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GATLINBURLIER
TOBACCONIST
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Mountain Mall
611 Parkway - D Level
Gatlinburg TN 37738
800.862.2204
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Editor:
"Give me liberty or give me death." "I don't necessarily agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." So much for Great American Quotes if Doctors (NAMES DELETED) and Marci ran the country. They would like to rewrite history to read, "If Marci doesn't agree with what you are saying, then even if it takes your death, we will prevent you from saying it."
During this period of social protest I have had the pleasure of talking with other Great Americans like the good doctors and Marci. I have even had the pleasure of talking to some who had the audacity to publicly wish me death, merely because I would like to see both sides of an issue debated.
The fact that my story has been suppressed by some in the media has only convinced me that I was right to stage this protest to prove how undemocratic America has become in regard to this issue.
The way in which the data on smoking have been collected leads to the conclusion in the public's mind that smoking is the cause of all social health ills. Yet while smoking has decreased the amount of lung cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer has skyrocketed. Rather than advising the public about the real dangers that they face from their environmental and personal life styles, as well as their own eating habits, it has become easy for the medical profession to focus upon one issue, smoking, to conceal its ignorance on other real causes for the increases in illness.
Given that there are many more cases of oral cancer than can be attributed to smoking and tobacco and an ever-increasing rate of cancers among non smokers, I am perplexed by the statistical antics that continuously lead the medical profession back to the conclusion that smoking is the cause of all ills. The real cost of this ignorant view point is that the causes of these increasing diseases will be left undiscovered and the attempts at prevention will be wasted as the medical profession contents itself to look at only this one risk factor.
The dietary and genetic factors of disease, as well as an understanding of the environmental factors will someday eventually become more important after tobacco and smoking are gone, yet the rate of cancer cases still continues to grow. Still I can imagine even a hundred years after the last tad of tobacco has been consumed that there will be some who will be attributing the growth in disease to the fact that an ancestor of patients once knew someone who had used tobacco.
The ban on free speech and advertising has impeded the flow of correct information about smoking and tobacco. The restrictions on advertising and speech have deprived America of any real knowledge about the product that they consume. As in all consumables there are good products and less good products. Because of the one-sided debate, facts such as the one on page 92 of Public Health Service publication no. 1103 (The Surgeon General's Report) which states, "Pipe smokers who inhale live just as long as nonsmokers. Pipe smokers who don't inhale live longer than nonsmokers," are lost as are the reasons why. In truth, many products consumed by smokers are not made from pure leaf tobacco in that they may contain reconstituted sheet tobacco and other fillers.
Since my store opened in 1978 it has aided over 18,000 individuals quit smoking cigarettes and helped 9,000 quit smoking all toPOSTher. The package of our pure tobacco cigarettes that my company produced for 10 years advised individuals of the contents of other brands and advised people to stop smoking if they could. For the record I, myself, am a non-smoker and non-drinker and have for many years championed attempts to bring more truth about product contents to the public.
In the letters which spoke against my right to speak there seemed to be then implication that if it were an issue, other than tobacco, it would be all right for me to express my views. Evidently, the lack of objection to the various guests of the Donahue Show and other talk shows would constitute an acknowledgment by my detractors that these guests have a right to a forum at the national podium. From these two statements I feel that it might be safe to assume that Marci and the good doctors would, excluding my right to speak, fight to the death to defend the rights of the American Nazi Party, the Skinheads, The Klu Klux Klan and all manner of societal and sexual deviants regularly given voice by these shows.
Sincerely,
Ira T. Lapides
Gatlinburg
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611 Parkway - D Level
Gatlinburg TN 37738
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