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Non-Tech : Philip Morris - A Stock For Wealth Or Poverty (MO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James R. Barrett who wrote (1357)	4/12/1998 5:45:00 PM
From: Maven	Respond to of 6439

Remember how the environmentalists sank America's Supersonic Transport Program by publishing Bad Science and promoting it as Gospel? Are the anti-tobacco fanatics following the same path, and is our government rallying public support against the tobacco industry using phony data and Bad Science? Not possible, you say? Then check out the March 14th issue of THE ECONOMIST, page 91. A study which looked for links between lung cancer and passive smoking found that non-smokers married to, working with or growing up with smokers were NOT at significantly more risk from lung cancer than anyone else. Who commissioned the research? None other than the World Health Organization. It involved a seven-year long study of 650 lung cancer patients. But was this study and its results issued with fanfare?---no, it was buried in a WHO internal document. The WHO is influenced by its biggest paymaster, the United States, and the results of this study demolish the argument of those who trumpet the dangers of third-hand smoke and are pressing for a world-wide ban on smoking in public places. Here's an instance where the politics and fanaticism of the anti-smoking lobby gets in the way of the truth. With hindsight, our aircraft makers, particularly Boeing, bewailed their failure to meet the environmentalists head-on and demolish their scaremongering and Bad Science. They held their tongues and we lost the opportunity to build the SST. In similar fashion, the tobacco industry has been almost dainty in their handling of spurious claims of purported dangers of passive smoke, to the point where the Big Lie, repeated often enough, is perceived by the public as Truth. I'd like to see them finally take the gloves off and paint this vengeful legislation for what it really is, a feeding frenzy at the money trough by politicians, the legal profession and the government, in pursuit of their ban on public smoking. Wouldn't it be a wonder to behold if our Congress would pursue the Drug Lords with equal vigor? It's as big or bigger target than tobacco. Robert S. Sheldon