A Criminal Assault On Innocent Bystanders

More than 50,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. But that many die needlessly each year in America, in another immoral war. A war with secondhand cigarette smoke. Amazingly other unnecessary forms of air pollution are made illegal or contolled through expensive filtering, sometimes at the cost of 100,000 of thousands per factory or pollution source. Automobiles are required to have expensive catalytic converter systems, sometimes at the cost of $1,600 per car. But tobacco companies and smokers are given a "special rights" status to dump 4,700 chemicals in normal clean air each time they light up. And in addition , more than 200 poisons and more than 50 human carcinogens fill normally clean air each time smoker's light up in a public place.

And just like any war, many are left injured or wounded each year. And just like any war, many of the victims are children. 150,000 to 300,000 children develop lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. 7,500 to 15,000 of these children end up in the hospital. And the ETS carcinogen exposure creates new cases of asthma in children who were never previously diagnosed with this lung disease.

And while automobile pollution can be controlled through complex air pollution control devices, each cigarette destroys gallons and gallons of good clean air, replacing it with poisons and heavy metals such as nickel and cadmuim. In addition some of the killer chemicals that make a meth house unlivable, a place where cleanup workers must wear chemical protection suits because of the danger to these workers, are also found in cigarette smoke, such as toluene and acetone.

And like any war, the poor pay the highest human cost. Because so many food service workers work near other coworkers, the nonsmoking coworkers are 50% more likely to develop lung cancer than workers not exposed to this unnecessary danger.

Another cigarette carcinogen, NNK is found to soak through the entire body of the nonsmoker exposed to secondhand smoke. It is found to cause leukememia by soaking into the bloodstream, and bladder and breast cancer by soaking into human tissue in those areas. Just like radiation exposure, that would kill by penetrating right through human tissue, NNK and other deadly carcinogens from cigarette smoke kill by penetrating right through the body of the nonsmoker. And some heavy tars actually accumulate in the lungs of nonsmokers in a very heavy rate due to the cooling effects of cooler air on the secondhand smoke poisons.

And many sick persons who want to purchase medical supplies or groceries often have to walk through a wall of smoke outside of grocery stores or pharmacies by smokers who insist on smoking outside the doors of these businesses. Why this criminal assault on these nonsmokers is even allowed by these businesses is a very good question. Why these businesses don't adopt voluntary policies to prevent this criminal assault on nonsmokers who support their businesses is also a very good question.

Who is the tobacco industry? In the early days of America, the tobacco and cotton industry decided to work business deals with tribal chiefs in Africa to purchase entire families and villages who were taken as prisoners of war in African continent wars. These civilian POWs were brought to America and sold on auction blocks as slave labor to the tobacco and cotton growing interests. When they felt that their financial interests were harmed, they helped to establish the Southern Baptist faith to indoctrinate Southern Christians that slavery was somehow the will of God. And they helped to create the divisive American Civil War to defend these financial interests to use free human slave labor. Abraham Lincoln, a deeply religious man was so outraged at a slave block auction watching a family broken up and sold to various farming interests, that he actually cletched his hands bloody. Lincoln maintained a powerful prayer life with God and pledged to end this immoral evil one day. As a child, the only book Lincoln had to learn to read from was the Holy Bible. Actually living the faith, like Lincoln, made him perhaps our greatest president. He was the American Moses. A holy man, a saint of God who led America through the Civil War to a republic based on equality for all Americans, where slavery was seen as an immoral crime against God.

Where is the comparable moral values of legislators today? They pander to tobacco interests and lobby eforts. They have little of the moral character of Lincoln to realize that tobacco kills the innocent, while immoral tobacco executives drive to the bank to pick up wheelbarrels of money. There is little legislative backbone to outlaw all public smoking. To ban all smoking in public housing and property. To ban all smoking on grocery store or pharmacy grounds. There is little of the faith in God or the moral determination of Lincoln to stop the murder of innocent bystanders of this war by tobacco executives in this dirty war of immoral corporate profiteering.

This is a typical war. All wars tend to make innocent civilians and children some of the highest number of war victims. War is an immoral sin against God. This war is as well.