Perhaps it all started over the sexism issue -- and even had some justification in that arena -- but then the anti-tobacco army got ahold of it and things got worse. ETS became the hot button. Some people objected to others smoking in their vicinity. Often it was just a matter of not liking the smell of burning tobacco but they had to claim they were being killed. What to do? Make a political issue out of it!

The control freaks knew a gold mine when they found it.

I can remember when the anti-smokers were even decent and courteous about it. In those days a common comment was, "I'd prefer it if you didn't smoke." Those gentle, well-mannered days are long gone. Now the stance is that smokers don't have a right to light up --- hardly anywhere -- and the PC gang has no qualms when it comes to getting nasty about it.

Anti-smokers are now the new Ugly Americans. With a vengeance. The cult has become fascistic; anti-smoking Nazis. (See following section.) In their view all Rights are on their side and they feel righteously justified in stripping the rights of those who don't agree with them. There is no longer any room for accommodation; "Smoking Areas" are not enough. The aim is to outlaw smoking altogether.

In Massachusetts a movement is already under way to do just that. No one should have any doubts about what prohibition and criminalization of smoking is likely to result in.

In the myopia of such narrow minded, anti-equal rights dictators there is no negative side to their philosophy. Never mind that they may be setting a dangerous precedent. What's next? Where do we go from here? Down a very dismal path, I'm afraid.

But let's get to the nitty-gritty of this trend: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

Never mind that the term is a howling oxymoron, the deluded are hell bent on enforcing it. Intolerance has become the politically correct stance.

Originally the movement may have had some virtue in so far as it betokened a certain social sensitivity. Doing away with the nastier varieties of sexist, racial and ethnic language and thinking is an admirable enough goal.

But let's face it, when the principle degenerates into such absurdities as "hearing impaired" for deaf, "physically challenged" or "differently abled" for disabled or "visually challenged" for blind (and, believe it or not, "inter-connectedness" has even been seriously proposed as a substitute for brotherhood/sisterhood!) it is no longer either useful or defensible. It has devolved into a pathological hypersensitivity.

When we hear such euphemisms red flags should wave like crazy -- at the craziness that not only gives them expression but actually believes in them.

How can such an ideological malady prevail? No one in their right mind would know. The ill-conceived neologisms of the politically correct dunces are a product of their belief that they are "thinking before they speak" when in reality no logical intellectual activity has taken place at all, only an impulse to bitchy nit-picking at other people's life styles.

There is a reason that an internet search for "political correctness" results in primarily humorous and satiric citations: It is such a joke.

Or would be if the perpetrators weren't so deadly serious and if their blatherings weren't taken so seriously in certain timid quarters. In their effort to be totally inoffensive they have become highly offensive to most rational thinkers. It's political correctness versus reality. The PC police are on the march!

Some of the misguided revisionists want to delete all scenes depicting smoking from movies and TV -- even old movies and TV shows. (Right. And the holocaust never happened either.) In some cases they are even out to get cartoon characters. No holds barred, take no prisoners!

In Massachusetts these flakes actually pushed through a law which forbids score keeping in games played by children under the age of 10 in the Youth Soccer Association where trophies are awarded! They call it "non result oriented competition." They didn't want anyone's self-esteem damaged by being identified as losers. Even the coaches apparently went along. But you can bet the kids know what the score is.

It is not really surprising that the madness of political correctness has gained such a foothold in Protestant America with its Puritan heritage (and, no, I'm not Catholic) but the phenomenon is hardly limited to the United States; it's a global sickness that has reared its ugly head in numerous other countries of the world as well.

And the war is not only about tobacco, it's over life-style control, in whatever area the PC's disapprove of. Alcohol, tobacco, sports utility vehicles, caffeine, food -- they are all among the issues to be "corrected."

We need to reclaim our sanity.

Rally ‘Round the Fat Tax!

Finally, taxes and government regulations have been proposed that every smoker in America should support!

The National Smokers Alliance has consistently warned that more taxes and more regulations on the nation’s adult smokers create a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to more of the same on other lifestyle choices.

As it turns out, we may be well down the slippery slope already. A Yale University professor has seriously proposed a complete program of government regulation, including advertising restrictions, government subsidies, higher taxes and government-mandated education programs -- all for the good of the children.

Yale Professor Kelly D. Brownell has called for changes in public policy as a means for altering diet, including:

1. "Subsidizing healthy foods to increase consumption."

2. "Taxing unhealthy foods to discourage consumption."

3. "Teaching the public about proper nutrition and encouraging a militant attitude about promotion of unhealthy foods."

4. "Regulating food advertising aimed at children."

5. "Enhancing opportunities for physical activity."

Brownell has even come up the equivalent of the anti-smokers’ environmental tobacco smoke shams. He describes individuals as being exposed to a "toxic food environment." (Will they inhale deadly levels of fat and cholesterol?) It will come as no surprise that he published his conclusions in the journal, Addictive Behaviors.

If this doesn’t sound familiar to smokers we don’t know what will. And this is no frivolous proposal. No less than our old friend, Dr. C. Everett Koop, has engaged on this issue, saying if he had stayed in office for another term as U.S. Surgeon General he would have launched the same kind of national war on obesity that he waged on tobacco.

Koop has already said, "300,000 Americans will die each year just because they’re fat." Experience tells us that number will creep ever upward as anti-fat activists gravitate to this new trend.

"But wait," you say. "Wouldn’t it be crazy for smokers to mobilize in support of this proposal? Isn’t that what they’ve been doing to us for all these years? Isn’t that the very kind of government intrusion we’ve been fighting? Aren’t some of us overweight, too?"

Of course. But isn’t this a golden opportunity to shed light on the oppression of smokers? Is there a better time to send a message to the rest of America, those who have remained silent while only smokers bear the brunt of government intrusion into our private lives?

If enough smokers get behind the "fat tax" to encourage the government nannies and the other "good for you" social engineers to energize themselves, maybe, just maybe, other mainstream Americans will wake up to the fact that the slippery slope is real and not just an argument.

If, instead, we shrug off this new assault on personal freedom, just as so many have ignored the assault on smokers’ freedoms, another opportunity will have been lost.

So let’s help things along a little bit. Let’s help them get as crazy on this issue as they have become on smoking.

Let’s urge Congress to impose a dollar tax on a Big Mac, or better yet on a Happy Meal for the kids. Let’s ban those colorful playgrounds luring children into a vat of fat.

Let’s ask the FTC to ban television advertising that targets kids (or adults, for that matter) promoting sugared cereals or "the other white meat." Let’s not forget that Dunkin’ Donuts banned smoking so they could push their calorie-laden concoctions.

Let’s challenge legislators to come up with new government subsidies and programs to support bean sprouts, tofu and granola to lower the price and encourage consumption.

Let’s encourage a transfer of wealth through taxes from those who choose not to bicycle or jog to those who do. Let’s create tax credits for the purchase of exercise equipment. Let’s sue somebody; it’s the American way.

Cite Dr. Brownell’s study. Write in support of his conclusions. Ask your elected leaders to intervene.

The Resistance manifests itself in many forms, and creativity is prized.

From The Resistance, September, 1997

The Resistance is a publication of the National Smokers Alliance

Copyright 1997 National Smokers Alliance. All right reserved.

But primary in the aim of the tax-crazy proponents is the aim of discouraging young smokers on the theory that they will be the first to be cut off by such a maneuver. This point of view is hotly contested by those on the other side of the fence who point out that if kids can afford to pay $100 or more for a pair of canvas shoes or a jacket sporting the logo of their favorite basketball team there is little reason to suppose that doubling or even tripling the price of a pack of cigarettes will constitute an insurmountable barrier to teenage smokers.

Add to that the well known fact that when the young and rebellious are presented with a big no-no it is likely to be taken as an invitation to explore the forbidden territory. With this in mind higher taxes to lock them out and strenuous effort to educate them against smoking will very likely have just the opposite of the desired effect. Therefor neither approach is likely to work. The net result will only be to economically penalize those who smoke anyway and add to their ranks in the process.

In any case, every state in the union already has laws on the books prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to minors. If the nanny state really wants to discourage teenage smoking all they have to do is enforce these laws. But that would be too simple and too logical for control freaks determined to totally eradicate the "evil empire" of tobacco. Besides, it wouldn't fatten the treasury.

The trouble with the whole principle of higher taxation is that it will be the smokers themselves, not the tobacco companies, who will pay. The companies would simply pass this increased cost of doing business to their customers. And since nobody has proposed confining higher taxes to young smokers, smokers of all ages and economic means will foot the bill.

As to the proposition that higher taxes are needed to recoup the extra health care burden smokers impose on states, a policy study by The Heartland Institute points out that, "Research clearly shows that smoking does not impose a net financial injury on state treasuries. In 1993, state and federal cigarette taxes averaged 52.6 cents per pack; estimates of the medical care costs imposed on society by smokers that year range between 50 and 55 cents per pack. Smokers may actually save society money when lower nursing home care pensions, and Social Security costs are accounted for."

Try telling that to anti-smoking advocates; they will be conveniently deaf.

Hit them with the certain result of higher taxation producing smuggling and a black-market in cigarettes (its already happening) and they will still cling to their addiction to taxes. Oh well, what do you expect from addicts?

Anti-tobacco activists are blithely confident that their high taxation tactics won't contribute to cigarette smuggling. Fact is, they already have.

In Michigan where taxes reached $7.50 per carton smuggling activity in one ring alone was netting $1 million a month back in 1994. It began in Detroit in a an Amer-Can Shop, one of a string owned by a man named Thomas Salamey who established contact with a cigarette wholesaler in Minneapolis from whom he purchased untaxed cartons of cigarettes.

In addition to owning Amer-Can Shops, Salamey worked as a salesman for Garden Foods of Dearborn, Michigan, a wholesaler of fruit juices to stores, gas stations and food retailers. While making his rounds on that job, Salamey began offering his cut-rate cigarettes, unknown to the sales manager of Garden Foods. He soon had more than 150 buyers around the state.

His $7.50 "discount" on the stock he bought from his Minnesota connection gave him room to deal on transactions that netted him between $4.50 and $5.50 on each carton. Within five months his volume totaled 600,000 cartons.

Salamey also set up some Canadian with his contact in Minneapolis who worked the same routine across the border.

All might have gone well, hadn't a wholesaler selling taxed cartons at the higher price alerted state police who began an investigation in which they met considerable resistance from many people who said they'd prefer going to jail rather than talk. Their reluctance however was not enough to shield Salamey.

Investigators found shredded receipts in trash outside Salamey's store that showed legitimate cigarette purchases on the front, but on the back carried hand scrawled records of the actual, illegal purchases.

All in all, eighteen people involved in the operation were arrested and charged with conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion.

As a result of the smuggling by this one ring alone, monies slated for use in Michigan health programs was reduced by at least $6 million, resulting in budget cuts.

On pro-smoking web sites one not infrequently runs into the phrase, "Anti-Smoking Nazis." Does the phrase sound a little strong, over the top to you? That's the way it struck me -- until I ran into the following:

Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising, restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world's most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer. The anti-tobacco campaign must be understood against the backdrop of the Nazi quest for racial and bodily purity, which also motivated many other public health efforts of the era.

Medical historians in recent years have done a great deal to enlarge our understanding of medicine and public health in Nazi Germany. We know that about half of all doctors joined the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilization, "euthanasia," and the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies.(1) (2) Much of our present day concern for the abuse of humans used in experiments stems from the extreme brutality many German doctors showed towards concentration camp prisoners exploited to advance the cause of German military medicine.(3)

Tobacco in the Reich

One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.(4-6) Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race.(1) (4)Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers.(7) Hitler was the most adamant, characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." At one point the Fuhrer even suggested that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.(8)

German smoking rates rose dramatically in the first six years of Nazi rule, suggesting that the propaganda campaign launched during those early years was largely ineffective.(4) (5) German smoking rates rose faster even than those of France, which had a much weaker anti-tobacco campaign. German per capita tobacco use between 1932 and 1939 rose from 570 to 900 cigarettes a year, whereas French tobacco consumption grew from 570 to only 630 cigarettes over the same period.(9)

Smith et al suggested that smoking may have functioned as a kind of cultural resistance,(4) though it is also important to realize that German tobacco companies exercised a great deal of economic and political power, as they do today. German anti-tobacco activists frequently complained that their efforts were no match for the "American style" advertising campaigns waged by the tobacco industry.(10) German cigarette manufacturers neutralized early criticism-for example, from the SA (Sturm-Abteilung; stormtroops), which manufactured its own "Sturmzigaretten"-by portraying themselves as early and eager supporters of the regime.(11) The tobacco industry also launched several new journals aimed at countering anti-tobacco propaganda. In a pattern that would become familiar in the United States and elsewhere after the second world war, several of these journals tried to dismiss the anti-tobacco movement as "fanatic" and "unscientific." One such journal featured the German word for science twice in its title (Der Tabak: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der International en Tabakwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, founded in 1940).

We should also realize that tobacco provided an important source of revenue for the national treasury. In 1937-8 German national income from tobacco taxes and tariffs exceeded 1 billion Reichsmarks.(12) By 1941, as a result of new taxes and the annexation of Austria and Bohemia, Germans were paying nearly twice that. According to Germany's national accounting office, by 1941 tobacco taxes constituted about one twelfth of the government's entire income.(13) Two hundred thousand Germans were said to owe their livelihood to tobacco -- an argument that was reversed by those who pointed to Germany's need for additional men in its labour force, men who could presumably be supplied from the tobacco industry.(14)

'Tobacco capital' raining down to spoil the people's health

Culmination of the campaign: 1939-41

German anti-tobacco policies accelerated towards the end of the 1930s, and by the early war years tobacco use had begun to decline. The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938 and the post office did likewise. Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals, and rest homes. The NSDAP (National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty.(15) The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Hermann Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.(16) Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on street cars in 1941.(17) Smoking was banned in air raid shelters-though some shelters reserved separate rooms for smokers.(18) During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.(19) From July 1943 it was illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.(20) Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself, who was worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.(21) Nazi policies were heralded as marking "the beginning of the end" of tobacco use in Germany.(14)

German tobacco epidemiology by this time was the most advanced in the world. Franz H. Muller in 1939 and Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schoniger in 1943 were the first to use case-control epidemiological methods to document the lung cancer hazard from cigarettes.(22) (23) Muller concluded that the "extraordinary rise in tobacco use" was "the single most important cause of the rising incidence of lung cancer."(22) Heart disease was another focus and was not infrequently said to be the most serious illness brought on by smoking.(24) Late in the war nicotine was suspected as a cause of the coronary heart failure suffered by a surprising number of soldiers on the eastern front. A 1944 report by an army field pathologist found that all 32 young soldiers whom he had examined after death from heart attack on the front had been "enthusiastic smokers." The author cited the Freiburg pathologist Franz Buchner's view that cigarettes should be considered "a coronary poison of the first order."(25)

'Our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler drinks no alcohol and does not smoke...His performance at work is incredible...(from Auf der Wacht, 1937)

On 20 June 1940 Hitler ordered tobacco rations to be distributed to the military "in a manner that would dissuade" soldiers from smoking.(24) Cigarette rations were limited to six per man per day, with alternative rations available for non-smokers(for example, chocolate or extra food). Extra cigarettes were sometimes available for purchase, but these were generally limited to 50 per man per month and were often unavailable -- as during times of rapid advance or retreat. Tobacco rations were denied to women accompanying the Wehrmacht. An ordinance on 3 November 1941 raised tobacco taxes to a higher level than they had ever been (80-95% of the retail price). Tobacco taxes would not rise that high again for more than a quarter of a century after Hitler's defeat.(26)

Impact of the war and postwar poverty

The net effect of these and other measures (for instance, medical lectures to discourage soldiers from smoking) was to lower tobacco consumption by the military during the war years. A 1944 survey of 1000 servicemen found that, whereas the proportion of soldiers smoking had increased (only 12.7% were non-smokers), the total consumption of tobacco had decreased-by just over 14%. More men were smoking (101 of those surveyed had taken up the habit during the war, whereas only seven had given it up) but the average soldier was smoking about a quarter (23.4%)less tobacco than in the immediate prewar period. The number of very heavy smokers (30 or more cigarettes daily) was down dramatically-from 4.4% to only 0.3%-and similar declines were recorded for moderately heavy smokers.(24)

German cigarette consumption in 1940-1. Germans smoked 75 billion cigarettes, or enough to form a cylindrical block 436 metres high with a base of 1000 square metres. (From Reine Luft.)

Postwar poverty further cut consumption. According to official statistics German tobacco use did not reach prewar levels again until the mid-1950s. The collapse was dramatic: German per capita consumption dropped by more than half from 1940 to 1950, whereas American consumption nearly doubled during that period.(6) (9) French consumption also rose, though during the four years of German occupation cigarette consumption declined by even more than in Germany(9)-suggesting that military conquest had a larger effect than Nazi propaganda.

After the war Germany lost its position as home to the world's most aggressive anti-tobacco science. Hitler was dead but also many of his anti-tobacco underlings either had lost their jobs or were otherwise silenced. Karl Aster, head of Jena's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research (and rector of the University of Jena and an officer in the SS), committed suicide in his office on the night of 3-4 April 1945. Reich Health Fuhrer Leonardo Conti, another anti-tobacco activist, committed suicide on 6 October 1945 in an allied prison while awaiting prosecution for his role in the euthanasia programme. Hans Reiter, the Reich Health Office president who once characterized nicotine as "the greatest enemy of the people's health" and "the number one drag on the German economy"(27) was interned in an American prison camp for two years, after which he worked as a physician in a clinic in Kassel, never again returning to public service. Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, the guiding light behind Thuringia's anti-smoking campaign and the man who drafted the grant application for Astel's anti-tobacco institute, was executed on 1 October 1946 for crimes against humanity. It is hardly surprising that much of the wind was taken out of the sails of Germany's anti-tobacco movement.

The flip side of Fascism

Smith et al were correct to emphasize the strength of the Nazi anti smoking effort and the sophistication of Nazi era tobacco science.(4) The anti smoking science and policies of the era have not attracted much attention, possibly because the impulse behind the movement was closely attached to the larger Nazi movement. That does not mean, however, that anti smoking movements are inherently fascist(28); it means simply that scientific memories are often clouded by the celebrations of victors and that the political history of science is occasionally less pleasant than we would wish.

1 Proctor R N. Racial hygiene: medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988.

2 Kater M H. Doctors under Hitler. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

3 Annas G, Grodin M. The Nazi doctors and the Nuremberg code.New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

4 Smith G D, Strobele S A, Egger M. Smoking and death.BMJ1995;310:396.

5 Borgers D. Smoking and death. BMJ 1995;310:1536.

6 Proctor R N. Nazi cancer research and policy. J Epidemiol Community Health (in press).

7 Bauer D. So lebt der Duce. Auf der Wacht 1937:19-20.

8 Picker H. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Athenaum Verlag, 1951.

9 Lee PN, ed. Tobacco consumption in various countries. 4th ed. London: Tobacco Research Council, 1975.

10 Reid G. Weltanschauung, Haltung, Genussgifte.Genussgifte1939;35:64.

11 Kosmos. Bild-Dokumente unserer Zeit.Dresden: Kosmos,1933.

12 Reckert FK. Tabakwarenkunde: Der Tabak, sein Anbau undseine Verarbeitung.Berlin-Schoneberg: Max Schwabe, 1942.