June 29, 2005
The International Smokers Rights Conference

 

Dear friends, 

I would like to thank Samantha for inviting me to speak today.

I believe that this meeting marks an important shift for FORCES and hopefully for our times. Differently from the many "pro-smoking" and "anti-smoking" groups that make up the smoking wars saga, FORCES is a real grass-roots movement. 

In FORCES, we see ourselves as political realists with a moral foundation. FORCES is coming out of its infancy, and has now a constitution that proudly states the principles it is based upon, as well as the goals we want to reach, and how to get there.  

FORCES is neither financed nor is it controlled by the colossal interests at play, and is therefore uniquely qualified to represent those who are both used and ignored: YOU the wholesalers, YOU the hospitality establishment owners, YOU the retailers, WE THE SMOKERS. All of us are beleaguered with taxation, paternalism, and false information. We are the cows to milk with taxation, the "patients" to "treat" with the VERY SAME NICOTINE that addicts us if taken through a cigarette, but frees us from addiction when taken through a pharmaceutical inhaler! We are the abstract numbers that are spit out from computers where sheer hypothetical fantasies meet customised software in a mockery of "science" that belongs in jail. 

We are the customers of Big Tobacco * a defeated industry with a death wish, which treats its only customers without the dignity and the respect owed to those who keep it rich and alive by buying its products. This is the only industry that finances propaganda, misinformation, action groups and politicians who have only one purpose: ITS DESTRUCTION, and the destruction of its clientele, of the infrastructures that supply it, and of smoking as part of a freely chosen way of life. This is an industry with a death wish so strong, it promotes pharmaceutical smoking cessation, tells its own customers to quit purchasing its products, validates and supports the junk science produced every day against smoking, often even supports smoking bans * as Philip Morris seems to do * while supporting the negation of choice and constitutional liberties, and pushing for its own effective nationalisation in a country based on that private, entrepreneurial initiative which made the United States as great and free as it is unique in the world. 

There is no doubt in my mind that this social, moral, economical and a philosophical paradox will extend to other industries and other target groups in society. We already see it with the food industry and with the overweight, who are taking their due place in the ranks of social pariahs right beside smokers. We see it with the alcohol industry, with warning labels being added to some labels. We will see it with almost every other consumer and industrial categories, because it is INEVITABLE. Why?  

To begin to answer this question, we have to examine the confusions and contradictions in our culture, a culture that has lost much of its direction.  

The so-called "health authorities" have embraced a negative mentality that considers everyone sick and in need of some "therapy" * otherwise they become a "cost to society" when compared to the model of the perfect human before expulsion from the Garden of Eden. But these "health experts" do not proceed from conventionally religious convictions or morality, at least not exactly. Nor do they proceed from some sort of culturally neutral vantage point that rejects the morality of our religious heritage. Nor is traditional public health practice what they have in mind, because they want to go much further than that. Instead, they offer us an unhealthy brew of medicalized secular Puritanism disguised as common-sense modern public policy, and try to sell themselves to us that way. In doing so, these so-called health authorities present a distorted blend of the political, the secular and the religious, which does justice to none of them, but creates a justification for all kinds of intrusions into people*s lives.  

Ours is an age where societies and people are no longer defined by what they do and accomplish, but by what they DO NOT DO. It*s like trying to define a hole. But if you try to describe a hole, you can*t * because you can*t define what is not there, but only what IS around it. A good example of this inversion is from a health official who defines his concept of the free and mature man as follows: "A REAL man is he who DOES NOT smoke, DOES NOT drink, and DOES NOT do drugs". Recently he has added that a "real man" is not fat. I don*t know how he would define a real woman, but if men and women are defined by their differences, perhaps the gentleman is hiding a secret preference for really fat, drunken, smoking WOMEN! 

This is certainly not an isolated case, but the typical representative of this obscurantist mentality. The Precautionary Principle increasingly adopted by the countries in the West for health and environmental matters in general puts it in black and white: "There is NO NEED to scientifically demonstrate that something is dangerous for the authorities to forbid, restrict, tax and regulate: SUSPICION is enough". Furthermore, it states that those who are accused of causing harm to health and to the environment have the burden of demonstrating that their activities DO NOT cause that harm * conveniently reversing the burden of proof on the accused -- as has happened in the darkest moments of human history. With this mentality in place and new generations trained to think in these terms by public schools and public health propaganda, the step from its application in sanitary and environmental codes to criminal codes is a very short one. Perhaps, in the future, and in the name of prevention, we may arrest people with troubled childhoods IN CASE THEY MIGHT COMMIT A CRIME, because statistics actually show a CORRELATION between crime and troubled childhood. Prevention is good, and crime is a social cost, after all! Don*t raise your eyebrows too much * if someone had told you 20 years ago that smoking in public would be forbidden, chances are you wouldn*t have believed them. 

I suggested earlier that FORCES is uniquely qualified to represent the many stakeholders in the smoking wars who stand to lose if the tobacco extremists movement gets its way * who stand to lose livelihoods, markets, and personal freedom. I add here that FORCES has survived with little money thanks to the unconditional dedication of those who have participated in the nearly ten years of its life. To those people I extend my unbounded gratitude. The reasons why those people have supported FORCES with their moral, intellectual, physical and financial resources is that they are moved by the belief that it is possible to change things. FORCES is not a smokers* rights group, although it defends smokers* rights. FORCES is a current of thought that considers liberty the most precious element of human life * a liberty that must be limited only if it threatens the liberty of others and when such a threat can be objectively demonstrated. Truth is its voice, and intellectual honesty its carrier wave. We believe that it is possible to have honest institutions again, and we believe that one*s lifestyle is EXCLUSIVELY one*s own business, without any interference from the state. Public health has a role to play in society * to keep our drinking water safe, and to intervene in the case of demonstrated, real epidemics such as AIDS or SARS, for example. It must not be permitted to expand its mandate, and begin micromanaging the lives of a free people, as it is beginning to do. Finally, we believe that the state is power, and where there is concentrated power there is corruption, thus the larger the state, the bigger the corruption. In a liberal democracy, the people * regardless of their voting preferences, must be politically active to keep the size and reach of government in check. 

Epidemiological junk science on smoking took off in England and in the US in the early 50s. Not stubbed out at the onset, this scientific trash was allowed to grow and became institutionalised first, and then become the tool for an obscurantist movement now fuelled by billions of public and pharmaceutical dollars. This junk science on smoking has become the base for all the health scares that afflict us today * and of much of the taxes we pay!  

To fight this wave, it is necessary firstly to understand who and what we are fighting. We have to make others understand that smoking is just the tip of the iceberg. And we have to stop seeing smoking bans as local issues, for they are NOT. Even when the small restaurant association manages to stop or slow down a smoking ban, we know it is a pyrrhic victory, for the antismoking zealots will come back, and back, and back again until they get what they want. Why? Because THE PROBLEM IS NOT ADDRESSED AT THE ROOT * and the roots are: 

* The corruption of institutions, who abuse the Precautionary Principle as well.

To do all that it takes MONEY * to organise, to develop independent means of mass-communication as we cannot rely on the mass-media, to educate as well as to spread hope, and to give back to smokers, drinkers and eaters the dignity, the power and the rights they deserve as citizens AS THEY ARE * not as the contrite or obstinate secular sinners depicted by "public health", which seems to grant dignity only to those who comply or fit with its contemptible agenda of state control. 

It is therefore important that all those who are in this room accept that to get REAL results, it takes REAL MEANS, and that each one of you takes on the responsibility not only of spreading the word of FORCES on freedom and junk science, but also to contribute with organised and RELIABLE work to its mission, and to help us raise the sizeable economic means that are indispensable to stopping a wave that, at the moment, has virtually unlimited funding. 

However, we have already demonstrated by our mere existence that FORCES can be more efficient with a penny than antismokers are with a dollar * but we have to understand that THAT PENNY IS NEEDED. 

Because Liberty never came by itself and never came for free -- and when we stop believing that is when we lose it. 

Thank you for listening. 

Maryetta Ables

Secretary of FORCES International

President of FORCES West Virginia

June 29, 2005

 

 

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