Parts excerpted from Anchorage Daily News, November 26, 2003

HOMER, AK — A local businessman who had just finished testifying against a proposed smokefree ordinance collapsed with a heart attack in the council chambers and could not be revived.

Robert Keys, a former smoker, told a packed city council meeting that he sat at a table of smokers every morning for coffee and conversation at a local restaurant without trouble. “It hasn’t bothered my health any,” Keys testified. In fact Keys, a veteran, said he’d just had an echocardiogram about six weeks ago at the hospital at Elmendorf Air Force Base. “They told me I had the heart of a very young person. So I think all this baloney about tobacco smoke affecting people’s health is just that. Baloney.”

Keys returned to his seat in the council chambers. Less than five minutes later, gasping noises from Keys interrupted further testimony. The room was cleared and emergency help summoned.

Among those at the meeting were the city fire chief, head EMT, and a doctor. Attempts to resuscitate Keys en route to the hospital were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest in the emergency room at South Peninsula Hospital, Homer Fire Chief Bob Painter said.

The council meeting was recessed until next week.

Keys told the council he had started smoking when he was 8 and quit when he was 35. Keys was active in local government affairs. Several years ago, he ran unsuccessfully for the city council.

“Bob actively voiced his concerns for city government over the years. He was strong in his beliefs,” said Mayor Jack Cushing, who was chairing the meeting.

The council recessed Monday before it ever got around to introducing the controversial smokefree ordinance. Cushing estimated that at least 30 people had come to testify about the measure. It is scheduled to be taken up with other council business when the meeting resumes on Monday.

“It’s a shocking, horrible tragedy,” said Annette Marley, who attended Monday’s meeting for the Homer Alliance for Fresh Air. “We can’t make a causal relationship between his being around smokers and his death, but we know you have a 30 percent higher risk of dying of chronic heart disease if you’re a nonsmoker exposed to smoke in the workplace.”

echoing the strains of the late leni riefenstahl’s defense of triumph of the will and olympia, isaac mizrahi (whose contribution to fashion design is far more insignifcant than riefenstahl’s contribution to film) was recently quoted as saying,

“If a designer or any artist takes funding from tobacco companies, I admire them. Shouldn’t art be more important than policy?” wsj, 15 sept 03, b1

well, the germans have left the americans out in the cold by caving to EU pressure to sign and ratify the FCTC.

would it be wrong to say, “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah”?

two brown students have opened an after-hours hookah bar at a popular off-campus eatery. to do so, they sought advice from brown’s entrepreneurship program and are now competing for a $15k program grant.

it’s always nice to see people strike out on their own and find success. given the recent media reports of the rising appeal of hookah bars nationwide, it’s likely that “smoky waters hookah bar” will do well, if the principals nurture the business properly.

several students are less than happy about the venture, while others have commenced howling about personal liberties.

smoking is an entirely legal, “adult” pastime. huge corporations make billions every year peddling the weed that is known to cause several types of cancer, contribute to heart disease and hypertension, and so on and so forth. it’s enough of a health problem that the CDC has a whole office devoted to smoking and health. kills about four hundred thousand americans every year, costs the nation billions in healthcare.

but, like i said, it’s entirely legal, so why shouldn’t two bright young men make money exploiting the desires of their insecure classmates to be hip and cool at the expense of their health, just like the multinationals do?

on wednesday, april 30, the white house press briefing featured the following exchange:

EXCERPT
Q A different topic. The tobacco treaty at the U.N., the U.S. wants
some changes to it that critics say will weaken it significantly.
What’s the administration’s —

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, this is this is — if ever there was an issue involving standard language in treaties, this is it. We wanted to be a signatory to this treaty. We have made clear that we want to sign it, we want to ratify it. The language here deals with what’s called the reservations clause, which is a standard procedure in treaties. And this reservation — the reservation clause simply prohibits signatories from making reservations of sections of the treaty. Reservations is a standard part of treaties. So you really haven’t seen anything different in our approach to this treaty. It is a treaty we want to sign, we want to ratify with the standard language.

“standard language” my ass.

nick sent me this one. i have no idea where it’s from — anyone know, and i’ll put a link to it.

my sources tell me that gilberto gil, MPB singer and now brasil’s minister of culture, will be performing in lima, peru next month — sponsored by the british american tobacco company.

hmmm. so many problems with this one (for one, BAT just bought out the peruvian national tobacco company, and has managed to suppress most movement towards effective tobacco control legislation in the country; for another, since the transition to lula, brasil has been caving to tobacco industry pressure on several fronts).

so many problems, in fact, that they outweigh the coolness factor of having a government minister with “discography” as a section of his CV.

“We will support FDA regulations that are not prohibition in disguise,” said Philip Morris’ Farlow. “We would believe and advocate that the tobacco company would be heavily involved in developing FDA regulation.”

because industry involvement in regulation is a good thing. especially the tobacco industry, which has such a good record for being trustworthy and responsible. riiiiiight. move along, nothing to see here. move along.

(Congress Tackles Tobacco Buyout; Growers, Who Have Seen Quotas Cut In Half In Recent Years, Want A Buyout This Year.
Greensboro News Record, 20 April 03)

saturday’s nyt carried a good editorial about the framework convention on tobacco control (the text that the US objects to is online here in english (acrobat reader needed), and in the other five official UN languages if you hunt around). for those of you who are nyt-access impaired, i’m including it here.

if anyone’s interested, here’s a nice article from the economist on what i was doing for the last two weeks in february.