Stanton Glantz vs the TEA Party

The other day I showed the dishonesty and ad hominem attack that Stanton Glantz engaged against the TEA Party. Remembering that it was progressives that brought us the Great Depression,smoking bans,prohibition and eugenics in the first half of the 20th century.  Mark Twain even wrote about them in “The Moral Statistician“. Little has changed, same questionable tactics using flawed methodology.  They use Meta-Analysis even though by their own admission (on page 21 of the 2006 Surgeon Generals Report) is unreliable and may be totally inaccurate.  They list the donations given to various conservatives while failing to note the donations to their progressive friends.  Don’t worry Dr Siegel took care of that.  Like the rest of the progressives yelling “Koch Brothers” Glantz and his progressive friends use the same red herring tactics.  Actions speak louder then words.

Then why would he do such a thing, the bottom line is even progressives are capitalist and it comes down to money.  Look at the first line of Stanton’s page. “Dr. Glantz, the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control” To the average person those words would mean nothing, but the “American Legacy Foundation” was the money extorted from smokers through  The Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).  Essentially smokers are forced to pay for the lobbying efforts against them through extortion.  Why do I say extortion?  Because it was achieved under false premises.  I could search for the actual documents but WIKI sums it up quite nice.

The states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health-care costs, and also exempted the companies from private tortliability regarding harm caused by tobacco use.

So  these progressives said give us some money and we will protect you from lawsuits and fund our lobbying efforts.  But then the fraud doesn’t end there. The clarion call for higher taxes always includes the claim that smokers cost taxpayers more in healthcare costs, even though smokers are already paying a higher costs as a result of the MSA. (what you don’t think Big Tobacco isn’t going to pass that cost on to the consumer?)  Stanton himself has made such claims.

The study by University of California, San Francisco researchers found that for every dollar spent on the state’s anti-smoking program, health care costs dropped by about $56. Researchers attribute those savings to lower spending on health care due to people quitting or not starting, and those who do light up consuming fewer cigarettes each day.

“The California program has shifted people to being much, much lighter smokers,” said Stanton Glantz, co-author of the study published Wednesday in the science journal PLOS ONE,

This is the BS that is spread by every anti-smoking group when pushing for higher taxes.  The problem is that the only studies that show this are done by anti-smoking activists like Stanton. Of course none of the money went for the healthcare cost of smokers as the increase in cost was imaginary.  The money that was not spent on lobbying efforts went to filling budget holes for other “progressive” programs. Here is the conclusions of one such study.

In our study, lifetime costs
for smokers can be calculated as $72,700 among men and $94,700

among women, and lifetime costs
among nonsmokers can be calculated as $83,400 and $111,000, respectively.

This amounts to lifetime costs for nonsmokers that are higher by 15 percent
among men and 18 percent among women.

And this does not take into account the savings in Social Security.  Facts don’t faze the likes of Stanton though.  When praising the call for the next tax increase he said the following.

In response to concerns that the report considers the savings from people dying earlier and therefore not requiring Social Security or Medicare payments, Glantz writes: “I have received several emails from people expressing concern about this article because its summary says “By discouraging people from smoking, the higher excise tax would improve the average health status of the population … [L]ower health care spending per capita would push down federal spending, but increased longevity would have the opposite effect …”

Which is it Stan, do smokers cost taxpayers more or less? But the collusion between progressives and “Big Tobacco doesn’t end there. They recently slipped into the transportation bill a paragraph that outlawed the rental of machines that allowed smokers to roll cigarettes at a cheaper cost.  As always the progressives taxed those that they do not like in order to pay for programs that they themselves didn’t want to pay for.  SCHIP. I went it to all of the abusive taxes imposed here.  But why would anti-smoking groups (who lied,RYO shops pay massive taxes),progressives, and “Big Tobacco” Team up to shut down these small mom and pop RYO shops? Oh they’ll say for the children, to pay for XYZ.  But the real reason is the backroom deal made with “Big Tobacco” in the MSA extortion agreement.

“The tobacco companies claim that the state failed to meet obligations under the settlement agreement. This is the first time the issue has been pursued,” First Assistant Trey Phillips said. “It’s possible the state would have to give up our April 15, 2014, payment up to $140 million. We could possibly lose the entire payment that year and likely what’s due the next year.” . . .

The dispute involves whether state officials have done enough to regulate off-brand cigarette companies.

In a 1998 master settlement agreement tobacco companies agreed to make billions in compensatory payments to states as long as they remain in business.

As part of that agreement, states were required to be “diligent” in making sure that cigarette companies that were not part of the settlement pay a $6-per-carton fee to an escrow fund. The idea was to stop nonparticipating companies from undercutting companies making the settlement payments.

So the so called “Progressives” engage in backroom deals ensuring the monopoly held by the evil “Big Tobacco” companies. In order to get their share of the pie, and the anti-smoking groups join in to ensure their continued funding, how altruistic.  But, but it’s for the poor.

Well not really, it’s all about Nanny Statism and Control hence the name “Tobacco Control”  The draconian taxes imposed on tobacco hit’s the poorest among us the most.

New York’s highest-in-the-nation cigarette taxes are failing to drive down smoking rates; instead, they’re just putting a heavy extra burden on poor New Yorkers. A new study funded by the state’s Department of Health confirms these ugly facts.

Yes, the public-health establishment insists that every hike in cigarette taxes results in fewer people smoking. But it’s not true: Extensive research shows that high “butt taxes” are a major public-health mistake that punishes the poor without reducing smoking. . . .

The state-funded study found that cigarette taxes hurt poorest smokers the most — that is, they’re “regressive,” the term economists use to describe a tax that hits harder on lower-income folks.

For this study, Research Triangle Institute researchers surveyed more than 13,000 people (focused on New York, but with a national sample as well) to investigate the impact of high cigarette taxes on different income levels. They found that low-income smokers (individuals in families making less than $30,000 a year) spent an average of 23.6 percent of annual family income on cigarettes, way up from 11.6 percent in 2004.

Actions speak louder then words, so Stanton, who is in bed with “Big Tobacco”?

Update Feb 16 2013

Taxpayers paid for this attack on the TEA Party, who’s in power?

As for the taxpayer funding, he acknowledged that NIH and NCI might not have known the subject matter. 

But he asked: “Which is worse? That you simply give taxpayer dollars to people and say, ‘hey study whatever you want … or (say) ‘Oh so you’re going to go after people who oppose the president’s agenda?’ … ‘That’s good.'”