November 2009

FORCES International columnist Edmund Contoski reports on how a proposed national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would be unfair, ineffective, and downright ludicrous…<br />

Robert Prasker comments on the instrumental role tobacco played in settling America, and the true origins of the Thanksgiving holiday.

<div style="text-align: center;"><b>&quot;Rising obesity will cost U.S. health care $344 billion a year&quot;</b></div>
is the eye catching title of an article of<b> </b><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2009-11-17-future-obesity-costs_N.htm">USA TODAY</a>, of November 16, 2009, where Nancy Hellmich writes that &lt;a study released in July 2009 showed that obese Americans cost the country about $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, and that it will cost the USA about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018&gt;. <br type="_moz" />

In 1997 Tony Blair came to power in the UK with a promise of transforming the National Health Service but 10 years later a person was more likely to come out of a UK hospital in worse health than when they went in and patients were regularly dying in hospital corridors for lack of beds. <br />

<div style="text-align: justify;">We are told that folks in India, particularly youth, have responded to anti-tobacco fanaticism with blatant derision and defiance.</div>

<div style="text-align: justify;">People always find them.</div>

<div style="text-align: justify;">The real lesson of Ireland is resistance.</div>

This is going to disgust you, but you must read it.<br />

<span style="font-size: larger"><b>Eureka! </b></span>My colleagues woke up: They realized that behind the relentless propaganda about the vaccine against influenza A there is Big Pharma. <br type="_moz" />