Vue Update - Song Remains The Same

The Vue Weekly March 29th edition contains three follow-ups to their story on Alberta Director of Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada, Charl Els, attempts to manipulate policy-makers at the University of Alberta - discussed in the blog entry before this one (below).

The most notable of the three, is a short piece titled "Vue story causes policy change at U":
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=6063

In this piece, it is trumpeted that:
"The council at the University of Alberta’s medicine and dentistry faculty has passed a motion “to reject research and other funding from the tobacco industry.” and
The faculty passed the anti-tobacco motion by a majority vote during its quarterly faculty meeting Mar 20, five days after a Vue story on the Els case came out.
The timing of the change is “a remarkable coincidence,” quipped Les Hagen, executive director of the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health, who said there’s “no question” the Vue story influenced the decision."

Well. That seems to remove any doubt over whether or not the prior Vue story on Els was intentional, manipulative propaganda. "Social Marketing" propaganda is all about influencing thinking and behavior in a targeted group, (whereas journalism is about the reporting of fact without desire for any particular outcome), and in this case the Vue story on Els seems to have acheived its social marketing purpose - according to Vue themselves, their story brought about a change of policy at the medicine & dentistry faculty of the University of Alberta (the targeted group).

A limited change of policy, but one that will no doubt be exploited by every prohibitionist Tobacco Control fanatic in Alberta as a domino to stimulate similar policy changes in every department (or simply campus-wide):
"Once the motion becomes a formal policy, it will apply to the faculty’s psychiatry department, which has yet to make clear whether any of its members accept tobacco dollars or work as industry consultants"
"...the CIHR form only asks that the department confirm that it does not accept or will not accept “any grant or anything else of value from” tobacco-related companies, making no mention of the faculty or university."
" [Les] Hagen wondered if the U of A’s School of Public Health, which received the smokeless tobacco grant for one of its professors, would pass a similar anti-tobacco-funding policy."
"Meanwhile, Els said he wants to wait until the medicine and dentistry faculty’s anti-tobacco declaration is turned into official policy before re-applying to the CIHR for funding."

And if Els never does re-apply for funding through the "Strategic Training Program in Tobacco Use in Special Populations" program run by his very close associate and mentor in Tobacco Control, Peter Selby, I guess that would prove that Els never was sincere in making the rejected applications for funding, that he only wanted to manipulate his department into becoming the precedent-setting first U of A department to have an official "no tobacco funding" policy.

Oh yea...this follow-up piece continues to omit all of the critically important info about Charl Els and Peter Selby that we brought to light in the previous blog entry.

More BS to expose:
The second of the three Vue follow-ups we will deal with is the "letter to the editor" from Diane Kunyk, who reveals herself to be; "Vice President, Action on Smoking and Health" and "Volunteer, Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada". (Last we heard, Kunyk had left her position as project co-ordinator for Capital Health Authority's "Smoke-free Communities Initiative" and was working as a Population Health Promotion consultant for Capital Health).

Kunyk's letter is a response to Prof. Carl Phillips' letter published in Vue, which he posted in full in the previous blog entry's comments. Kunyk doesn't actually respond in a substantive way to anything Prof. Phillips had said, rather her letter consists of little more than a string of hackneyed old Tobacco Control social marketing propaganda cliches and deceptions.

Overall, what we have to say about these tired old cliches is this - yes, the tobacco companies are corporate scumbags, yada yada blah blah blah. Time to move on from there, folks.

Kunyk begins by dismissing the bulk of Prof. Phillips' revelations - that "standards of honest inquiry and academic integrity" are threatened more by funding agency's attempts to dictate what sources of funding any members of a University staff can use, than by his having received a "no-strings attached" research grant from a smokeless tobacco company. She says:
"His [Prof. Phillips] suggestion that accepting tobacco industry funding is not different than accepting pharmaceutical funding does not hold up to scrutiny. Pharmaceutical products are developed to save lives. Tobacco, when taken exactly as directed, kills half of its loyal users"

BZZZT! Time to kill off that stupid propaganda cliche, once & for all.
Ms Kunyk - tobacco is not "the only legal product that, used as intended, can cause the death of the user". Adverse drug reactions are estimated to cause over 100,000 deaths per year in the US, and tens of thousands of deaths every year in Canada. An adverse drug reaction (ADR) is any unintended response to a drug. Most adverse drug reactions occur while a pharmaceutical product is being used exactly as prescribed and intended by the manufacturer. Prescription and OTC drugs are products that, used as intended, kill tens of thousands of Canadians every year!

Furthermore, most of the multinational pharmaceutical companies are also corporate scumbags - at least on par with the tobacco companies when it comes to marketing lethal or dangerous products, covering up evidence that their products are killing people, buying favorable and fraudulent research findings about their drugs, lying to the public, placing profit and greed above the wellbeing of their customers and society generally, and violating ethical business standards as well as breaking the law.

Pfizer, the drug giant that Peter Selby has "an ongoing relationship with", has a huge list of trangressions against the public. A few of the more notable ones;
- Seducing top scientists and researchers into criminal conflict-of-interest:
Top NIH scientist pleads guilty
- Defrauding the Medicaid program thru deliberate overcharging:
Criminal prosecution of Pfizer
- Marketing killer drug Bextra without adequate research:
Pfizer sued over Bextra
- Violating consumer protection laws against deceptive advertising, marketing cholesterol-lowering drugs that not only can't help the people Pfizer suggested they could, but that also increase risk of heart attack in those people:
Pfizer sued over Lipitor
- Ripping off the public thru price-fixing:
Pfizer pays huge criminal fines
- Marketing killer drug Celebrex:
Killer Celebrex

Then there's GlaxoSmithKline (formerly GlaxoWellcome or just Glaxo). Glaxo makes the drug wellbutrin (zyban), widely prescribed as an aid to smoking-cessation, as well as a host of other quit-smoking products. Glaxo funds lots of tobacco-control related research, and even has employees sitting on the boards of directors of many provincial Lung Associations. And, they are corporate scumbags of the first degree. Some of Glaxo's notable offenses:
- Blocking generic AIDS drugs being sold in African nations where AIDS is truly epidemic, putting MILLIONS of lives at increased risk:
Glaxo doomed millions
- Suppressing research finding that showed their antidepressant Paxil increases risk of suicide:
Killer drug Paxil
- Massive, ongoing deception of the public - profiting from selling false hope to millions of its customers:
Glaxo boss admits: "Our drugs do not work on most patients"
- Widespread bribing of doctors to prescribe Glaxo products unnecessarily:
4000 doctors charged in Italy

We all know the tobacco companies are unscrupulous corporate scum, that's ancient history already! True progressives have moved past being obsessed with that, and are now looking into and exposing the corruption, greed, and lack of ethical & scientific integrity on the other side - within tobacco control and other areas of health promotion including the pharmaceutical giants. Progressives are championing and standing up for the victims of tobacco control - the poor, elderly and emotionally traumatized persons whose lives have become collateral damage in the war tobacco control is waging against Big Tobacco. The fact that Vue Weekly and Murray Sinclair are still fighting battles that were effectively won long ago in relation to tobacco & smoking, shows just how stodgy, conservative and 'establishment' they really are.

Diane Kunyk claims, in her letter to Vue, that the ridiculous demands of the funding agency run by Peter Selby - " "Applicants must: confirm that they and their home department is not currently accepting and will not accept during the training award period any grant or anything of value from any tobacco manufacturer, distributor, or other tobacco-related company" -and others like it were developed through the "Ottawa Declaration" of Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC).

Says Kunyk: "...a movement to restrict funding to those working in departments where colleagues benefit from tobacco monies - a strategy developed in the Ottawa Charter [Declaration] sponsored by Research for International Tobacco Control".
But this "Ottawa Declaration" does not say anything remotely like that. It says: "Deny funding for tobacco control research to researchers that have received financial support from the tobacco industry. Ensure transparency in accepting funding for tobacco control research from industries where conflict may exist.":
http://archive.idrc.ca/ritc/Ottawa_Statement_E.htm

It doesn't say anything about denying funding to everyone in a department where someone is getting tobacco funding, or even that persons "colleagues". It says - deny funding to researchers who have received...support...from the tobacco industry."

These funding qualifiers, attached to applications for funding from Tobacco Control zealot controlled agencies, have nothing to do with ethical standards. If that was true, they'd deny funding to anyone that was ever funded by the pharmaceutical scumbags also. What this is really about, is a conspiracy by prohibitionist elements of Tobacco Control to gain complete control over who does or does not get funding for research on tobacco or smoking issues. While it is still possible for a researcher to bypass the iron grip the prohibitionists hold over 99% of the funding available for such topics, and secure funding from another source that they don't control (such as the tobacco industry), then it remains possible for researchers looking into hypothesis that might contradict Tobacco Control "scientific" and public policy orthodoxy to do their work and get published. That, is what the prohibitionists cannot and will not allow - research that exposes the flawed science in much of the "accepted wisdoms" of Tobacco Control, or that fails to support the public policy orthodoxy that is so visciously enforced in the Tobacco Control community. For more on that subject, check out the latest postings of that Tobacco Control heretic & freethinker Dr Siegel:
Enstrom Cleared of Scientific Misconduct Allegations

Tobacco Control Propaganda - A Practical Example

This article will present a detailed analysis of how Tobacco Control zealots deceive and manipulate policy-makers and the public through carefully constructed propaganda, using a recent story in our local media as an example.

The story in question is this one:
Vue magazine story on Charl Els

"Is the U of A really 'the University of tobacco'?" written by Murray Sinclair.
[U of A is a contraction of University of Alberta]

The Vue story begins by painting a scenario in which researchers at the University of Alberta are unable to get funding for their research because the U of A does not have a formal policy prohibiting tobacco industry funding of research at the University:

"Addiction specialist and professor Charl Els wanted to start a project last year within his University of Alberta psychiatry department, researching causes of death for people with long-term mental illness. But his plans collapsed when his department chairman could not sign a form guaranteeing that the department does not receive tobacco industry funding, as required by the funding agency."

“I understand that neither your university nor faculty of medicine have a policy against receiving funds from the tobacco industry or its various front organizations,” stated a rejection letter from Peter Selby, an agency investigator."

Clearly, the intent of these opening passages is to provoke the reader's sympathy for this unfortunate researcher - Charl Els - who can't get funding for his research about the mentally ill, and to provoke anger at the University for failing to have a strict "no tobacco money" policy which would allow Charl Els to be funded.

But some very important information has been left out of these opening passages - information that does not appear anywhere in the Vue story at all.

Charl Els is not simply an "addiction specialist and professor" within the U of A psychiatry department - Charl Els is also the Alberta Director of Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada, one of the most fanatical anti-smoking and anti-tobacco organizations in Canada, and represents PSC within the Coalition for a Smoke-free Alberta public policy lobby group. Furthermore, Charl Els is an "affiliate" of the very powerful and wealthy Ontario Tobacco Reduction Unit, to which most of Canada's Tobacco Control leadership belongs and through which the majority of Tobacco Control policy adopted anywhere in Canada is generated. Charl Els is one of the most prominent and active Tobacco Control activists in Canada, and is personally responsible for pressuring mental health facilities and psychiatric wards in Canada to ban all patient smoking:
Psych ward smoking bans

Even more important information has been left out, when Peter Selby is described in the Vue article simply as "an agency investigator" who wrote a letter rejecting Charl El's application for funding to "an agency" Selby works for.

Peter Selby is in fact "the Clinical Director of the Addictions Program and Head of the Nicotine Dependence Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as well as Assistant Professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto". He also happens to be a "principal investigator" with the Ontario Tobacco Reduction Unit (of which Charl Els is an affiliate), and another of Canada's most prominent and active Tobacco Control activists. He also happens to be Charl Els' "mentor" within the Tobacco Control heirarchy. The extent to which Charl Els and Peter Selby are close associates and collaborators is perhaps the most revealing of the information that was ommitted from the Vue magazine story.

Charl Els completed two clinical fellowships (Addiction Medicine, and Schizophrenia & Tobacco Dependence) at the University of Toronto and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto under the supervision of Drs. Peter Selby and Robert Zipurski.
Charl Els and Peter Selby are co-authors of a chapter in a book for alcohol and drug counsellors. In July of 2006, Els and Selby gave a joint presentation at a tobacco control conference, on "Tobacco Training Curricula to support Policy Reform".

The Vue magazine story mentions that "Els had specifically applied for “tobacco use in special populations” funding, provided by the federally funded Canadian Institute for Health Research", but failed to mention that the "Strategic Training Program in Tobacco Use in Special Populations" to which Els had applied for funding is actually run by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, of which Peter Selby happens to be head of the Nicotine Dependence Clinic, that Peter Selby is himself the principal investigator of the Tobacco Use in Special Populations project, and that Charl Els and Peter Selby are as close associates and collaborators as it is possible to be.

By ommitting all of this information, the Vue story creates an impression that Charl Els is just a random "victim" of the University's failure to adopt a "no tobacco money" policy (resulting in denial of funding from other agencies) - that this denial of funding he experienced could have happened to anyone at the U of A.

Technically, that may be true - any U of A researcher applying for funding through Tobacco Control agencies would be refused by Peter Selby and/or his associates, because the University has not formally repudiated tobacco industry funding on campus - but what other U of A staff member would repeatedly apply for funding from agencies that he already knows will refuse him? Who else, other than Charl Els, would repeatedly apply for funding when he already knows he does not qualify to receive it? What motivation could Els have for doing this?

The Vue story tells us that "his [Els] plans collapsed when his department chairman could not sign a form guaranteeing that the department does not receive tobacco industry funding, as required by the funding agency".
"But nobody from the university could give specific details on who in the psychiatry department is receiving or has received such money. Then acting chair Glen Baker, who in 2005 couldn’t sign the form, would only say it was a university decision, referring calls to a U of A lawyer, which were unreturned. Baker’s successor, PJ White, says he was unaware of anyone receiving tobacco money in his department. “I would not condone any research done by tobacco companies,” White said. “Tobacco is directly related to chronic illness and death.” White may articulate a firm opinion on the issue, but the university’s board of governors is still working on a tobacco-use policy".

So, Charl Els was aware, back in 2005, that his department head could not sign the form guaranteeing that "the department does not receive tobacco funding" - yet he continues to apply for funding from programs which clearly state in their eligibility criteria that he will be ineligible if he can't get the form signed. As an example, here is the eligibility criteria for the Tobacco Use in Special Populations program that Els applied to:
TUSP funding eligibility

"Applicants must: confirm that they and their home department is not currently accepting and will not accept during the training award period any grant or anything of value from any tobacco manufacturer, distributor, or other tobacco-related company".

The Vue story: "Els, who has brought in a half-million dollars worth of research in the past from Health Canada, could have received a $150 000 grant from the CIHR that was denied to him. He has since lost out on two more funding streams, worth $100 000 each, rejected because the psychiatry department still can’t sign the required form clarifying its tobacco-industry funding situation."

tells us that Els is repeatedly applying for funding that he knows he is ineligible to receive. Why is he doing this? Now we come to the heart of the deception and manipulation embodied by and carried out through this propaganda.

There is a passing mention, in the Vue story, that the University of Alberta accepted $1.5 million in funding - from a smokeless tobacco company - for a newly acquired staff member in 2005:

"The subject came up in the U of A’s controversial 2005 decision to accept a $1.5-million grant from the US Smokeless Tobacco Company. The money was granted to Carl Phillips, concurrent with him taking an assistant professor job at the School of Public Health. Phillips, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist from the University of Texas, advocates for replacing cigarettes with smokeless tobacco".

The Vue article tells us that this decision was controversial and prompted protests from some other staff: "The move prompted an email campaign within the university asking the board to return the grant, facing even national and international condemnation and concern".

What the Vue story doesn't tell us, about this "controversy", is that many U of A staff members supported the decision to accept this tobacco company funding. The U of A ethics committee cleared the funding as being entirely without "strings attached" - in other words, the committee was satisfied that the company providing the funding was not making and would not make any effort to influence the outcome of the research being funded by its monies. Several U of A staff and Student Council members stated, at the time, that funding can be hard to obtain and that Carl Phillips should be congratulated for securing $1.5 million in funding for the University even if the source was a tobacco company.

The Vue story also does not tell us that Charl Els was himself a very vocal opponent of this decision - that he even authored an article condemning it and stating that he supported funding boycotts of Universities that accept tobacco money by health research funding agencies:
http://tc.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/15/6/422

Charl Els is not opposed to agencies such as the ones he applied to for funding, requiring candidate's Universities to have a formal no tobacco money policy. He supports such requirements. If he were in Peter Selby's shoes, dispersing the funds, he'd reject his own application for the same reasons.

Charl Els has been applying for funding that he knows he is not eligible to receive, from agencies run by his own closest associates and mentors in Tobacco Control, that he does not believe he (or anyone else in his position) should be eligible to receive under current circumstances at the U of A. It is impossible to believe that he is sincere in making these applications. He must have an ulterior motive for making these applications.

The most likely explanation is that he wants to have his applications rejected, so that he can claim the University of Alberta's decision to accept smokeless tobacco funding for Professor Carl Phillips is costing the University other research monies. He needs to be able to make such a claim, to counter the support Carl Phillips received for having brought $1.5 million dollars to the University. His associates & mentors tolerate Els applying for funding he knows he cannot receive, because they want to help him embarass the University administration with refusal of funding. There is no other reasonable explanation for the wording Peter Selby chose when he rejected Charl Els application to his TUSP program:

“I understand that neither your university nor faculty of medicine have a policy against receiving funds from the tobacco industry or its various front organizations,” stated a rejection letter from Peter Selby, an agency investigator.
“I hope your department is able to articulate their policy, as it is important for Canadian researchers, funders and policy makers in the field to be aware of prestigious academic institutions who accept tobacco industry funding.”

This goes far beyond a simple: "sorry, your application cannot be accepted because you could not complete the required form", which would have been sufficient. Selby's letter of rejection is a condemnation of the University, it's administration and their policies. Charl Els application for funding he knows he cannot receive allows him to claim the University is missing out on funding opportunities, and allows his associates running the funding agencies an opportunity to slam and denigrate the University administration through their refusals.

All of this less than ethical manipulation, by Els and his associates such as Selby, is concealed by the omitting of very relevant information from the Vue story. With this important information omitted, the Vue story itself becomes a component of the deception and manipulation. The question is - was this information deliberately withheld from the author, or was the author of the Vue story a fully informed and willing participant in the use of his writing as deceptive and manipulative propaganda?

I wrote to Murray Sinclair, the author of the Vue piece, and asked him that directly. I asked him if he had been manipulated, if Els had withheld relevant information from him, or if he was an informed and willing participant. He has not replied. Draw your own conclusion.

Addendum :
One more piece of information about Peter Selby has recently come to light. He is a raving hypocrite.

An article appearing in the little Victoria Times Colonist paper - "Code of conduct sought to govern doctors and drug companies" - reveals that Peter Selby has "an ongoing relationship with [pharmaceutical giant] Pfizer" :
"One doctor who has an ongoing relationship with Pfizer agrees Canada’s medical community should adopt improved codes of ethics, but said receiving money from a drug company shouldn’t suggest a lack of professionalism. “You’ve got to make sure as a researcher you don’t get co-opted as the spokesperson for that (medication),” said Dr. Peter Selby, clinical director of addiction programs at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
Selby was featured in a press release on a new smoking cessation pill developed by Pfizer titled: “Magic pill to get you to quit smoking!” It was distributed in June 2005 by the Ontario government-funded Media Network for a Smoke-Free Ontario to highlight Selby’s research. “It’s as easy as open, pop, swig and swallow. Well, at least it will be,” reads the press release. Selby, who is a vocal supporter of smoking cessation products, said his relationship with Pfizer doesn’t influence his research"

Riiiight. Peter Selby demands that any researcher receiving funds through programs he administers must "confirm that they and their home department is not currently accepting and will not accept during the training award period any grant or anything of value from any tobacco manufacturer, distributor, or other tobacco-related company", but Selby himself can be employed as a smoking-cessation product spokesperson for a multinational pharmaceutical giant at the same time that he is involved in developing tobacco control policy for governments. What a load of hypocritical crapola.

[refer also: "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" by Edgar Allan Poe, and the Alan Parson Project song of the same name. Verily, the inmates run the asylum]

Health Promotion Driving Alzheimer's Epidemic

A report on the CNN site confirms several things we've been saying over the past 5 years:
Alzheimer's epidemic underway

"More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, a 10 percent increase since the last Alzheimer's Association estimate five years ago -- and a count that supports the long-forecast dementia epidemic as the population grays.
Age is the biggest risk factor, and the report to be released Tuesday shows the nation is on track for skyrocketing Alzheimer's once the baby boomers start turning 65 in 2011. Already, one in eight people 65 and older have the mind-destroying illness, and nearly one in two people over 85.
Unless scientists discover a way to delay Alzheimer's brain attack, some 7.7 million people are expected to have the disease by 2030, the report says. By 2050, that toll could reach 16 million.
Why? Ironically, in fighting heart disease, cancer and other diseases, "we're keeping people alive so they can live long enough to get Alzheimer's disease," explains association vice president Steve McConnell."

We've pointed out this conundum many times - Health Promotion social marketing uses the phrase "preventable deaths" in reference to smoking or weight-related cancer, heart disease, respiratory and stroke fatalities, intentionally implying that people who don't die from a smoking or weight-related illness somehow live forever. That idea is nonsense, of course. We are all going to die, someday, and the best that "healthy living" campaigns and lifestyles can offer us is to reduce the probability that we might die from a "lifestyle-induced" illness - but that will simultaneously increase the probability that we will die from some other cause, and for many people that cause of death will be Alzheimer's or other adult dementias.

"Indeed, government figures released last year that show small drops in deaths from most of the nation's leading killers [cancer and heart disease] between 2000 and 2004 -- even as deaths attributed to Alzheimer's disease increased 33 percent."

Furthermore, the cost burdens on our healthcare system imposed by adult dementias such as Alzheimer's are phenomenally greater than the cost of treating smoking or weight-related illnesses.

According to an analysis reported by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA, the lifetime treatment cost for a lung cancer patient was $12,510 (US, 1984 dollars - or $24,413 in 2006 dollars). ["Lifetime treatment cost" describes the total cost for direct treatment of the illness, from the initial diagnosis until the successful resolution of the illness or the death of the patient.]

In comparison, according to the american Alzheimer's Association, the average lifetime cost of care for an individual with Alzheimer’s is $174,000 ! "National direct and indirect annual costs of caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease are at least $100 billion, according to estimates used by the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Institute on Aging".
"Medicare costs for beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s are expected to increase 75 percent, from $91 billion in 2005 to $160 billion in 2010; Medicaid expenditures on residential dementia care will increase 14 percent, from $21 billion in 2005 to $24 billion in 2010, according to a report commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Association"

and, in the CNN article:
"Because it complicates treatment for every other illness, the new report shows Medicare spends nearly three times as much for dementia patients' care as for the average beneficiary -- $13,207 a year vs. $4,454. Medicare's spending on dementia-related care is projected to double to more than $189 million by 2015.
That doesn't include the value of the unpaid round-the-clock care that families and friends provide the vast majority of Alzheimer's patients who live at home -- a tab the new report calculates at almost $83 billion - or nursing home costs."

The claims by anti-smoking and "healthy living" advocates, that reducing the prevelance of smoking or weight-related illness will lead to reduced public health care costs IS A LIE. Furthermore, it is a deliberate and calculated deception intended to manipulate policy-makers and the public. Reducing smoking or weight-related illness will ultimately result in vastly increased costs to the health system as more people are enabled to live long enough to contract Alzheimer's and other adult dementias.

Not that it matters, ultimately. That's what public health care is all about, after all - it is a social contract by which we all agree to help shoulder the cost burden of each other's health care, regardless of the source or cause of our illnesses. People who aren't willing to play by those rules, people who resent helping to pay for other people's illness or injury treatment because they don't approve of the "cause" of the illness or injury, ought to move the heck out of this country. The majority of illness treatment costs are generated by elderly persons, who paid into the system all their lives and never objected to helping cover the cost of your childhood illnesses & injuries - so if you are now, as an adult, going to whine and complain that you don't want to help pay these people's health costs because you think they are "self-inflicted", then you are a selfish ingrate and we don't need you here.

Clueless In B.C. - Clueless In Alberta

"B.C. declares all-out war on tobacco" declares the headline of a CanWest media article on March 7th, 2007.
"Tough anti-smoking legislation introduced yesterday is aimed at making tobacco products invisible in B.C. stores by next Jan. 1 and available only by request.
The new law will also ban smoking in all indoor public places and on school grounds.
"People won't see the tobacco products, nor will they see any advertising attempting to induce them to purchase those tobacco products," said Health Minister George Abbott.
"There will be limited, if any, visibility of tobacco products in any retail outlet. 'Invisible' would be our objective."
Premier Gordon Campbell announced the plan last November and Abbott talked in detail yesterday about how it will work.
The ban on the display of tobacco products will also cover lighters, caps with tobacco brands, ads, self-serve displays and outdoor signs.
The tactic is part of a sweeping plan to counter the use of tobacco".

The rationalizations for banning the display of cigarettes and tobacco-related products in retail stores are so blatantly stupid and obviously false that it's embarrassing to read them. It's like watching someone trying to make a speech on a serious subject with their pants down around their ankles - you feel so embarrassed for them you have to look away.

"Last month, the province argued in a brief to the Supreme Court of Canada that tobacco companies that lure smokers with advertising do "violence" to tobacco addicts -- the equivalent of preacher Jim Jones inducing his followers to commit mass suicide by drinking a cyanide-laced beverage."
"Lindsay Meredith, a professor of marketing in the business faculty at Simon Fraser University, said further restrictions on the display of tobacco products in places where tobacco is sold to youth may not affect hard-core smokers.
But he said they will likely curtail tobacco use by beginning smokers, because brand packaging helps to trigger tobacco sales.
"You want to get the people on the introductory edge and remove all visual cues," Meredith said. "That's where you want to break the linkage, before they get hopelessly hooked on nicotine. You're knocking down the linkage for desire for the product."

What a load of crap! Heaven help us, if the government spokespeople, health organization reps and academics spouting this nonsense actually believe what they are saying; if they truly believe that seeing cigarette packages on store shelves somehow "causes" teens to start smoking - because if they really believe that then we are being governed by a ruling class of witless nincompoops.

Allegedly, only 10% of BC teens smoke tobacco products - but almost 45% of them smoke pot! Retail stores must be crammed to the rafters with cunningly designed marijuana products displays, that only teens can see, continuously seducing BC teens to take up smoking pot, eh?

The real reason for banning cigarette and tobacco displays in retail stores, is that the retailers get paid big bucks by the tobacco companies for having these displays in their stores - which encourages retailers to carry cigarettes even if they make very little or no profit from the sales of those products. Banning the displays means the retailers won't get this "display bonus" kickback from the tobacco companies, so many retailers will either raise their prices on cigarettes to compensate for that loss of revenue or may just drop tobacco products altogether - as they will no longer be worth the trouble you'd have to go through just to carry them. That, is the point of banning retail displays. It has nothing to do with the preposterous idea that displays of cigarettes in stores somehow hypnotize children into an uncontrollable desire to "smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette!".

"I would like to see smoking rates around zero," said [BC Health Minister] Abbott, a smoker in his student days". I'd like to see pigs flying around the BC Legislature, but neither of us will have our wishes fulfilled during your lifetime, Minister Abbott. But you're on the right path, you clueless prohibitionist, toward "seeing" a zero smoking rate, toward the "invisibility" you are striving for. That doesn't mean there will be no tobacco smoking -just that you won't see your teenaged kids doing it...just like you don't see them smoking pot, or Crystal Meth, or taking Ecstacy. And once the tobacco smoking has been hidden under the rug, it's usage rate can climb right back up to the usage rates of marijuana and alcohol - right under your nose, and you'll never even know it has happened.

Speaking of not knowing what's happening, we came across a very revealing document the other day. It's titled:
"37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION
Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs
EVIDENCE
CONTENTS
Thursday, August 29, 2002"

and in it, the CEO of AADAC - Murray Finnerty - makes some startling admissions:

"We don't have a baseline on drug prevalence in Alberta. I'm being very quiet about that, because my boss will say, are you saying you don't know what the cocaine use is in Alberta? Sorry, sir, I don't. So how can I give you a projection?"
"We frankly don't know what's going on, we really don't."

At least he's honest about it - AADAC is clueless about the extent of drug usage in Alberta. He doesn't seem to understand just how clueless he really is, however:
"We're going to have a heck of a time keeping it [cocaine usage] at, I don't know, 2% or 3%."
2or 3%?? You're right - you don't know...

"We're just running to stay ahead of the game. We have Ecstasy and all these new drugs that are going into high schools. It blows your mind. People don't understand what's happening out there."

But, Mr Finnerty, neither do you! If you are under the impression that substance use survey responses, or criminal arrest records, provide an accurate portrayal of substance use - here or anywhere else in Canada - then you are disturbingly naive for someone holding the position that you do. The truth is that only a fraction of the true rates of usage are visible to you through these means. Surveys, especially surveys of youth, are acknowledged to be so problematic that their practical usefulness is close to nil. Even Health Canada says:
"While it may seem that the problem of representativeness may be solved through avoiding institutions and making "households" the sampling unit, as is the practice in most national studies, such procedures are likely to omit important sectors of the youthful population. Household sampling frames typically exclude residents of institutions. Thus, people living in college residences, military bases, group homes, and correctional and treatment facilities are not likely to be included in the sampling frame, and population samples of this age group are likely to be misrepresented in serious, but unknown, ways."
and
"Youth who are most at risk from harm related to drug use are not likely to be identified through national sample surveys. They must be sought out in institutions, in the streets, in emergency rooms, in the more disorganized sections of large cities and in the aboriginal communities. Problems of adolescents who are in the most trouble from substance use cannot be assessed through surveys; nor can their problems be reduced through programs informed by general population surveys."

As for arrest records and law enforcement observations - the vast majority of substance trafficking and use is completely invisible to the police. It takes place within respectable social circles of friends and acquaintances, and will never come to the notice of law enforcement because the people involved in it aren't criminally inclined. The police only ever come into contact with the "street" level dealers, gang members, and users who are completely immersed in criminal lifestyles. They only represent the most visible tip of an iceberg beyond the wildest imaginings of the prohibitionists, which is another reason why their policies always fail to eradicate drug usage.

Not that it really matters, because the Murray Finnertys and the Les Hagens of the prohibitionist cabals are really only interested in having a set of numbers by which their job performance can be evaluated - through which they can justify their continued public funding. What these people do, isn't about anyone's health or wellbeing. It's about making numbers go up & down on charts and graphs. It's about setting "usage reduction targets" and pursuing whatever policies are most likely to cause the superficial appearance of a drop in those statistics - regardless of whether that actually translates into better health or not in the real world - so that the monies these cabal leaders suck up like vacuum cleaners can be justified.

Says Finnerty: "One of the things I've found in the tobacco initiative in Alberta is that the federal government is up to speed on tobacco. It does regular surveys. We get relevant data every six months or every year. We know where we're at. We know what the trends are."

No. He was right the first time, when he said: "We frankly don't know what's going on, we really don't", but at least with smoking rates he has a set of numbers that he can claim to be influencing, and thereby justify all the funding his agency is receiving. Even if the head of AADAC's Tobacco Control unit was an unqualified con-artist siphoning off money into his personal accounts.

Background Check Conundrum

Employers demanding to run a background check on job applicants, as a condition for even considering hiring someone, has become standard practise all over North America (and probably beyond) in recent years.

There are some jobs for which an accurate, independent verification of an applicant's statements - about their education and history of abiding by or violating laws - are essential.
This is particularly true in the case of professions where the expertise of persons working in that field has the potential to impact other people's lives, for good or for bad. There are lots of obvious examples; medical personnel, pilots and other transport drivers, construction engineers, etc.

A current example of the potential for disaster that undetected false claims of expertise/ qualification can cause, is this tragic story of a police ballistics expert who testified in hundreds of cases over four decades and who committed suicide after being confronted with the fact that he did not have the educational background he had always claimed that he had. All the cases he ever testified in will now have to be reviewed, and where his testimony is judged to have been a deciding factor in a criminal conviction there may have to be a new trial. It is possible that this man committed perjury on an unimaginable scale over 40 years, resulting in large numbers of false convictions:
http://tinyurl.com/23xsbc

However, most jobs for which employers are now demanding that applicants sign a waiver allowing the employer to have a background check run on them, don't have that kind of potential for disasterous consequences if the employee is less than completely truthful. In fact, background checks are being demanded for the most menial and unskilled service and labor jobs - such as flipping burgers at a fast-food joint or stocking shelves in a supermarket. The dramatic increase in employer demands for background checks is driven in part by the explosive growth of independent background check companies, offering employers 'bulk discount' rates to perform checks on job applicants.

So - you apply for a job and the employer says: "ok, I think you're suitable for this position...all we have to do now is run a background check on you, and if you pass it - you're hired!" and puts a form in front of you which asks you to sign that you voluntarily agree to allow your new employer's independent background check company to investigate you and gather extensive personal information about you. If you object to having your privacy invaded, on principle, and refuse to sign the release - you won't be hired, plain & simple. That's a heavy-duty blackmail, which few applicants would be in a position to afford to stand up to by refusing.

Let's say, on the other hand, that you feel you have nothing to hide, and this is just a formality, and you trust the company you are applying to, so you see no reason to object to the request to allow a third-party company to gather personal data about you. But - how do you know that the background check company your prospective employer is using isn't some fly-by-night operation, run by identity theives or other kinds of people who might abuse your trust and misuse your personal information. What do you know about "Background Checkers Inc", or whatever the background company is called? Probably nothing.

The employer might alleviate your concern, if you raised it, by assuring you they've been using the background check company for years and there's never been any problems - or you might go online and check out that company's website, which looks very professional and contains assurances of their policies respecting your privacy. Ok. But - just because no one at your employer's company has become aware their personal data was abused doesn't mean it hasn't happened, and wouldn't a bunch of con-artists posing as a background company have a nice slick website full of reassuring statements about themselves? That sounds a bit paranoid, and 95% of the time such paranoia might be unjustified, but abuse of personal data and data bases does happen. There have even been cases where police personnel themselves have abused their access to personal data bases - looking up people's data not as part of an investigation, but for some non-professional reason known only to them:

"The Edmonton Police Service has had its knuckles rapped for allowing an officer to run a check seeking sensitive police information on a private citizen.
In a ruling released today, the Information and Privacy Commissioner determined the search of the Canadian Police Information Centre - or CPIC - database wasn’t done for legitimate investigative purposes and therefore broke privacy rules.
The case arose after Det. Daniel Forrest, a detective with the auto theft unit, directed someone to search the name Lisa Jordan on CPIC.
Records also show he failed to shred confidential documents. She filed a complaint with the provincial Privacy Commissioner’s office.
He pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to breaching department policy and given a 15-hour suspension.
Police use of CPIC came under intense scrutiny last year after an internal police investigation found five members used the database to get personal information about former police commission chairman Martin Ignasiak and Edmonton Sun columnist Kerry Diotte."

Maybe you could get a little more info about the background check company's employees, yourself? Try contacting such a company - tell them you've applied for a job with an employer who uses their services - and ask them if it would be ok for you to do your own background checking on the people who will be gathering and handling your personal data. You want to know if the background company's employees are worthy of your trust, and you aren't willing to take the company's word on that (just as your employer isn't willing to take YOUR word on your honesty & trustworthiness). Would they mind giving you the names of their employees who will be handling your info, and provide consent for you to investigate them?

Not in a million years, will they be willing to do this. They won't even give you their investigator's names, in most cases. It's ok for them to learn everything there is to know, about you, but any attempt on your part to protect yourself by looking into and verifying their backgrounds would be a violation of their privacy, they will say.

There is something very wrong about this whole scenario...

For a good discussion of background checks, your rights and your privacy (unfortunately the specific statutes cited are only American), have a look here:
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs16-bck.htm

"Wet Shelter" Deserves Support

Edmonton's Police Commission is considering a proposal to establish a "wet shelter" for alcoholics in our city. A wet shelter is a facility catering primarily to the homeless, which allows drinking of alcohol under controlled circumstances. An example of a wet shelter would be Toronto's wildly successful Seaton House:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/168/7/888-a

Residents of a wet shelter are provided with regular, controlled doses of wine - say, at hourly intervals. Under these conditions, previously socially non-functional persons frequently become much more functional. They stop committing crimes, they stop harrassing pedestrians on the street for handouts, they stop "binge" drinking, fighting, passing out in pools of their own vomit on the sidewalk outside your place of business, they stop freezing to death in the winter.

Beyond all of these benefits, however, Seaton House staff have found that some of their residents begin to drink less over time. Some choose to "go dry" and are successful in doing so.
Even those who remain drinkers demonstrate increased capacity for working or otherwise looking after themselves and contributing to society.

This is another dramatic vindication of the Gaison Hypothesis - that instability of supply is what drives substance users to become socially non-functional. It is prohibitionist policies and attitudes that destroys the lives of substance users, more so than their substance use itself. Furthermore, when provided with minimal but reliable supply of their substance by a medically-oriented facility, many users are enabled to escape their reliance of the reciprocity circle of fellow users - upon which they had become dependent for survival and which required their continued use of the substance to maintain their 'membership'. The substance-oriented reciprocity circle involves incurring powerful social obligations and committments to other users, which reinforces reliance on the reciprocity circle and a sense of alienation from the broader society. When users are freed of their reliance on fellow-users, they become freed of the obligations and committments which bound them to that subculture and are enabled to make other choices in their lives.

A wet shelter for Edmonton is a worthy cause and deserves our support - most of all, because unlike prohibitionist approaches, this harm-reduction approach actually works!

Pietramala For Mayor?

Mike Pietramala has declared his intention to run against Mayor Mandel in the fall election.
Good for him! Some commentators have remarked that our Mayors always win their second term, and that Mandel "deserves" a second term - but it's a slap in the face of our democratic principles when candidates for important offices run unopposed or win by acclamation.

We don't know Mr Pietramala, and don't know much about him beyond this:
http://tinyurl.com/2e2cj7

but we have a message for him - Mr Pietramala, would you be so kind as to put up a website that tells us more about your plans and could facilitate people getting in touch with you? Because there is interest in your candidacy.

And pay no attention to Scott McKeen's negativity - he's got someone else pegged as an eventual replacement for Mandel, so he's likely to discourage anyone else from beating his preferred replacement to the punch.

Democratic Reform In Alberta?

Thanks once again go to Ken Chapman for alerting us to the discussions on Democratic Reform/ Renewal taking place through Public Interest Alberta .

Ok. We all know what needs to be done, as a first priority, to renew democratic processes in Alberta - don't we? Yes, that's right - we need a system of proportional representation, wherein the number of seats in the Legislature awarded to a party reflects the percentage of popular vote each party received. Lay your partisanship aside long enough to consider what system best respects "the will of the people" and there just isn't any excuse not to institute this basic reform of our system.

Aside from that, what other steps should be taken to stop or prevent the misuse/abuse of power by our elected representatives or "the machinery of government"? What else can we do, to maximize the participation and influence of ordinary individuals in government decision-making?

One important step, would be a ban on government-funded organizations lobbying members of the government that funds them, to retain, oppose, or change the laws, policies, or decisions of that government. This is important, to prevent government ministries, departments or agencies from using non-governmental organizations as proxies or "fronts" through which that ministry, department or agency attempts to influence the decision-making of its own government members. That idea - governments lobbying themselves, to retain, oppose or change their own laws, policies or decisions - seems so patently ludicrous that its hard to imagine it really happening. But...it has happened and it may still be happening, right here in Alberta.

As a matter of fact, it was the accidental discovery that exactly such a scheme was going on here in Alberta that first motivated us to become active in speaking out publicly. Our discovery was later summed up quite nicely by Colby Cosh of the old Report Magazine:
(Report magazine, May 13, 2002: "Big drug shoulders out big tobacco")

We discovered that, in 1998, Alberta Health ministry had participated in creating an "arm's-length" organization called the Alberta Tobacco Reduction Alliance - and subsequently directly funded that organization with $1 million/year in taxpayer monies. The purpose of ATRA was to "develop a tobacco reduction strategy", solicit public support for this strategy and then lobby members of the Alberta government for the adoption of specific policies based on this strategy. The centerpiece of ATRA's tobacco reduction strategy ended up being, that the Alberta government should institute a massive tax increase, levied on the sale of tobacco products in Alberta.

So - a ministry of the Alberta government set up and funded an organization whose principle purpose was to lobby members of its own government to increase taxes.

Regardless of how you may feel personally, about tobacco & smoking, this kind of under-handed and devious manipulation of our elected representatives (and the public) is clearly unacceptable behaviour by a government ministry, department or agency. Who knows how many times a similar scheme had been carried out before ATRA - or whether similar schemes continue to this day, involving any of our provincial ministries, departments or agencies?
If this kind of crapola is still going on, it needs to be stopped - and we need a policy that will prevent it from being acted out in the future.