The new reality . . . NO SMOKERS

“What’s that guy doing, Mom, it looks like he’s got smoke coming out of his mouth?” The boy’s mother turned in the direction in which her son was pointing.

“Oh my God!, don’t look William, close your eyes”, she exclaimed in horror while shielding her son’s eyes from the tobacco fiend standing in the corner of the parking lot. He was leaning against his van and puffing on his cancer stick as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“My God, he’s seen one. What are we going to do, Bill? We have to get him to a hospital”, she cried, turning to her husband, her hysteria mounting.

“Relax, dear”, he husband responded calmly, “the boy is seventeen years old. He’ll be fine. And, I’ll go have a talk with the guy”.

“Be careful, Bill”, he heard his wife call as he started in the direction of the smoker. “He may be dangerous”.

He wasn’t dangerous of course. Instead, Bill was met by a big friendly grin. “How can I help you, neighbour”, he asked.

“Actually”, said Bill, “I’d like to bum a smoke. Can we step around to the side of the van?”

The city of Loma Linda has imposed the most draconian ban to date in the United States. The ordinance is only a few steps away from outright prohibition. The ban drops all but the pretence of protecting non-smokers and children from the alleged hazards of secondhand smoke.

The new by-law will ban smoking in all public and private spaces with few exceptions. That means no smoking on city sidewalks, parks, alleyways or parking lots.

The exceptions will include private homes and a hypocritical, self-serving exemption for smoking shelters at the city’s two shopping malls. After citing the need to protect children from the very sight of smokers lest they start believing that smokers are normal human beings, they exempt the local malls where young people congregate in large numbers.

In the preamble to the ordinance, there are twenty whereas statements, mostly bullshit and bafflegab, which seek to justify the ban.

For example, the city council was apparently unaware, or just didn’t give a rat’s ass that the EPA study declaring secondhand smoke a group A carcinogen was trashed by both a congressional committee and a court of law as an outright fraud. I guess they don’t have a whole lot of respect for the truth in Loma Linda if they have to justify their ordinance with the fraudulent science which the EPA study represents.

The statements in the preamble cite the imposition of state laws to control the sale and distribution of tobacco products to minors as justification for their new ordinance, saying in essence, the state used legislation to control tobacco use, therefore it must be justified. What they didn’t explain was the need to impose additional bans which go far beyond what the state felt was necessary.

They also cited a decision by the California Air Resources Board that is month’s away from being made, to justify their ban, which leads one to wonder what they know that the public hasn’t been told. Is the result of the Air Resources Board a foregone conclusion?

Four out of five of Loma Linda’s councillors want to reduce the potential for children to associate smoking and tobacco with a healthy lifestyle and affirm and promote the family-friendly atmosphere of the City’s public places. Uh-huh.

And, arresting Mom or Dad for engaging in a perfectly legal activity in public will certainly ensure that children learn to respect the law. In reality, teaching children that smoking is abnormal behaviour is encouraging fear and intolerance. But then, fear and intolerance is what tobacco control is all about. De-normalizing and dehumanizing smokers. But then, it's never been about controlling tobacco; it's about controlling smokers.

The hoax of secondhand smoke is based on lies and deceit, including corrupt science.

Having been born just before the fall of Hitler’s Nazi movement, I’ve always wondered how the entire population of Germany could allow themselves to be duped by the hate-mongers and their propaganda. How could they allow huge segments of society to become the targets of blatant discrimination?

After all this time, the new health Nazis are providing the answers. And, those answers are frightening.