<p style="" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Interesting piece from The Telegraph about the epidemic of signs that is plaguing our society – the most recent ones concerning smoking. There are so many signs ordering people about that, in fact, no one reads them anymore.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Forces is pleased to post the first real time study of statewide economic impact imposed by smoking bans.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Finally somebody has answered Michael Siegel’s challenge to prove that 30 minutes of secondhand smoke causes clogged arteries that increase the immediate risk of a heart attack: TobaccoScam.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">When’s the best time to fight back against a smoking ban? There’s never a better time than when the ban first comes into effect. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; color: black;">Once upon a time, you actually had to commit an infraction before being fined for one. That was in the old </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; color: black;">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; color: black;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard <span class="spelle">Carmona</span> complains to members of a Congressional committee that he was muzzled by White House operatives to support political agendas.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Staff writer Eric Blair sweetens our weekend with a good shot of humour as he explores the quest on the part of Public Health and its community activist partners to engineer the first-ever fully-documented death from Second Hand Smoke.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">You would think that someone nicknamed "Johnny Cigarette", someone capable of saying that contemporary pubs are often a pale “corporate imitation” of the once idiosyncratic mom-and-pop places that once flourished, and that smoking bans represent “<span style="color: black;">a draconian social apartheid”, would also understand that there is more going on here than a random bit of bad legislation. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Confession time! We goofed recently in making a brief but rather churlish comment about The Telegraph. In our defence, we can only say that everyone was in an uncommonly bad mood over the dawn of the British smoking ban.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">We may sound like old cranks when we say that the reason for the current health witch hunts is because the institution of “public health” is plainly sold out to the pharmaceutical multinationals, and thus has little credibility. </span></p>