CAN'T WAIT

I'm really jealous of Leg Iron and others who are ahead in home grown tobacco stock. Those flowers sound lovely.

I can't wait until my indoor crop starts to grow but it could still be some time yet as the first two tiny leaves only came up a couple of days ago and haven't grown any more since.

Patience has never has been one of my virtues but I'm trying and I'll learn more than one lesson during this home grown experiment.

How exciting this all is. In five years tobacco has gone from being just the thing I bought in the shop with my paper and other bits and pieces to becoming a full time hobby of great interest, driven by a passionate cause.

GOOD DRUGS BAD DRUGS

Image from HERE

When are "bad" drugs "good"? When Big Pharma pushes them rather than illegal cartel drug barons or the legal tobacco industry.

We know that the Pharmaceutical industry is corrupt and doesn't give a flying fig about health. It's primary and only concern is profit and if children in the Third World are too poor to pay for life saving drugs then Big P simply won't provide them.

That's why every single anti-smoker organisation in the UK that is snuggled up in bed with Big P - including ASH - and several UK universities are not in it for health reasons but for cash and jobs.


Early medical "researchers"

Even the hallowed and saintly Stirling University admits it is dependent on Big P because most of its students now have careers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agricultural industries.

I don't see how they are much better than those who work in the tobacco industry myself and certainly their morals at taking this dirty money are questionable.

Of course tobacco is a natural medicinal herb but Big P and its academic lackeys malign it as a drug to slander tobacco consumers as addicts and push custom towards Big P. They cover the lie with Frankenstein science because they cannot openly admit after years of untruths that tobacco does indeed contain therapeutic qualities.

I know that I'd rather rely on nature than an unnatural manipulation of nature but each to his or her own - if only we were allowed to make our lifestyle choices without fear or favour.

It does suit Big P and its servants scientists to create a nation of hypochondriacs and phobics to keep the huge profits rolling in but I honestly and sincerely doubt that their motives are altruistic or based on any real concern about health - just as they were not in the days when snake oil salesmen pushed their useles wares.

I'd like to think that Govt is finally waking up to the con bearing in mind that Nanny Milton is trying hard to distance herself from ASH but I simply don't believe her.

ASH is not a grass roots organisation and never has been. It was set up by Govt and is a Govt quango in reality that masquerades as a "charity" so we are really not that easily fooled Ms Milton.

The only way that you can prove to us that you are not smokerphobic or biased in running the DoH is to stop all funding to the anti-smoker industry and lay off the Tobacco Industry, its law abiding consumers, and all the associated businesses with it - including the small vending machine salesmen, paid less than researchers at Stirling, now out of work and on the dole thanks to your Govt's stupidity in following the damaging economic policies of your predecessors in Labour.

Tobacco should be regulated and is. Over regulation in favour of its direct competitors at Big Pharma is obscene and would be unlawful if such methods of putting legal industry out of business was directed at any other lawful product.

UPDATE : I just saw this and wonder how on earth the author expects us to believe it and how he can state, with a straight face, that :

R.W. undertakes research and consultancy for, and has received travel funds and hospitality from, companies that develop and manufacture smoking cessation medications. He has a share in a patent for a novel nicotine delivery device.

Sorry, but here is direct evidence of an alleged "scientist" who depends on his own personal fortune by harassing smokers and propagating untruths.

If this man really "cared" about smokers damaging their health then he would be active in his cause for free like just about every single pro-choice warrior. He's obviously in it for the money. Don't believe a word.

PLUMS AND TOBACCO

I stomped off into the garden to pick 5lb of plums after writing below about the latest piece of anti-smoker politicking to make me see red. It gave me time to think and calm down a bit and a job for the afternoon preparing fruit for jam.



My plums are greengages like Leg Iron has in his garden. They've been soaking in sugar for hours and now ready to boil down.



Hours have been spent this summer by me and my other half foraging in nearby woods for anything we can pick. In addition to red and yellow cherry and plum jam, we've set red and yellow cherry, elderberry, plum, sloe and damson wine and bottled lilac that was set two years ago. The taste is just strong - like brandy or whisky.



I also thought it was about time I got myself some tobacco seeds after watching Leg Iron's success at growing and I hope the order has gone through as I just don't get paypal but at least the firm has a phone number so I can always check on my order the old fashioned way.



New demands on plain packaging can only create a dangerous and organised black market and a greater chance of fake tobacco getting into shops. You'd think the Govt would realise what a dumb idea they are forcing onto us. Ah well, as long as the anti-smoker industry can keep throwing money in to clean up the mess they make then I can rest assured with my own home grown supply that I will no longer contribute to the insanity.



If my seeds arrive soon, I'll grow one plant indoors over autumn and winter and then if all goes well with growth, harvest, and taste, I'll look at getting a greenhouse full next spring and some sort of crop rotation going.



For now I'd better get back to my plums and get that jam boiled.

IT'S NOT ABOUT HEALTH

The video above is a demonstration of how 21st century technology can address the smoking issue. It is rather like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut because CS gas in that volume is not a wisp of tobacco smoke in a normal well ventilated room but you get the point.



We know that in truth not one person in reality has died of passive smoking and this public health scam is more about political ideology and hard cash than altruistic concern.



Academics and scientists paid to produce results in paid for studies, which the general public is not allowed to see until they have been cherry-picked peer reviewed, seem to have their own weird and wonderful way of making the evidence fit whatever new active or passive smoking scare story is touted on any given day.



And when legitimate industry exercises it's legal right and makes a reasonable request to ask what this so called evidence is based on, the academics begin to panic.



It's disgusting and totally unacceptable if Linda Bauld has personally received threatening calls but I'm sceptical about that too. The two standard deflections of criticism are always : "Big Tobacco money is behind it" or "Big tobacco has threatened me".



As Dick Puddlecote points out Bauld accuses blogs - which call for Govt to wake up to the real motives behind these studies and the damage and divisions over-regulation are doing to both the economy and society - of leading hate campaigns against her personally and she could also be referring to Tea and Cigarettes as I've written about her before and featured Imperial Tobacco's report.



However, this blog has never called for violence or threats to be made against anyone in the anti-smoker industry despite the fact that they don't bat an eyelid when such threats are made against smokers. Bauld might believe her own damaging propaganda but there is nothing in law yet to say that we must.



What this blog has called for is an independent review and health information which I still believe is desperately needed to redress the balance and put this issue back into a proper perspective.



Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you but some of the outrageous claims about smoking and smokers are simply ludicrous and appear to be designed to incite fear and loathing.



If it was really about care, about people not dying, why not accept that people will smoke and are able to make up their own minds about it. What they want is harm reduction. What is wrong with that? Why does it have to be death or quit and then serves you right?



I would have more respect for Bauld and her kind if they worked to make tobacco safer. The professionals should understand the warnings pumped out continually don't relate to smokers' real lives and some will not quit no matter what is said or done to them.



Instead of trying to rid the world of tobacco, why not invest in developing safe cigarettes for adults or children of the future who fall by their definition of the wayside. It could be done in the 21st century. In pushing that smoke free cause surely more lives have been lost than need be over the last 40 years.



Just imagine if Gio Batta Gori had been allowed to develop that safe cigarette in a programme that was sacrificed to push instead for the ideological smoke free future which has been enforced largely by coercion and has now evolved into downright bullying of a minority.



Govts must realise that in backing this ideology, without allowing consumers the right to smoke a legal product in peaceful association, they are slaughtering equality, civil liberties, freedom of association, private property rights, and a future based on a decent and tolerant society.



And other legitimate industries and their consumers are being targeted by the same professionals who wouldn't be out of place in the early Temperance Movement of last century.



It's time people woke up to what is happening and backed calls for decision making to be based on real science to the benefit and not detriment of people's lives.



UPDATE : It appears few are taking Bauld's whining seriously and there are moves from the tobacco industry to actually start fighting back on our behalf, and not before time. Read more over at Taking Liberties.