Today's editorial by Dick Feagler on taxing smoking for the arts, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, really makes me think about the unfathomable death and destruction on this planet from humans' use of tobacco, and the evil killers who are to blame for all those deaths. The British site Action on Smoking and Health estimates that between 1950 and 2000 around 60,000,000 people worldwide have died from tobacco-related diseases. That is a shocking number, but a fraction of the 100,000,000+ who have died from tobacco over all time. But still I've been willing to remain an addict to tobacco and smoke... until Feagler's column made me picture myself dying like he may, from smoking. Feagler wrote:

I've smoked off and on (mostly on) for 50 years. My tarred lungs helped build Gateway and Cleveland Browns Stadium. I was an addict. I didn't mind until the doctor told me, "Stop it today." We can't discourage smoking on the one hand and cash in for it on the other.

Feagler's nervous ramblings made me think hard about others I've known who have died from smoking, like my grandmother Clara Roulet, rest her soul, I now feel hatred for those who are killing 100,000,000 of people, and I've started researching deep into the history of tobacco litigation, and it has infuriated me more than anything else in my life, and I simply feel a fool.

Thus, Feagler has given me a new lease on life, as I will join him in his plan to quit smoking, and I will go to war against the friends of tobacco who are the enemies of life, and I will now attack at the front lines of the defense for big tobacco, being Cleveland's beloved Jones Day, as I am already on the attack against them for the harm and death over the years of 1,000,000s through lead poisoning, which Jones Day also defends.

The first casualty of this war against smoking will be the very ill-conceived new cigarette tax that Feagler attacked today. In my posting on REALNEO about the Cuyahoga County Commissioners' desire to tax cigarettes for the arts, I quoted "Community Partnership for Arts and Culture president and CEO Thomas Schorgl as addressing the commissioners in support of this tax, saying it is needed to support county assets that are "life affirming and economy building"... and I wrote in response "I would actually like to see significant reduction in smoking rates and the life killing impact of smoking on the county." Feagler agrees, in his usual curled-lip way.

My hope is I'm not already a victim - that it's not too late to avoid a smokers-end. I mind being an addict to tobacco. It is a foolish curse I developed in college, largely resulting from living an a heavy smoking environment - sin city New Orleans - and working in an upscale wine shop that featured luxury cigars and cigarettes, which are a powerful drug that well compliments the drugging and taste of fine wine and liquor - vintage port and Upmanns led to scotch and Sobranies. Once I'd tasted the poison, I was hooked. But it was not the taste that drew me in deeper. but the chemical addiction. Soon, smoking was a tonic for stress - and as an entrepreneur I've lived a very stressful life.  Other factors I recognize as core to my habit are the classic death wish instinct in my subconscious, the positive association of childhood memories of family friends and relatives who smoked in my presence when I was a kid, peers and coworkers who enabled and encourage the habit over many years, cultural programming that says smoking is sexy, sophisticated, edgy and cool, and, most important, that all through my life I've been lied to by evil media outlets, advertising professionals, politicians and lawyers hired by evil tobacco executives to brainwash the masses into believing smoking is fine, while they've known very clearly for my entire lifetime that tobacco kills.

In fact, the year I was born, 1961, was the year when the war against tobacco really became one of good against evil. Selling tobacco should have been outlawed then, but it was not, and still is not, 10,000,000s lives lost later. At "Tobacco Timeline: The Twentieth Century 1950 - 1999--The Battle is Joined", it is so clear the depths of evil surrounding this industry, all throughout my lifetime... I'll start my attack with 1961, when we learn:

• 1961: HISTORY: The Tobacco Institute stages a celebration of the 350th anniversary of America's first tobacco crop. The festival features Pocahontas and a cigar-smoking John Rolfe.
• 1961-06-01: POLITICS: The presidents of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the National Tuberculosis Association, and the American Public Health Association submit a joint letter to President Kennedy, pointing out the increasing evidence of the health hazards of smoking and urging the President to establish a commission. The result will be the landmark 1964 SG report.
• 1964-01-11: 1st Surgeon General's Report linking smoking and lung cancer: Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. See the CDC's History of the 1964 Surgeon General's Report. See the full list of SG reports here
• 1967: 2nd Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Public Health Service Review. William H. Stewart's Surgeon General's Report concludes that smoking is the principal cause of lung cancer; finds evidence linking smoking to heart disease

At that time, the people of the tobacco industry knew they were evil, and went to corrupt new depths to kill people, as the honest scientists and health professionals of the world continually and more thoroughly proved to the world that tobacco kills. For the past four decades, the battle lines were drawn that should have changed history, immediately, and so saved me, and Dick Feagler, and 1,000,000s of others in our lifetimes from horrible deaths from smoke.

The title of this posting - "Cigarettes are like girls. The best ones are thin and rich" and "Some women would prefer having smaller babies." are far from the most disturbing things the tobacco industry and their lawyers and marketers have ever said and done.  These are the words of the tobacco community - an evil community of executives and politicians and lawyers and other highly educated professionals who in their sick minds are able to separate their work from such basic human principles as "thou shall not kill", and so they have killed 100,000,000+ people simply to create $ trillions in profits and wealth for themselves and investors. Who is to blame. Every last person who has profited at all from the loss of those lives. More to come... interesting related reading, for now...

http://www.tobacco.org/resources/history/Tobacco_History20-2.html 

http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=37846&lastestnews=1