LE C.D.C DONNE LA RÉPLIQUE À L'O.M.S.

Le 22 septembre dernier nous écrivions que malgré que le Plan d’action européen visant à réduire l’usage nocif de l’alcool 2012-2020 touche prioritairement l’Europe, l’O.M.S. cherche néanmoins la collaboration de tous les pays membres.  

Voilà que les instances de santé américaines le CDC (Center for Disease Control) n’ont pas tardé de répondre à l’appel.   Ou serait-ce peut-être que l’offensive s’est faite simultanément et que les nouvelles américaines nous seraient parvenues avec un décalage de quelques semaines?  

Il importe peu qui l’a prononcé en premier ou même en simultané, la rhétorique est à peu près la même.  Le CDC, à l’instar de l’OMS, sonne l’alarme sur les décès reliés à l’alcool aux États-Unis qui se chiffrent selon eux à 79000.  Au fait, d’après vous, si vous étiez buveur, fumeur et sédentaire à la fois, quel lobby profiterait de votre décès pour renflouer ses statistique?  Sans aucun doute les trois, car aucun de ces chiffres représente des décès réels.  Seulement des estimés basés sur des calculs effectuées par des logiciels programmés selon les résultats d’un nombre d’études épidémiologiques sélectionnées.  Si on ne se fiait qu’à ces chiffres chacun de nous mourrait certes deux ou trois fois selon s'il était fumeur, buveur, sédentaire ou les trois à la fois.

Dans le cas d’une femme, le CDC estime une consommation excessive d’alcool à plus de quatre verres lors d'une même occasion et à plus de cinq pour un homme. On qualifie de ‘’gros buveur’’ une femme qui consomme plus d'un verre quotidien et un homme qui en consomme plus de deux.  

Sans doute pour impressionner le lecteur, le CDC fait ensuite le bilan du coût de la consommation d’alcool à la société tout en confondant les dépenses personnelles avec les dépenses publiques mais heureusement ils (ou le journaliste) se révisent par après indiquant que ces coûts faramineux sont partagés à part égal entre la société et l’individu.  

Ils suggèrent une hausse de taxe sur l’alcool et une réduction des points de vente.  Êtes-vous surpris?  Et pourtant la consommation de l’alcool a baissé considérablement aux États-Unis dans les dernières décennies tel qu’illustré dans cette excellente analyse :  Alcoholic Beverage Consumption in the U.S.: Patterns and Trends  .  Par ailleurs,  nous prédisons sans trop de crainte de nous tromper que, si les politiques anti-alcool deviennent aussi agressives et répressives que les politiques anti-tabac, cette tendance à la baisse se verra compromise tout comme fut le cas avec le tabac dans le pays d’Oncle Sam ainsi que la plupart des pays qui ont adopté des lois anti-tabac abusives.  

États-Unis: 79 000 décès par an liés à l'abus d'alcool

"Principles are never a good enough excuse for cruelty and lack of compassion" -- Dan Romano -- C.A.G.E

 

A comment to the following letter that we received from one of our readers would be tainted with mixed emotions such as anger, sadness and resentment.  Nothing constructive is ever obtained from such emotions we will therefore abstain from commenting.   

My mother, a recent but hopefully  temporary resident of a Stratford Ontario Nursing facility is 82 years old. She has smoked for 62 years! Some idiots in the health ministry/ Stratford Ontario bylaws have decided to ban smoking within 9 meters of this facility. Also, staff are not allowed to accompany her to smoke outdoors. My mother has become slightly physically disabled and she requires assistance even to go outdoors. It matters not that a verandah of 70 ft or more is in place because that verandah (mostly unused) is off limits also. This facility is a relatively good care place to be but unfortunately the short staff situation has become a problem. If the government would provide even one more staff my mother and others could have a daily cigarette. Has anyone ever seen or heard an elderly person beg for a cigarette while in a nursing home? Sadly, this is the case for my mother. She quite literally begged them to let her have a cigarette. She was independent until a short time ago so begging is new to her.
 
I should mention she smokes 2 perhaps 3 cigarettes a day and healthwise when this is withdrawn, her last enjoyment of life is being denied. Firstly it was her driver license, secondly her partially disabled body was in trouble and now she is forbidden to smoke ( a legal cigarette ) even on the verandah. How anyone in power could do this to an elderly citizen is beyond my scope of understanding especially one who has smoked for 62 years and is unable to defend or protect her rights. Strangely as a smoker she is very beautiful in appearance and looks 10 years younger than her age.
   
Compassion has vanished and so has her right to smoke. They protect her privacy but strip her freedoms. It is horrifying to think what else Canada might do or is doing to its elderly. None of us expected this to be happening in my mother's new residence. For God's sake someone help the elderly who are being denied their basic rights! At some point we will all have to walk the walk and I wonder what it will be like for us in the hands of these fanatics who have decided to remove all of our risk behaviors. I can only say this is not done with

" alcohol" because many of our law makers are drunks! Believe me when I say that I would prefer to sit next to a smoker than a "drunken" arrogant law maker! Only drunks and idiots believe the manipulated stats if it will reduce the payouts for elderly in long term care.

Allow her to smoke on the verandah with the assistance required.. It is her right to do so. Dictated by compassion instead of draconian laws would enable us to rectify this for an elderly citizen, who does not have many years left. She did pay her taxes for decades and this is her reward -- often referred to as the "golden years". Let me mention that my grandmother (her mother) lived to age 99 complete with second hand smoke. She never had a surgery of any kind in her life. My mother had one surgery at age 60 or so.  Health wise the smoking itself had not harmed my grandmother and if in fact it finally does harm my mother at 82 years old that is her own choice from a life time of smoking but not from 3 cigarettes a day at this point in time. Her doctor knows about her smoking and of course he prefers she does not smoke but he does not dictate her life and agrees that a couple of cigarettes a day no longer can harm her at this age. She has told me to be sure and let her smoke as a last wish before she dies.

Part of the year (in winter ) I live with my Italian born partner who has Parkinson's disease and for this reason we must return to Italy for his health and for him to visit specialists and take part in the trials of new medicines. Because of this we had to arrange a compassionate man who will take my mother outdoors once a day. Also, a female caregiver who is willing to take her outdoors three times a week. This is all at our own cost. What do residents do who are living on a small govt. pension? My family is very much anti smoking and believes she is better off to be distracted from her dirty harmful habit. I feel alone in my quest to give her assurance that she is a worthwhile effort no matter her addiction. I believe she has a right to smoke. This is a lady who reads world history and economics and is not easily distracted by child-like activities that take place in many nursing homes today.

It has left a foul taste so I have begun to think of my own aging and will have to make a decision on which country I should live in and what care might be provided. We must begin at a younger age so that we have a measure of control regarding the facility where we will spend our "golden years" should we ever reach them. Who will protect our rights and who will deny us the simple pleasures we have gotten used to throughout a lifetime? Who will it be to lock the doors and inform us we must stay indoors because there is a lack of staff to

assist us to the outside for a fresh air walk, and/or a cigarette? Pity the poor souls who must live in these conditions of fanaticism set down by our health ministries and governments. The elderly have been silenced and have no hope to recover a measure of independence. God help us all for allowing this to happen.

Last night in the rain I managed to push my Mom in a wheelchair outdoors. Having a slight disability myself made it next to impossible but after some effort we managed with an umbrella in tow to let her have the evening enjoyment of a cigarette. She said «thank you thank you thank you" Poor lady outside in the rain like a second class citizen but it was worth it just to see her smile.
 
"This ministry thought it could de-normalize smoking but what it has achieved is non other than the normalization of bigotry and intolerance. " 

"Principles are never a good enough excuse for cruelty and lack of compassion" -- Dan Romano -- C.A.G.E

"Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad,
 but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison."
 - William Shakespeare
  
Thanks for reading this letter.
  
Andrina Lejon.

How long does it take someone who gets occasional whiffs of smoke in the great outdoors to die?



1915 No smoking sign - Note how the lady posed in front
of the sign while holding a cigarette in each hand



Not content to have implemented smoking bans in beaches in Vancouver, there is now talk from one City Council that they will ban it in parks because ‘’ Second-hand smoke is a known health hazard, even outdoors, and so banning smoking in parks would help protect children and others from being exposed’’.  

It takes about 20 years, if ever, for a heavy smoker to develop a disease suspected to be caused by smoking. This is why the Center For Disease Control SAMMEC software does not compute any ‘’smoking related’’ morbidity and mortality that occurs before the age of 35 in their computer generated estimates.  How long then does it take someone who gets occasional whiffs of thousands of times diluted smoke in the great outdoors to get seriously sick and die?   Five hundred, a thousand, a million years?  How can outdoor smoking ban proponents insult our intelligence when claiming that breathing tobacco in the outdoors is a health hazard?  They must really think we are idiots!  

And what's this about banning all tobacco products? Are they telling us that smokeless tobacco can also hurt the kiddies in the great outdoors? Naturally there is no talk about banning  pharma nicotine inhalers, patches, gum and lozenges.  Doesn’t nicotine come primarily from tobacco? Aren’t then these pharmaceutical nicotine products much like the smokeless tobacco products they consider banning?  In the face of such incoherency, we can rightfully wonder what ''incentives'' this City Council gets from Big Pharma to consider such absurd ordinances. 

If some people still can't see that smoke-free laws never had anything to do with harming bystanders and everything to do with making Big Pharma even richer, they'll never see it.  If more people don’t wake up, God help us all when they start getting even more aggressive against obesity in a concerted effort to push their wares down our and our children’s throats.  Andrew Phillips has recently written an article in his blog on how medicine is now seriously suspected to be responsible for the rising obesity rates.  You can read it here:  Antibiotics, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, and the Rise of Obesity

City council weighs outlawing tobacco in parks

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