PREAMBLE
FORCES International is an organisation in support of human rights and – in particular, but not limited to ? in defence of those who expect from life the freedom to smoke, eat, drink and, in general, to enjoy personal lifestyle choices without restrictions and state interference.
FORCES is an acronym of Fight Ordinances and Restrictions to Control and Eliminate Smoking. That name reflects the organisation?s original intent when it was founded in 1995 in San Francisco, USA. When it became clear that smoking repression, and the use of junk science to justify it, was going well beyond the petty prohibition to smoke in public, and implied instead a fundamental subversion of professional ethics and social values on an unprecedented scale, the scope of FORCES greatly expanded, and so did its size, through many chapters and affiliates in the United States and around the world.
The message of FORCES is based on the values of liberty for every individual in his personal choices. In this, FORCES is aligned with those who fight the antismoking cartel, which is basically false and oppressive. However, FORCES goes well beyond this, as it intends to expose the paucity and the illogic of a way of thinking and of conducting medicine, politics and scientific research that is simply unethical, and that wastes great human and public resources and energy in non-essential and irrelevant endeavours.
In this perspective, then, smoking prohibition and the campaigns for behaviour modification are a front to hide the self-righteousness of those who feel entitled to impose advice on health, choice, behaviour and social values. Furthermore, “health” campaigns disguise the prevarication of those who want to impose their ways with laws and taxes, programming the lives of individuals without sufficient knowledge of the values that many people hold dear, and of those liberties and pleasures which are as essential to the political and psychological well-being of people in a free society as health is to the well-being of the body.
To FORCES belong those who consider the following phenomena unacceptable:
- the siding of the state with one group of citizens against another
- the interference of the state in private life and property
- paternalistic “guidance” and life prescriptions which are harmful to the dignity of adults in a free society
Therefore, in order to generally counter these unacceptable tendencies and social-political trends and
- To improve the structure and the efficiency of the movement against state control and state-determined lifestyle;
- To advance the fight against the use of unethical science and misrepresentation of scientific evidence by public health and private institutions;
- To educate people about the real meaning and limitations of scientific evidence, and its appropriate use in public policy;
- To protect and ensure a future of public honesty and personal liberty for this and future generations, we proclaim this
CONSTITUTION OF FORCES INTERNATIONAL
