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The Truth at last.

For 22 days the hunger strike was one of Americas best kept secrets because of the anti- smoking sentiment and liberal bias of the electronic press, that being that only liberals are guaranteed the right of free speech.

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The hunger strike was undertaken as way to unlock the Cigarette Gate© which blocked the public form knowing the difference between cigarettes and tobacco. Yet once begun, the struggle became more of an issue over free speech and the result of the fact that after more than 15 years of attempting to stir fair public debate on the smoking issue and despite having collect tens of thousands of signatures asking for such debate nothing but form letters had been received.

The response to the letter sent to Donahue which preceded the letter which threatened the hunger strike met only with excuses for not answering the mass of communications sent previously. There seemed to be little possibility of POSTting a fair hearing thus the letter threatening the hunger strike was sent. The arrogant nature of the Donahue response to this letter clearly illustrated that there was no free speech when it came to the rights of smokers. At this point the hunger strike became a matter of free speech and resulted only after years of writing letters in defence of the difference between cigarettes and tobacco which met with only stall after stall from those whom he petitioned. The stone wall continued as even his request after the hunger strike for reconsideration and reconciliation also went ignored.

Despite a deluge of faxes, calls and letters of support for Dr. Lapides from his community, renown talk show hosts like Springer, Geraldo, Oprah, and Larry King, who in defence for their lewd tabloid approach to programming publicly profess to give anyone a chance to speak, privately did all that they could do to keep the truth about the difference between tobacco and cigarettes from the public and to suppress the news about the hunger strike.

The fact that the concentration of ownership of the media has given a few the ability to impose national censorship was never clearer. One of the National Bureau Vice Presidents for the Associated Press expressed his regret that he would not put the story on the AP wire because he had to back up the decisions made by his Knoxville reporter, regardless of the reporter's bias.

This reporter along with his counter part at the Knoxville News Sentinel conspired to keep the news of the hunger strike from gaining national attention, since they were both unashamedly anti-smoking. It worries me that they got to decide for America what it should hear, though neither impressed me as having the capacity of understanding the arguments or implications of the chemical issues involved with my struggle. Since both in my opinion had obviously risen to their positions as entitlements because of their conditions, I was not surprised by their astonished negative response to my question as to whether they would censure the "physically challenged" or "women" if they personally (though rather unlikely) held such blind bigotry against those groups.

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