Sent on behalf of Norma Ritter [log in to unmask], whose 
computer is not cooperating....

*******quoting Norma from Sun 15 Jan 2006 21:54:23 - 0500  Subject: 2nd try: 
my reply to "Breast-feeding wars go into overdrive"*****

I am afraid that the first time I sent this out, those who receive a digest 
form of Lactnet got it in gobbledygook :(  My reply was a spoof on the 
original article, which can be found at 
http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm.  Pat Young - please 
note that I corrected the spelling error <G>  THAT will teach me to rely on 
spell-check!

Norma

(Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be 
reached by e-mail at [log in to unmask])

My reply to "Breast-feeding wars go into overdrive," by BETSY HART 29-DEC-05 
http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm

Anti-Smoking Wars Go Into Overdrive

Leave it to the Federal Government to get on the anti-tobacco platform.

The legislature has banned - yes banned - hospitals throughout the nation 
from giving out free samples of cigarettes, provided by tobacco companies, 
to patients.

Typically, a patient, before she leaves the hospital, will get an allotment 
of cigarettes with coupons for more.  (The stufff is really expensive.)  The 
ostensible goal in banning the giveaways is to "encourage" the practice of 
healthy lungs, versus giving him the much-despised even occasional ciggie.

What a crummy way to start the new year.

For the uninitiated, there are all sorts of "debates" in elite cultural 
circles about zero tobacco use versus cigarettes, and to what extent people 
should be encouraged to the former.  And so, for instance, every few years 
the debate over a person's right to publicly smoke makes national news.

My argument on that score, which typically ruffles a lot of feathers, is 
that if a person is discreet - as I was when I occasionally smoked - no one 
needs to know and there doesn't need to be an argument in the first place. 
What I do object to is the "I am woman watch me not smoke" demonstrations 
some mothers seem to insist my children and I witness in wholly 
inappropriate places.

But back to the subject at hand.

These tobacco debates have taken on ridiculously huge philosophical and 
political importance, when it should just come down to this:  Everybody 
knows that not smoking is physically healthier in all sorts of ways than 
puffing away on a ciggie.  We also know that some people who smoke do...just 
fine.  And some people, for a host of reasons, choose to, or have to, smoke.

That should be their prerogative.  But instead it is an absolute no-no 
according to some of the "experts."  That's when the no-smoking zealots, all 
the national organizations and advocates who lobby for and can actually 
accomplish an amazing thing like having the federal government ban the free 
distribution of an expensive product to needy patients (as well as wealthy 
ones) step in.  These folks are able to make even those who only 
occcasinoally smoke feel like a complete loser.  And that's what I object 
to.

For the longest time I couldn't figure out what the angle was.  Yes, not 
smoking is best, but so is, for instance, a situation where people have NO 
drug addictions or eat nutritious foods.  Such commitments will have a lot 
longer and more important and positive impact on the nation than avoiding 
tobacco.  But we don't hear a peep about such things from many of the same 
folks on the no-smoking zealotry bandwagon.  Perhaps one factor is that 
smoking has become a palliative for guilty people who choose to engage in 
other health-risk behaviours.  (Magazines are rife with information and 
expensive products for those who choose to behave responsibly.)  Maybe it 
has something to do with the reality that cigarettes are expensive and 
probably profitable, and the fact that corporations make money on feeding 
the tobacco habit (inexplicably) drives some people nuts.

But more and more I've come to think we so desperately want to believe, 
literally, there is some formula, preferably a comparatively easy one, for 
making our nation better, stronger, faster.  Some pill, some expert advice, 
some technique, some guarantee, some answer to this business of living a 
long and healthy life.  And so we've glommed onto tobacco-avoidance as the 
national Rosetta stone of ensuring health.

Wouldn't it be nice if it were that easy?  Wouldn't it kind of let us off 
the hook?

We've come a long way since the time when my mother, like the other moms she 
knew, sometimes rolled her own cigarettes.

OK, how well we survived that whole thing may still be in question.  But, 
yes, we know a lot more today about how tobacco causes cancers.  But if the 
anti-smoking wars and the zealots who lead them are any indication that we 
now trust people less - or, worse, value their role less - when it comes to 
making the right decisions, then we haven't come so far after all,

****************end of Norma's message*********

And from Sara again...
As I wrote to Norma, this reminded me of the great parody written by Tess 
Parriot (an IBCLC down the road from me in Omaha, NE) a few years ago which 
can be found at http://www.geocities.com/heartlandalliance/satire.html.  It 
is entitled "A Satire on 'Gift' Bags from Hospitals."

Sara Dodder Furr, MA, LLLL, IBCLC
Lincoln, Nebraska 

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