The Holdouts

Tobacco is in the same food group as potato, tomato, cauliflower, green pepper, chili’s, egg-plant and other foods. They ALL contain nicotine. You can buy it at any grocery, eat it in restaurants and school cafeterias.

State smoking bans, built in the public view on a like or dislike, are brought to us by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with grants to the American Cancer Society (the middle man that profits). Grants are also given for research to FIT their agenda, that being nice for money hungry research centers and people who have found their way to ‘free’ money in exchange for ‘a service for the agenda’. The foundation was a start up by a past owner of Johnson and Johnson. J&J currently owns at 250 OTHER pharmaceutical companies while the foundation OWNS multi truckloads of J&J stock. Guess who makes the no-smoke products.

Never mind that independent (non-agenda) research shows that smokers have less Alzheimer’s, Dementia and other health issues. Never mind that smokers actually are not sickly as widely promoted and that smokers numbers are low at 3% for lung cancer. Never mind that tobacco is in research as a cure for cancer and looking very hopeful. Never mind that they could make a fortune owning nicotine for a variety of health issues it helps and currently are with their sales of nicotine (no-smoke products). A giant corporation has an agenda and we are the victims of the scam.

NO business was ever forced to allow smoking. It was ALWAYS the business owner choice and the choice of the customer to enter or not. Now there is no choice and many businesses have and are closing due to the smoking bans. The no-smoke groups say ‘level playing field’– so should we force Italian cuisine in Chinese Restaurants for a ‘level playing field’ or sell pizza in a shoe store? Ask yourself this: If businesses were losing money allowing smoking, do you think they would have allowed it? It is not a coincidence that when the bans swept the USA, jobs were lost. You can’t blame all economic woes on the mortgage mess but you CAN blame smoking bans for people not being able to pay their mortgage!

Oh, and if you have wondered who might make weight loss products and OWN bariatric surgery centers (Ethicon Endo), you might want to take a look at J&J who is behind the obese issue.

Follow the money and learn a lot, including who is behind the national health insurance where at 660,000 organizations and foundations can have access (their eyes and noses) INTO your medical records without your permission or financial compensation!

Further, the RWJF also pays "fellows" (8 per year) to place with members of Congress, Congressional Committees (even Michelle Obama) and they write POLICIES. The RWJF pays them up to $165,000 a year and give them to Congress to use for FREE (nothing like internal spies and mouth pieces). Isn't that ILLEGAL? They write POLICIES! Is this the United States Government, or is it J&J’s government? I'm beginning to wonder.

Beware if they ever get into the razor blade and wig businesses!

This is a good article. Not pro or con, just a sympathetic portrait of what it's like to be a smoker in NYC in 2010.

"They are the holdout smokers. The ones who have survived the ever-scarier health warnings (and the social stigma that made the Vietnam veteran ask that he not be identified in this article); the ones who have persisted despite legislation banning butts from bars, restaurants and office buildings; the ones who keep paying those rising taxes, the latest of which, starting this summer, raised the typical price in New York City to $11 a pack. The ones who can’t, won’t or just don’t give it up."

"So they stand in ever-shrinking clusters all over New York, their turf continually circumscribed, or so it seems. A few months ago, a new sign went up at the MetLife buildings: No smoking within 25 feet. The smokers, by now regulated into submission, mostly complied by moving from the front door to the side of the building. When it rains, they crowd under a tiny overhang near the loggia and hope the security guard won’t shoo them away like loiterers at a convenience store."

“I really try to be a courteous smoker,” Ms. Greene said.“If I’m smoking a cigarette on the street and run into a friend, I won’t have them stand downwind.” If someone is visiting her apartment who does not like cigarettes, she does not light one.“I use Febreze all the time,” she said,“on the rugs and on the furniture.”

"In New York, she landed a job at Alcoa and smoked at her desk, at the movies, on a plane, at the dentist’s office.“Even on a plane, I always asked someone next to me if it bothered them,” she said.“I did have one nun who said yes. I was furious.”