EMPHYSEMA and BRONCHITIS(COPD)

This is from the “ALA”, we know that they would not lie as they are a public health

organization and only interested in our welfare.

NOTE: Smoking has gone DOWN by almost 50% over the last 40 years, over the

last 20 plus years the COPD death rate has GONE UP BY 74%.

Clearly, smoking does not cause Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis.

Yet, the ALA and other health advocates say that smoking causes Emphysema!!!!

TRENDS IN CHRONIC BRONCHITIS AND EMPHYSEMA MORBIDITY AND

MORTALITY
MERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION
EPIDEMIOLOGY & STATISTICS UNIT
RESEARCH AND PROGRAM SERVICES
MAY 2005

COPD Age Adjusted Death Rates Population, 1979-2002

Age-Adjusted Death Rate per 100,000 Persons
1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

24.2 26.9 27.5 27.5 29.9 30.8 32.7 33.0 33.1 34.4 34.4 35.1 35.9 35.8 38.8 38.4 38.3

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

38.8 39.4 40.0 44.0 42.8 42.2 42.0

Source: Age Standardization of Death Rates: Implementation of the Year 2000 Standard. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 47 No. 3.
Additional Calculations Performed by the American Lung Association, Epidemiology and Statistics Unit.

I am going to start the "American Smokers Party" right now! The #$&*()@ politicians at both state and local level deserve to be voted out of office.

My goal is to enroll 15% of the smokers in the state in a dedicated group of voters. I am in the process of preparing a brochure that outlines the fact that tobacco smoking is not bad for you; that, in fact, smoking has no bad health effects and has a great many preventative good health effects. It will show that tobacco does not cause premature death and does not cause heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema, or anything else.

Smokers have been lied to, demonized, called foul names, and cursed because we are the cause of everything bad and I have had enough.

15% of this state (Illinois) smokers is about 330,000 voters or about 3,000 voters per district. This is enough to vote out of office any local or state politician that is anti-smoking.

My email address is gkayser30@aol.com

I smoke, I am angry as Hell, and I WILL vote with a vengeance!!!!

Gary K.

Anti-smoking is a SCAM. LIES about HEALTH are STUFFING the COFFERS of Drug Companies, Lawyers, Politicians, and the Anti-smoking Industry. Worldwide, the pharmaceutical industry is attempting to get rid of it’s COMPETITOR, the tobacco industry.

TOBACCO IS GOOD FOR YOU

We “Smokers” have been spit-on, verbally abused, taxed to benefit everyone else, forced outside of bars and restaurants, turned into second class citizens, treated like we were the scum of the Earth, and repeatedly told that smoking causes all sorts of deadly diseases and is killing us and everyone else!!!!!

I smoke and I am tired of all the lies and BS and I am “MAD AS HELL” and I do VOTE!!!

The “American Smokers Party” is being started so as to give smokers a chance to know the facts about smoking and disease. We have been lied to and scammed for tooooo long!!

I do not see any of us running for political office, I do think that we can be a large enough group to vote out of, or into, office any politician that is either against, or for, smokers as citizens.

Below are a few out of the thousands of pages of material available to prove that smoking “does not cause “ heart disease, cancers, emphysema, asthma, and that smoking does protect against some really nasty diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

More will be made available to those who are part of “ASP” as the reports are made.

Gary Kayser

Montgomery, Illinois

E-mail me: gkayser30@aol.com

The lies started at least 40 years ago. The SG’s Report of 1967 stated that smoking kills.

This is what the report actually contained; do not bother looking for this in their archives, it has been deleted.

"Prevalence rate for given smokers." smoking category divided by prevalence rate for never smokers.

Ratios of less than 2.00=not significant

Ratios of 1.00 = same as "never smoked"

RR of less than 1.00 are a protective effect!!

"Cigarette Smoking and Health Characteristics"

Surgeon General Report-May 1967

Page 11

Table D. Ratios of age-adjusted prevalence rates of chronic conditions for persons 17 years and over who have ever smoked to persons who have never smoked, by cigarette smoking status, number of cigarettes smoked per day for present smokers-heaviest amount, sex, and selected chronic conditions:

United States, July 1964-June 1965 Sex and selected chronic conditions

Male Ratio- All chronic conditions

number of cigarettes smoked per day for present smokers-heaviest amount

1-10 11-20 21-40 41+

0.92 1.04 1.30 1.54

Female Ratio- All chronic conditions

number of cigarettes smoked per day for present smokers-heaviest amount

1-10 11-20 21-40 41+

0.88 1.05 1.39 2.00

SMOKING IS GOOD FOR YOU

PROTECTIVE EFFECTS

Relative risk of lung cancer for asbestos workers was "highest for those who had never smoked, lowest for current smokers, and intermediate for ex-smokers. The trend was statistically significant. There was no significant association between smoking and deaths from mesothelioma," [emphasis added].

0565. University of London, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Cancer of the Lung Among Asbestos Factory Workers."

[Many other studies show similar findings for asbestos workers].

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE IS ASSOCIATED WITH NON-SMOKING

Graves' pooled reanalysis found, "A statistically significant inverse relation between smoking and Alzheimer's disease was observed at all levels of analysis, with a trend towards decreasing risk with increasing consumption (p=0.0003). A propensity towards a stronger inverse relation was observed among patients with a positive family history of dementia."

SMOKERS HAVE REDUCED RISKS OF ALZHEIMER'S AND PARKINSON'S DISEASE Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have a considerably decreased life expectancy, with the entire course of the disease taking an average of about eight years. It is hard to distinguish during life because of other damage and dementias. As many as 80% of the cases may be unrecognized by general practitioners.

Acute administration of low doses of nicotine improved mental processes and may be protective in AD. This possibility was first put forward by Appel, who noted that only 6 out of 30 patients had smoked at any time in their lives. Since that time, nineteen case control studies have been published and are considered here. The overall from these showed a clear negative association, 15 out of 18 studies reporting a lower risk of AD in men and women who had smoked.

Of the 19 studies, 15 found a reduced risk in smokers, and none found an increased risk and smoking is clearly associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease, another disease in which nicotine receptors are reduced. The fact that acute administration of nicotine improves attention and information processing in AD patients adds further plausibility to the hypothesis.

"The risk of Alzheimer's disease decreased with increasing daily number of cigarettes smoked before onset of disease. In six families in which the disease was apparently inherited, the mean age of onset was 4-17 years later in smoking patients than in non- smoking from the same family."
(Conelia M. van Duljn MSC Albert Hoffman Md., Erasmus Univ. Md. School)

SCIENCE NEWS
March 20, 2007

Smoking lowers Parkinson's disease risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study adds to the previously reported evidence that cigarette smoking protects against Parkinson's disease. Specifically, the new research shows a temporal relationship between smoking and reduced risk of Parkinson's disease. That is, the protective effect wanes after smokers quit.

As reported in the March 6th issue of Neurology, Thacker and colleagues analyzed data, including detailed lifetime smoking histories, from 79,977 women and 63,348 men participating in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. During about 9 years of follow-up, 413 subjects developed definite or probable Parkinson's disease.

Compared to people who had never smoked and were considered to have "normal" Parkinson's disease risk, former smokers had a 22-percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease and

“ current smokers had a 73-percent lower risk. “

"The results were similar for men and women, and were also similar to the results of studies by many other researchers looking at the same topic," Thacker noted.

"A 30 percent to 60 percent decreased risk of Parkinson's disease was apparent for smoking as early as 15 to 24 years before symptom onset, but not for smoking 25 or more years before onset," the investigators report.

"The results of our study," Thacker said, "can probably be explained by something in cigarettes -- most likely in the tobacco itself -- actually protecting people against getting Parkinson's disease. That would be the simplest explanation that makes the most sense."

SOURCE: Neurology, March 6,, 2007.

HEART DISEASE

What about heart disease, then? It's on the cigarette packet in capital letters: SMOKING CAUSES HEART DISEASE.

The most authoritative study on this is certainly the Framingham Heart Study, which is known as the Rolls Royce of studies. In this town in Massachusetts, 5,127 men and women have been studied since 1948. They have had the fullest details taken on their health and life-style, and have been checked every two years. Dr. Seltzer of Harvard University discusses this study at length in 'Framingham Study Data and "Established Wisdom" abut Cigarette Smoking and Coronary Heart Disease', Journal of Critical Epidemiology 42, no. 8 (1989).

The results of the study show that there is no relationship between smoking and heart disease in women except a very slight favorable one (women who smoke have a very slightly lower rate of angina, not statistically significant).

For men, the relative risk starts at 1.3 in smokers of forty or more cigarettes a day. Remember, the risk ratio of 2 has been designated the lower boundary of a weak association, so this means in fact a non-significant association. This risk went down to exactly one, that is, no risk at all, as the subjects aged.

When information about certain of the other 300 risk factors for heart disease were taken into account, the relationship between smoking and heart disease was lost.

More recent results from the “Framingham Study”, this done by doctors at Northwestern Univ.’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. This was published in “Circulation” the journal of the American Heart Association.

First Lifetime Heart Disease Risk Assessment Developed

Monday , February 06, 2006

Just more than half of men and 40 percent of women at age 50 in the U.S. will develop cardiovascular disease during their lifetime. But researchers say the danger is much greater for people who have multiple risk factors for heart disease by age 50.

The first-ever comprehensive lifetime risk assessment for cardiovascular disease highlights the importance of reducing risk early in life to prevent heart and vascular disease later on. Cardiovascular disease events included heart attack, angina, coronary heart disease, stroke, and claudication (peripheral arterial disease).

The researchers reviewed the medical records of 3,564 men and 4,362 women who did not have any record of cardiovascular disease at age 50. The men and women were followed for several decades and all cases of heart attack, coronary heart disease, angina, stroke, claudication (pain in the legs caused by circulation problems), and death from cardiovascular disease were recorded.

When the researchers calculated the impact of modifiable risk factors such as body weight, smoking history, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure, they found that:

--Smokers and nonsmokers had similar lifetime risks for cardiovascular disease.

The study appears in the Feb. 14 issue of the American Heart Association journal’ Circulation.’

SOURCES: Lloyd-Jones, D.M. Circulation, Feb. 14, 2006, vol. 113: online. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM, department of preventive medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago.

LUNG CANCER

When normal science encounters some correlation between the exposure
to some substance A and cancer B, the immediate next step is to use
hard science to test whether A causes B. For example, it is trivial
to establish that radiation or inhalation of radioactive particles
causes lung cancers -- you expose some mice to such radiation in dose
of interest and they develop lung cancers like clockworks. The same
goes for various chemical carcinogens for which OSHA and EPA set
exposure limits based on easily reproducible animal tests (cancer is
a primitive disease, not specific to humans).

So why then, fifty years later, are we still only handwaving
statistical association of smoking and lung cancer, such as "85-90%
of the cases..."? Can't we just make some animals breathe enough
tobacco smoke and develop cancers at higher rates, so we can
establish it once and for all? We could do that, and it was done, of
course, except that the data went the "wrong way" -- the smoking mice
get fewer lung cancers than non-smoking mice, with dose-response
relation showing that tobacco smoke is protective against lung
cancers:

QUOTE
Inhalation Bioassy of Cigarette Smoke in Rats
A.P. Wehrner, et al. Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs, Richland WA
Journal of Toxiology & Applied Pharmacology, Vol. 61: pp 1-17 (1981)

The results show that the highest number of tumors occurred in the
untreated control [non-smoking] rats. The next highest number of
tumors occurred in rats subject to sham smoking, i.e. rats which were
placed in the smoking machine without smoke exposure, and the lowest
number of tumors occurred in the smoke-exposed rats. Among the
latter, the largest number of tumors occurred in rats exposed to
smoke from cigarettes having the lowest level of nicotine.

Here is a later study done with mice.

Finch GL, Nikula KJ, Belinsky SA, Barr EB, Stoner GD, Lechner JF, Failure of cigarette smoke to induce or promote lung cancer in the A/J mouse, Cancer Lett; 99(2):161-7 1996

No matter how much tobacco smoke they made poor animals inhale, even
in equivalents of a carton or more per day (through surgically
implanted breathing tubes), the more they smoked the fewer lung
cancers they get. It just doesn't work and it even contradicts
their "theory" so they just gave it up.

With humans, we can't force them to smoke, or even not to smoke,
hence the next best thing, closest to hard science, are randomized
intervention trials -- you take a group of smokers, assign half of
them randomly into a 'quit group' (strongly advised not to smoke),
and a 'control group' (left alone, to smoke as they wish), then
follow them up for some years or decades, observe the smoking rates
(which are normally lower in 'quit group') and check for lung cancers
or other diseases.

That was done, of course, but only a handful of times in the early years of antismoking "science". As with animal experiments, the results of these few randomized intervention trials, whenever they showed anything at all, also went the "wrong way" --
the 'quit group' ends up with more lung cancers than the 'control
group' (and generally higher death rates).
These were the "Whitehall and Mr.FIT" studies,to name a couple.

The first 'Whitehall' study, starting in 1968, which recruited 1,445
British civil servants. Half were encouraged to give up smoking, the
others were left alone. After a year smoking in the intervention
group (the nagged) was down by 75%. After ten years, 17.2% of this
group was dead, as against 17.5% of the control group. This
difference of percentage is not statistically significant.

There was no difference in deaths from lung cancer or heart disease,
and the only other unexpected result was that the intervention group
had 28 deaths from cancer other than lung cancer, compared with the
control in which the number of deaths from such cancers was 12. This
is statistically significant.

Another study, with a wider range, was the 'Multiple Risk Factor
Intervention Trial' (MRFIT) in the US. In this there were 12,866
subjects. They were all shown to be at risk of heart disease because
of their lifestyle and general health. (With 300 risk factors that's
not surprising.) One group was given drugs for high blood pressure,
encouraged to eat more healthily, and to stop smoking. The other was
left alone, as in the Whitehall study.

These were not self-selected studies, and seem to have been conducted
competently. At the end of the MRFIT study, 41.2 per thousand of
the 'healthy' group were dead, as against the 40.4 per thousand of
the other.

Scientists investigating the study didn't like the results, and went
over them again. They found that the drugs to reduce high blood
pressure had in fact increased the death rate among the men given
them, and were forced to conclude that the risk factors had nothing
to do with the actual risks.

Professor Burch, in a letter to the British Medical Journal (March
1985) pointed out that in these two studies:

In the low smoking intervention groups 56 cases of lung cancer were
recorded in a total starting population of 7,142 men (0.78%); the
corresponding number for the more heavily smoking normal care groups
being 53 in 7,169 (0.74%).

Findings for cancer other than those of the lung were even more
surprising.

Some 88 cases (1.23%) were recorded in the low smoking intervention
groups, but only 60 cases (0.84%) in the normal care groups. Thus in
the category 'all cancers' there were 144 cases (2.02%) in the
intervention groups but 113 cases (1.58%) in the more heavily smoking
normal care groups. Reduced levels of smoking were associated with
increases in cancer incidence.

Asthma

This is what the Canadian Lung Association says:

Asthma is not caused by smoking.

The reason asthma develops in one person and not another is not well known. Asthma tends to run in families, but not always.

People with asthma have extra-sensitive airways that overreact to certain environmental elements such as:

· pollens

· fungus

· molds

· animal secretions

· house dust mites

cold air, etc.

When the airways are exposed to these stimuli, the linings of the airways react by becoming inflamed and swollen. They become "twitchy," meaning that the muscles surrounding the airways tighten and cause the airways to narrow.

For more information about asthma, please refer to the Canadian Lung Association Asthma Resource Center.

Smoke and the Asthma Epidemic: A Reality Check

Date of original release: 7/17/00

Link to the Speakeasy Forum

Return to main page

We've all heard that smoking and second-hand smoke cause asthma, but a growing body of evidence is challenging the veracity of this old saw.

The most recent study to exonerate smoking and tobacco smoke as a cause of asthma was published in the British Medical Journal July 8, 2000. ^[1]

In this 20-year, intergenerational study, researchers found that the rate of asthma had doubled between l976 and l996, even as the smoking rate dropped by half during that same period. Asthma and hay fever increased for both smokers and non-smokers, but the increase was higher for non-smokers. The steep rise in asthma was dramatically underscored by the fact that prescriptions for steroid inhalents for treatment of the disease rose more than six-fold between l980 and l990 alone.
This pattern of precipitous increases in asthma coupled with significantly diminishing smoking rates is not unique to the population described by the Scottish researchers in their BMJ article. Asthma and allergy rates are skyrocketing among adults and children in all developed countries, though not in less-developed, poorer countries.

Experts are baffled by the asthma epidemic. In most countries it strikes hardest at the children of middle-class and wealthy parents, and no one knows why.

These good, European middle-class parents have stopped smoking, banished it from their homes, and yet their kids are getting allergies and asthma far more often than children in more smoking-tolerant times ever did.

In the United States, too, the incidence of adult and childhood asthma has climbed to an unprecedented high during the past twenty years, while smoking and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke [ETS] have decreased significantly during the same period.

Between 1980 and l995, the number of people reporting asthma in the U.S. more than doubled (from 6.7 million to 13.7 million) ^[3], a 75% increase in the rate per 100,000 population. ^[4] And, after a sharp increase beginning in the early l990s, the rate is still climbing. The Centers for Disease Control estimates the l998 rate at 17.3 million, a 150% increase since 1980. ^[5]

· Between l980 and l995, the adult smoking rate decreased from 33.2 to 24.7, a drop of 25%. ^[6] In the late l990s the overall smoking rate has remained steady at between 24 and 25 percent of the adult population, far less than its peak of 42.6% in l966.

The inverse relationship between asthma rates and smoking and between asthma rates and exposure to ETS can be seen quite clearly by comparing extremes at the state level.

California has had the second-lowest smoking rate in the U.S. for many years. In l998, its adult smoking rate was 19.2. ^[7] It also has the most draconian smoking bans in the country. Nevertheless, California has the largest estimated number of persons with asthma in the U.S., with an estimated l998 prevalence of 7.1% ^[8]

Utah, which has had by far the lowest smoking rate in the U.S. for many years but which has not had the sweeping smoking bans so characteristic of California, had a l998 adult smoking rate of 14.2. The estimated l998 asthma prevalence in the state was 6.7%.

Kentucky has the highest smoking rate in the United States and has implemented few restrictions on public smoking. In l998 Kentucky's adult smoking rate was 30.8%, but its estimated l998 asthma prevalence was only 5.9%.

Asthma is also rising among adults in the workplace. One expert summarized it nicely in a book review in The New England Journal of Medicine:
"We know of more than 250 substances that can cause occupational asthma, and the list is expanding. Occupational asthma not only represents a substantial proportion of all cases of asthma but also is one of the main occupational diseases. The unsolved scientific questions concerning the increasing incidence of occupational asthma in recent decades, the socioeconomic effects of the disease, and prevention are the current challenges." ^[13]

One thing is certainly true: In recent decades, workplace smoking bans have been enacted far and wide throughout the United States, particularly since the mid-l980s. By l992, workplace smoking restrictions covered about four-fifths of all indoor workers, according to a government survey. ^[14] Since then, many more workplace smoking bans have been implemented, often as a result of state mandates. In l995, California banned smoking in all workplaces except restaurants and bars, and it has since banned smoking indoors even in those venues.

Nevertheless, occupational asthma continues to rise, and the Centers for Disease Control estimated that California had more cases of asthma in l998 than did any other state.

What Causes Asthma?

Asthma is not a new phenomenon. It has existed as a known clinical syndrome for more than 2000 years, ^[20] and yet its cause remains elusive.

Dr. Fernando Martinez, ^[21] director of respiratory sciences at the University of Arizona, is one of a growing number of experts who have completely changed their thinking about asthma.
"Like most people, I assumed tobacco smoke and pollution were the problem--this was the politically correct way to think. But these factors turned out not to play a major role. In high-pollution areas, in low-pollution areas, among all ethnic groups, there was asthma. Clearly, something else was involved." ^[22]
A variety of new explanations for the rising asthma rates are also being put forth by asthma specialists: lack of physical activity, changing patterns of diet, genetic predisposition, the increasing presence of man-made chemicals, and rising levels of emotional stress, among others.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, at least one thing seems clear: Whatever is causing more and more of our children and adults to contract and suffer from asthma, it's not tobacco smoke.

__________________________________________________________________

EMPHYSEMA and BRONCHITIS(COPD)

This is from the “ALA”, we know that they would not lie as they are a public health organization and only interested in our welfare.

NOTE: Smoking has gone DOWN by almost 50% over the last 40 years, over the last 20 plus years the COPD death rate has GONE UP BY 74%.

Clearly, smoking does not cause Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis.

Yet, the ALA and other health advocates say that smoking causes Emphysema!!!!

TRENDS IN CHRONIC BRONCHITIS AND EMPHYSEMA MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY
AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION
EPIDEMIOLOGY & STATISTICS UNIT
RESEARCH AND PROGRAM SERVICES
MAY 2005

COPD Age Adjusted Death Rates Population, 1979-2002

Age-Adjusted Death Rate per 100,000 Persons
1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

24.2 26.9 27.5 27.5 29.9 30.8 32.7 33.0 33.1 34.4 34.4 35.1 35.9 35.8 38.8 38.4 38.3

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

38.8 39.4 40.0 44.0 42.8 42.2 42.0

Asthma

This is what the Canadian Lung Association says:

Asthma is not caused by smoking.

The reason asthma develops in one person and not another is not well known. Asthma tends to run in families, but not always.

People with asthma have extra-sensitive airways that overreact to certain environmental elements such as:

· pollens

· fungus

· molds

· animal secretions

· house dust mites

cold air, etc.

For more information about asthma, please refer to the Canadian Lung Association Asthma Resource Center.

Smoke and the Asthma Epidemic: A Reality Check

Date of original release: 7/17/00

Link to the Speakeasy Forum

Return to main page

The inverse relationship between asthma rates and smoking and between asthma rates and exposure to ETS can be seen quite clearly by comparing extremes at the state level.

INFORMATION LINKS

Roll Your Own Tobacco Magazine

www.ryomagazine.com

FORCES International

www.forces.org

The Smokers Club,Inc

www.smokersclubinc.com

Illinois Smokers Rights

www.illinoissmokersrights.com

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