antismoking commercials, because "commercials attract the youth." In short, the tobacco industry is expected to stand still, do nothing, and be taken apart by its pharmaceutically and state-funded tormentors, who lie on everything they say, while promoting the distribution of nicotine sold by its greedy Big Pharma benefactors. Nicotine is deadly if delivered through a cigarette (don't you like the world delivered? Doesn't it sound morbid?), but it does nothing if inhaled with a pharmaceutical inhaler, or taken in through transdermal patch. The tobacco industry is to be damned, damned, damned, bark the antismoking stooges with chocked, red faces, while stamping their feet on the floor, and cashing billions. This may continue indefinitely – unless the tobacco industry wakes up, and starts fighting back with whatever means are necessary. But the stupidity of the tobacco industry is analysed in another dialogue with a reader.

Back to the additives and closing, I have no idea why the bureaucrats did not hit your hand-rolled cigarettes. An oversight? Probably, as everybody knows that tobacco kills on contact! There is nothing wrong with the concept of additives, in itself. WHAT additives is the issue, but the health & safety & environment Luddites are against additives in principle, as they long for the return to an idyllic, computer-assisted Middle Age, that has all the romanticism of the "natural" life, but does not bring the pestilence and the disease it inevitably carries. I tried to engage many of these schizophrenic dreamers on a rational basis, but it is a waste of time, as they have no idea of where they want to go. They only know that they don’t want it, they don’t want it, they don’t want it, and this emotional reasoning will, eventually, be their undoing.

Unfortunately, they’ll take the entire society down with them in the process.

Regards,

Gian Turci