June 4, 2009 Larry Waters

Kennedy/Waxman Tobacco Sell-Out – Opposed by R.J. Reynolds, SnusCENTRAL.org and Larry Waters?!

Kennedy/Waxman, S. 982, HR 1256; all very innocuous names for one of the most destructive bills to American Health Care which ever slithered through Congress. Lets call this legislation by it’s Official title: Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act. Really, I’m not making that up. It is the Official title of the Kennedy/Waxman legislation.

I’m not even sure why it is called Kennedy/Waxman anyway. Both Bills were substantially written by Philip Morris USA and extremist group Tobacco Free Kids. Add the US Congress which will pass both bills overwhelmingly and we have a NEW Axis of Evil.

On the other side, you have R. J. Reynolds Tobacco and Reynolds America; makers of American Camel SNUS, Camel Orbs, and Camel Sticks; the entire Reduced Harm Tobacco Products Community, rational anti-cigarette activists, most of the Scientific Community (except for the anti-all tobacco extremists for whom agenda trumps the facts)…..and most importantly, (at least to me) Larry Waters of SnusCENTRAL.org.

That’s right; I know you’d never thought you would read this unless a gun was pressed to my head, but to Daniel Delen, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and especially Susan Ivey, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of RJRT parent Reynolds America Inc….you have my complete and active support in your efforts to combat the so-called Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act.

Did Hell just freeze over? Did the Earth stop spinning on it’s axis? Have I lost my mind? Has my years-long strategic admiration and strange attraction to Susan Ivey finally blinded me to reality?

No to all of the above. My concerns and disagreements with Reynolds over their smokeless tobacco products are simply not relevant right now.

The Axis of Evil’s Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act; combined with the infamous PACT Act, “A bill to prevent tobacco smuggling, to ensure the collection of all tobacco taxes, and for other purposes.” also working it’s way through Congress makes all of that moot if both pass as are now written.

Today I want to focus primarily on Kennedy/Waxman’s “Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act”; legislation which doesn’t prevent, but instead encourages cigarette smoking by existing cigarette smokers, and yes, new smokers in “the children”.

The “Control” portion virtually destroys non-cigarette alternatives for the 46MM or so current American cigarette smokers; all of which are AT LEAST 98% less harmful than cigarettes.

Let me start with a quote from this morning by my new friend, long-time Anti-Cigarette, Anti-Second-Hand Smoke Activist and Director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania, Bill Godshall:

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE “Watch Democratic Senators misrepresent Marlboro cigarette protection legislation as a public health measure that would protect youth from tobacco companies, while Senator Burr exposes fundamental flaws of the legislation and proposes harm reduction policies to more rapidly reduce cigarette smoking and tobacco smoke pollution.”

I could write a book on the failures, cowardice, hypocrisy, corruption of both facts and individuals, the selling out of America’s Cigarette Smokers, Non-Smokers, and “the Children” with this perverse and cynical legislation.

I may someday, except Kennedy/Waxman and the PACT Act combined equate a humble Snus Lord like myself with a Mexican Drug Lord. This time next year, I may be writing from the Colorado SuperMax Prison unless Sweden will give me asylum. Does SuperMax have WiFi?

Instead, I’m going to bullet point for you just SOME of the insanity of “The Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act“. Remember as you read these that combustible tobacco: a burning cigarette, contains over 6000 toxic substances and around 60 carcinogens.

Roasted Coffee contains over 21 known carcinogens. Where are the Anti-Starbucks Zealots??? Where is my steaming cup of French Roast?

Reduced Harm Tobacco and Nicotine Delivery Systems such as Snus, American Smokeless Tobacco, oral and inhaled nicotine products have nicotine. Nicotine is very addicting: more so than heroin. It is not a carcinogen of any significance though. Let not your pancreas be troubled. Especially since cigarette smokers switching to Reduced Harm Tobacco alternatives cut any negligible risk in half.

Nicotine affects the cardiovascular system…just like caffeine does. The negative effects of nicotine and caffeine are pretty much identical. Why isn’t Congress banning caffeinated soft drinks “for the sake of the Children”?

This is why legitimate science taken in context and not distorted agrees that Reduced Harm and Tobacco and Reduced Harm Nicotine Delivery systems are 98% to virtually 100% less harmful to the smoker than cigarettes are.

In the coming days, I’ll be publishing some of my conversations with Dr. Brad Rodu, one of the leading scientists and researchers in the United States on the subject of Reduced Harm Tobacco, and Swedish Expert Dr. Lars-Erik Rutqvist, Senior Vice President for Scientific Affairs at Swedish Match AB. Both are brilliant men and their continuing insights into Reduced Harm Tobacco as a way to save the lives of current cigarette smokers will be a huge and fascinating addition to SnusCENTRAL.org.

PLEASE lets always keep in mind that Reduced Harm products are designed to wean cigarette smokers off of cigarettes; NOT to encourage current non-tobacco users to take up nicotine products of ANY kind.

Here are some of the supposed highlights of Kennedy/Waxman:

All new Reduced Harm products introduced after 2007 will be prohibited.
Permitted Reduced Harm products will not be allowed to labeled a safer alternative for cigarette smokers than cigarettes even though they are.
Reduced Harm Tobacco products will still require the label “this product causes mouth cancer” even though we know it doesn’t and the “science” which said it did was based on an antique “dry snuff” barely used by older Southern women in the US today. This dry snuff was a mouth cancer contributor but not today’s Moist Snuff, Chewing Tobacco, Snus, and especially Swedish/Scandinavian Snus.
FDA will have the authority to ban most flavors in products…except Menthol. Apple, cherry, strawberry, chocolate, pineapple, banana and the plethora of other flavors especially in Scandinavian Snus? Banned. But menthol, which is the only real flavor cigarette manufacturers use overtly, is exempt. Menthol, which study after study has shown has not only addicted, but was and is a major factor in enticing “the Children” to start smoking. Especially African American children. Where is the NAACP?
Nicotine: FDA would not be allowed to ban nicotine. They would, however, be allowed to mandate the lowering of nicotine levels in cigarettes. Any smoker or ex-smoker can tell you what that means: in order to maintain your accustom nicotine levels, you are going to suck harder on that cigarette and smoke more of them. Isn’t FDA supposed to ensure product safety, not contribute to increasing deleterious usage?

More means more profits for cigarette makers, more tax money for State and Federal Governments; especially when the companion PACT Act classifies any consumer ordering any tobacco product (except cigars) over the phone or Internet a “Tobacco Smuggler”.

Since PACT accomplishes this ban by coercing the Common Carriers (UPS, DHL, FedEx, USPS) and even private couriers from delivering tobacco products under penalty to the individual driver/delivery person of imprisonment and huge fines, you will be forced to buy the overpriced, limited selection and punitively taxed products over the counter.

That is until BATF ensures that all mail-order Internet/phone purchases, foreign or domestic, collect and pay ALL applicable sales, tobacco and other taxes. Then selection comes back but the price increase on products from adding all taxes, administering the tax collection programs and buying the required data-bases will force those Reduced Harm products to significantly increase. Smokers trying to improve their health will pay more for the limited privilege.

Since this isn’t my Book on Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act and PACT, let me boil all this down for you. There are some excellent articles (aside from my own of course) which detail different points of Kennedy/Waxman in horrifying detail and they are linked below.

The bottom line is that Kennedy/Waxman does nothing to aid Family Smoking Prevention. To the contrary, in the 60 bullet points I could have listed above, it actually encourages especially “the Children” to take up cigarettes.

It will force existing cigarette smokers to smoke more, send a false message that under FDA oversight, cigarettes are now “safer” product thus encouraging more people to smoke, and kill tens of millions current and future American cigarette smokers by purposefully denying them virtually harmless alternatives to cigarettes.

With lowered nicotine levels, these smokers will consume even more cigarettes causing them to die quicker…hopefully before their Medicare and Social Security entitlements kick in since both programs are bankrupt already. Before they die, though, these addicted smokers will continue and grow as a huge financial burden on the health-care system and the American taxpayer.

As to the “Control” part of the legislation, it intentionally bolsters cigarette use, especially of market-leader Marlboro cigarettes and one-trick-pony Lorillard Tobacco which would collapse in weeks without Newport menthol cigarettes.

The winners here are obvious: tobacco companies which make most of their revenue from cigarettes and want that to continue. The State and Federal Governments which will be able, between Kennedy/Waxman and the PACT Act, to be able to collect even more billions of dollars from punitively taxed, addicted, now forced and encouraged to smoke by preventing Reduced Harm alternatives while turning Internet purchasers of these products into felons, hated cigarette smokers.

Big Pharma also a winner. By purporting to be a smoking cessation product, you can walk into any Walmart and find a huge selection of overpriced nicotine gum (children love gum!) and patches right on the shelf. No warning labels….just that you have to be over 18 to purchase them. High School Seniors are 18. And the penalties for distributing to minors are a lot less than crack, cheese, crystal meth, or even marijuana.

Tobacco Free Kids? (how dare they use that name!) They get to claim “victories”, raising even more money from both extremists and naive anti-tobacco activists.

The losers are also obvious. Tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds who in America drove the spread of Reduced Harm products like Camel SNUS and Orbs (I still can’t believe I’m supporting RJRT..), new American Snus manufacturers like Discreet Snus maker American Smokeless tobacco who don’t have cigarettes to fall back on, Electronic Cigarette Manufacturers which in just a year has become a $100BB business, Swedish and Scandinavian Snus Manufacturers who offer the widest and safest selection of spit-less Smokeless tobacco products on the planet.

But of course, as always, the biggest loser is the socially stymatized nicotine-addicted cigarette smoker, both current and now future, whose blood has been on the hands of the American Government since 1964 when instead of banning cigarettes based on the Surgeon General’s Report, sold out along with State Governments for $250BB in blood money called the “Tobacco Settlement”. Plus all the ever-increasing tobacco and cigarette tax “revenue” of course.

They are ones denied real safe alternatives to the cigarettes they have to sell kidney’s to afford already (a pack of Marlboro Red’s in NYC is now $9.50 per PACK).

In the end, like everything else these days, it comes down to money. Exploiting Black Youth by not banning Menthol; the only overt flavor used in cigarettes. With PACT, crushing Native American Internet and over-the-counter discount tobacco sales even though the very treaties America signed when herding Native Americans onto Reservations allowed it…..until now.

President Obama presses on in nationalizing the banking industry, the insurance industry, the automotive industry, and soon it appears, the health care industry at the price of multi-trillion dollar deficits for all long as the eye can see.

Kennedy/Waxman: the Orwellian named “Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act” and the PACT Act, which lumps mail-order/Internet tobacco retailers in with (by name) terrorists like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah; demonstrate just how well the new Socialist America takes care of it’s citizens.

President Obamo has already indicated he will sign both pieces of legislation.

This is not why America was founded. This is not why America has prospered and been a beacon to the entire world for over two centuries. This is why we may very well have left our best days as a nation behind us. God help us all…and our children and grandchildren.

Sincerely,