Ohio still fighting back: interview with Pam Parker, Josh Tolley Channel

An entertaining interview with Pam Parker of Opponents of Ohio Bans:



Pam Parker covers a range of angles on the smoking ban, including the vast resources that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation injects into smoking restrictions and the 'studies' that support them (issues also covered on the home page of the Opponents of Ohio Bans website (linked above). As a bar owner however her focus is on enforcement. Public opinion, she says, voted on a ban that would be enforced by health department officials, and their would be exemptions on bars with no employees. In practice, health department officials police only the bar owners, who are left to enforce the law themselves, and there are no exemptions. In Ohio no smokers have been prosecuted, only bar owners who have failed in their enforcement duties. There are anecdotal accounts of deliberate entrapment. To cap it all, health department investigators are sent in without personal protective equipment to counteract the effects of secondary smoke: there is no safe level of exposure!

While I believe that some clandestine bar smokers have been prosecuted in the UK, the power to enforce the smoking ban on proprietors and licensees has ensured the ban's survival. Whether or not health departments over here entrap bar owners by sending in covert operators to smoke illegally, making people legally responsible for policing others is very heavy-handed, especially when it's likely to hit unpaid enforcers in the pocket. Pam Parker's tactic is to invoice the health department for enforcement costs. She will use these invoices to back up any court decision that the health department rather than bar owners should enforce the ban.

There's a big difference between the smoking ban through the eyes of its designers and the smoking ban as experienced at the coal face by licensees. Let's hope for a follow-up interview in the very near future.

Pharmaceutical sponsorship in smoking cessation: Toronto conference, November

Back in April, the World Health Organisation warned health professionals working in tobacco control not to become too involved with pharmaceutical companies. But the horse had already escaped. The creation of a global smoking cessation industry was already in its late stages, and continues to develop apace.

Michael Siegel blogs today on the 7th National Conference on Tobacco or Health being held in Toronto in June with Pfizer as a major sponsor. There is a significant conflict of interest (private v. public), since Pfizer manufactures Champix among other smoking cessation medications. Accepting sponsorship from Pfizer will compromise the integrity of the conference.

In March Siegel wrote a piece about ISPTID: the International Society for the Prevention of Tobacco Induced Diseases, in which he remarked that this society had renounced pharmaceutical funding and declared itself free of all industrial ties (before the advice from WHO had been published in the BMJ). He urges other organisations in this field to follow suit: but it will take a wholesale change for many years before I would have any confidence that the slate was clean of pharmaceutical influence. We know, in addition to the pharma-funded events that Siegel lists, that the major UK conference (UK National Smoking Cessation Conference) relies on pharmaceutical sponsorship.

Grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (a trust part-funded by profits from Johnson & Johnson) can be seen here. The list of grants (using 'tobacco' as a search term) contains some 1,650 entries with over $100,000 awarded for most of them.

It is probable that if all conference organisers wanted to find a willing source of funds for smoking cessation events and they were not permitted to take on pharmaceutical funding, they would find few people willing to come forward, and even fewer with a specific interest in coming forward, year after year in several different locations in any given period.

Guest post from Ohio: Creating Foundations to Move Their Ideals...and Products

The New Corporate American Business Model

Creating Foundations to Move Their Ideals ... and Products

By Pam Parker, Opponents of Ohio Bans, with permission.

There's a new and dangerous business strategy being employed in the United States. Corporations are creating Foundations who give grants to non-profits who push for laws that move their products. One thing the corporations, foundations and non-profits all share is profitability. One such corporation is Johnson and Johnson. Those who share in the profits are their partners.

The Robert Wood Foundation was created by the founder of Johnson and Johnson with over ten millions shares of Johnson and Johnson (J&J stock [i]). In 1972, it was established as a national foundation worth $1.2 billion [ii]. In 2009, the Foundation's investment portfolio increased $1 billion to $8,379,808,000 [iii]. RFJF's mission today: to help society transform itself for the better. Noble sounding, until you delve into the fact that it's what RWJF considers "for the better", foregoing what we want for ourselves or for our society. The horrifying truth is RWJF profits from what it wants for society.

The RWJF anthology "Taking on Tobacco: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Assault on Smoking" publication [iv] outlines how they gave $99 million in grants to fund coalitions "housed in organisations" such as American Cancer Society (ACS), American Lung Association (ALA) and American Heart Association (AHA). This publication outlines all the organisations who received over $446 million in grants just through January, 2008. In the beginning, grants were given to organisations to promote tobacco education. Once organisations were used to receiving funding, if they did not move on to tobacco "control", their funding was cut off. The Foundation makes it perfectly clear in their publications that as a Foundation, their grant money cannot be used for lobbying. However, to quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, that's just geography. It's just moving money from point A to point B while accomplishing lobbying, with smoking cessation as RWJF's ultimate goal. Over $99,000 in grant money was invested in Evaluating an Innovative Communications Campaign Designed to Increase Consumer Demand for Tobacco Dependence Treatment by Medicaid Recipients [v]. Nearly $97,000 in grant money was invested for Individual and Policy Level Influences on the Use of Various Cessation Strategies and Abstinence from Cigarettes Among Adult Smokers [vi].

RWJF points out repeatedly that coalition building is the key. Here are but a few:

• The Centre for disease Control has received grant money from RWJF [vii].
• RWJF provides funding for Tobacco Free Kids (TFK) for polls used to influence lawmakers, such as an Ohio Poll [viii] on raising cigarette taxes. 
• RWJF is a major funder of the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium [ix] who helps works with communities with tobacco law-related issues such as smoke free policies (smoking bans) and tobacco control funding laws.
• Stephen Schroeder, former CEO of RWJF, returned to the University of California, San Francisco, with a $10 million RWJF grant for the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center [x].
• Glaxo Smith Klein, marketer of Nicorette, Nicoderm, Nicoderm CQ, is quoted in this article as applauding two organisations for their efforts to improve the regulation of smoking cessation aides. The two organisations, Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (ATTUD) and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) both urged the FDA to adopt more flexible regulatory approaches to expand access to and the use of NRT products. ATTUD's FDA petition drive [xi] was funded, in part, by RWJF, SRNT is funded [xii], in part, by RWJF, Johnson and Johnson, GSK and McNeil.
• Professor Stanton Glantz, University of California, San Francisco, received grants of over $1,071,000 to create Tobacco Scam to claim smoking bans don't hurt the hospitality industry. It's been proven that most bars are hurt by smoking bans, but Glantz combines restaurants with bars (restaurants outnumber bars 5:1 while restaurant employees outnumber bar employees 10:1). (RWJF Grants 52810 and 36173). Glantz's job? To say it's all a Big Tobacco lie, and that's what his website claims [xiii]

If a group doesn't exist, the RWJF just creates and funds it. For example - Tobacco Free Kids. A brilliant marketing strategy. After all, who wouldn't want kids to be tobacco free? RWJF created and funded Tobacco Free Kids [xiv] (TFK) with $84,000000 in start up money. In 2000, TFK drafted the core principles for the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. In fact, interveners for the Master Settlement Agreement [xv] have all received funding from RWJF, (ACS, AHA, ALA, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights [xvi][xvii], the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network [xviii, p. 6]. The Master Settlement Agreement was originally to settle states' Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of tobacco-related health care costs [xix]. It has evolved into lobbying states to spend money on smoking cessation, quit lines and giveaways of nicotine replacement products, such as patches and gum.

For decades, RWJF has financed a felowship program, paying up to $165,000 each. This year [xx] there are six RWJF fellows, assigned free of charge to: Senator John D. Rockefeller (C), Senator Orin Hatch (R), Senator Kent Conrad (D), one is assigned to the Senate Committee on Finance, two are assigned to Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary.

With the exception of one FDA employee and three tobacco industry representatives, every member of the newly created FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee has received direct funding from RWJF.

The latest (2008) Tobacco Cessation Guidelines were updated by a panel of tobacco control "experts", seventy per cent of whom directly received RWJF grants and or / awards.

Consumers are now being told that using more than one type of NRT can triple quit rates [xxi].

RWJF's funding of tobacco control all links back to smoking cessation. Why is this important? As noted in this article, Glaxo Smith Kline markets Nicorette, Nicoderm, Nicoderm QC, but these are Johnson and Johnson products, as well as Nicotrol which belongs to J&J's McNeil Company. In fact J&J has pretty much cornered the market on over the counter nicotine replacement products. The lobbying for payment of NRT, increased taxes on cigarettes, lobbying for smoking bans (excuse me, "advocating") all increase not only J&J's profits, but because RWJF owns millions of shares of J&J stock, so does RWJF profit.

Their partners also pull in a pretty penny. The ACS's IRS 990 form on-line shows that the ACS brought in over $9,009,812 in revenue from Quit Lines [xxii, p. 11]. The ACS is a Quit Line vendor. The same 990 form shows the ACS claiming $0 [xxiii, p. 12] in lobbying expenditures, yet they claim $11,662,010 in grants to others for lobbying purposes [xxiv]. Interesting how no one seems to claim money for lobbying purposes but claims to give millions and millions away to others for the others to lobby. The ACS published a report in 2003 that showed that 91.4% of former smokers quit cold turkey [xxv], yet they not only push NRT, they've been paid for the use of their logo on Nicorette, according to a 1996 US Attorney General's report. According to the report, the ACS entered into a licensing agreement in August, 1996 for annual payments of $1 millions for the use of their logo on Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette. The same report claims the American Heart Association entered into an agreement with J&J for their logo to be used on McNeil's Nicotrol for the price of $2.5 million annually.

They serve on each other's boards of directors. John Seffrin, CEO, ACS sits on the Board of Directors of Tobacco Free Kids [xxvi].

Public Library of Science Medicine (PLoS) this month published an article titled Global Health Philanthropy and Institutional Relationships: How should Conflicts of Interest Be Addressed [xxvii] which state "the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has played a leading role in promoting anti-tobacco products and maintains Smoking Cessation Leadership Centres and programs, although its endowment is mainly invested in Johnson and Johnson, a leading manufacturer of cessation products, and some board members have been represented on both the Foundation's and the company's boards".

The British Medical Journal, April 14, 2011, published WHO (World Health Organization) Warns Anti-Smoking Campaigners Not to Become Too Close to Drug Firms [xxviii], ironically at a conference in Madrid sponsored by GSK, Pfizer and McNeil who market or own NRT.

Unfortunately, RWJF has used this footprint as a roadmap to further control our behaviours and bans of what they deem unhealthy. RWJF has given over half a billion dollars in obesity grants. First Lady Michelle Obama is the spokesperson for Childhood Obesity. RWJF fellow Shale Wong was assigned to the First Lady [xxix] (free of charge) 2009–2010. Experts argue for Tax on Sugar Sweetened Beverages, A RWJF publication [xxx]. Kelly Brownell, one of the experts of the two cited, claims taxing sugar-sweetened beverages would yield a 13% reduction whilst raising taxes. Ms. Brownwell is with Rudd Centre. The Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity is a RWJF grant recipient of $5,842,740 [xxxi]. What really results from these types of bans and taxation is that industries and businesses fail and consumers are driven to alternative sweeteners, such as J&J's McNeil Company's SPLENDA.

This is the same playbook as their tobacco control playbook. I would look for RWJF to create and fund Sugar Free Kids. Who will be hurt are bakeries restaurants, bars (who can only sell "diet" pop with mixed drinks), and more. People will quit going to these businesses and will instead baker at home. Just like the smoking ban in Ohio cause 14.6 million more bottles of liquor to be sold for home and social gathering consumption.

Johnson and Johnson and RWJF get even richer from the sales of their products they've guaranteed through the laws they buy with their grants, fellows and partnerships. The more they make, the more money they have to buy more control of our lives. The word "lobbyist" may have a negative connotation, however they have to register and be known. "Fellows" assigned to influential Congressional Members and Committees are virtually unknown to the common American Citizen.

Foundations and Corporations do not get to make laws, especially when they profit from those laws, Ohio lawmakers work for us, not these profitable non-profits. WE have the power to vote lawmakers out, not foundations and NGOs. God gave us rights over ourselves and He gave us the power to make decisions for ourselves. That includes deciding whether to drink a sugary drink or patronise a smoking bar. The more these people try to rule our lives, the more resistance they'll get from larger and larger and larger groups of people.

Twenty-one people in nine states have filed complaints with Congressional Committees asking for an investigation into RWJF/J&J. J&J just settled for small fines rather than do prison time for bribery charges in a foreign country. I think what they've done to free market enterprise, artificial stock manipulation, insider trading, violation of the Sherman Act, violation of the RICO Act, legislative rent seeking and violation of the False Claims Act should no longer have the blind eye of Congress turned away. This article only barely touches on what we've discovered (including the 98.4% failure rate of NRT patches, the highly addictive properties of NRT gum). We look forward to the Ohio Supreme Court hearing the Zenos case. Ohio's Constitution is much more protective of property rights than the US Constitution. We can't wait to have our properties returned to their rightful owners! We want you, our state legislators, to know that you've supported these special interest groups over us mom and pop business owners. You've forgotten to protect the minority. You've forgotten that our properties are to be held forever inviolate. That's "forever", not ignored when it suits special interests. No one is forced to work for us and no one is forced to enter our properties. We want to be profitable once again. And we want you to know that we know who's behind controlling our behaviours for profit. Now ... do you want to side with them? Or us, the people who vote?

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wood_Johnson_Foundation

[ii] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Robert-Wood-Johnson-Foundation-Company-History.html

[iii] http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/2009.rwjf.financial.statements.pdf

[iv] http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/books/2005/chapter_01.pdf

[v] http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/grant.jsp?id=63261&pid=1141

[vi] http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/grant.jsp?id=63263&pid=1141

[vii] http://www.rwjf.org/grants/grant.jsp?id=41244

[viii] http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press_releases/post/id_1077

[ix] http://publichealthlawcenter.org/programs/tobacco-control-legal-consortium

[x] http://smokingcessationleadership.ucsf.edu/BIoSteve.htm

[xi] http://www.attud.org/petition.php

[xii] http://www.srnt.org/about/supporters.cfm

[xiii] http://tobaccoscam.ucsf.edu/fake/index.cfm

[xiv] http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/resources/product.jsp?id=18079&pid=1141&gsa=1

[xv] http://www.legacyforhealth.org/593.aspx

[xvi] http://www.rwjf.org/grants/grant.jsp?id=61524

[xvii] http://www.rwjf.org/grants/grant.jsp?id=67571

[xviii] http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/books/2005/chapter_01.pdf (pg 6)

[xix] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Settlement_Agreement

[xx] http://www.healthpolicyfellows.org/secure/alumni-search.php?action=search&keyword=&state=0&fellowship_year=2010&assignment=0&discipline=0

[xxi] http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/smoke/smoke-nrt-faq.pdf

[xxii] http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@finance/documents/document/acsd-005945.pdf (pg 11)

[xxiii] http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@finance/documents/document/acsd-005945.pdf (pg 12)

[xxiv] http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@finance/documents/document/acsd-005945.pdf
(pg 20)

[xxv] http://opponentsofohiobans.com/Documents/ACS%20NRT%20table.doc

[xxvi] https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/content/who_we_are/annual_report/AnnualReport2010.pdf

[xxvii] http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001020

[xxviii] http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d2430.extract

[xxix] http://www.healthpolicyfellows.org/secure/alumni-bio.php?id=4591

[xxx] http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/digest.jsp?id=10245

[xxxi] http://www.rwjf.org/grants/grant.jsp?id=65013

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) supports campaign against eviction campaign: Sunday Post

The Sunday Post has reported Freedom to Choose (Scotland)'s support for a campaign to object against the eviction of an elderly resident, Philipina Schergevitch, in Canada because of her smoking status. The report can be read here, with thanks to Rich White, who made it available online.

Rich's account is here, and the link he provides bears repeating. Read here how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded significant research money to promote smoke-free facilities for the elderly. The link is quite old but offers an insight into the pressures that lead to such inhumanity as making elderly people smoke outdoors rather than allowing them to be comfortable.

Are these people for real? Unfortunately so.

Pharmaceutical influence on smoking bans, say Indonesian and Virginian protest groups

Indonesia recently agreed to ratify the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, following international pressure.

Not for the first time, a smoking ban is in the offing, but an anti-smoking ban coalition insists that business interests rather than health drive the restrictions. 'Pharmaceutical factories produce drugs needed for the therapy. With big number of smokers, Indonesia is the good market for pharmaceutical companies,' says coalition leader Suroso, who knows that Indonesia has more pressing issues on its plate than increased tobacco regulation. Money has poured in from the Bloomberg Foundation to support the smoking restrictions: acknowledged by NGOs supporting the ban who insist that improving health is the only motivation for the ban.

In faraway Virginia, the Virginia Smokers' Alliance published a list of active grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (major shareholders in Johnson & Johnson), all given to the cause of tobacco control (anything from smoking bans and eliminating smoking in rented housing units to preventing tobacco sponsorship of rodeos).

Everyone knows it, from the Far East to the US. Whatever is said by anyone about health concerns, pharmaceutical interests are big in the restriction of tobacco.

See powerpoint presentation on the science on second-hand smoke from the Virginia Smokers' Alliance, accessible from here.

Four degrees of separation

Obesity gains ground in the fight for funding in the United States. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is now spending over ten times as much on obesity as on anti-smoking.

We learn two things:

The rationale for designated smoking areas was based on the stated premise that secondhand smoke is medically dangerous to nearby people who might inhale the fumes.

There is no question that secondhand smoke can be unpleasant; few nonsmokers want to sit in a cloud of tobacco dust or have tobacco smell on their clothing or hair. But is it dangerous to your health? A study of 35,561 spouses of smokers followed for 38 years published in the British Medical Journal in 2003 showed that second-hand smoke is an irritant, but does not cause life-threatening disease. Actually, "secondhand eating" may be more dangerous.

With it so far. But it continues:

When people with whom we are closely associated gain weight, such as a spouse, sibling, neighbor or friend, we are also at an increased risk of gaining weight. For example, if your friend becomes obese, you have a 177 percent increased risk of becoming obese. If your friend's brother becomes obese, your risk is still increased. The increased risk goes out to four degrees of separation.

Okay. But what happens if they lose weight? And why is your friend putting on weight if you're not putting on weight?

As usual with such absurdly focussed studies, this leaves more questions than answers.

Secondary smoke has allegedly left one thousand a year dead in Scotland and seventy-nine thousand in Europe, without us knowing with any certainty who any of these people are. It is nice that Dennis Gottfried points out that smoke is actually only an irritant, even if only to convey the idea that obesity is a more urgent problem than smoking these days.

If this is any indication of the quality of 'obesity-related science', it looks even more akin to witchcraft and/or guesswork than the 'science' of secondary smoke.