News Digest May 17, 2012

Coffee

It’s healthy, it’s healthy not, it’s healthy, it’s healthy not, it’s healthy…according to this umpteenth study on the issue:   

NIHstudy finds that coffee drinkers have lower risk of death

  

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Efforts by anti-smoking campaigners to reinstate a smoking ban in small cafes and bars failed on Wednesday when judges in The Hague ruled the law does allow exceptions.

In theNetherlands customers can continue to smoke in small bars, judges rule

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It Officially Costs More To Be Overweight Than A Smoker In America

So let’s fix that with yet more government control and taxation!  Hate to tell you we told you so. 

‘Fat tax’ would have to be a whopper to work, study says

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All plain cigarette packaging as adopted in Australia and under consultation in the UK will accomplish is to make tobacco more affordable since with nothing else to stand out except their name in identical fonts, the only way the tobacco companies would be able to compete with each other is through prices.  Case in point:

BAT launches budget Tobacco brand in Australia row

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Experts are surprised that the number of asthma sufferers continues to rise while the number of smokers falls.  Perhaps they should start looking elsewhere for the solution to the problem as some researchers have found that being subjected to smoke prevents allergies by making the immune system stronger. 

Number of Asthma Sufferers Sky-Rockets; Doctors are Puzzled

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It is frequently claimed that consumers of ‘unhealthy’ products place an excessive burden on public services and that this justifies additional taxation.  This is not true according to a report from The Adam Smith Institute: 

The Wages of Sin Taxes: The True Cost of Taxing Alcohol, Tobacco and Other "Vices"

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‘’ To be sure, obesity is a public health problem that should be addressed with scientific discipline. Instead, as the current campaign illustrates, activists are politicizing obesity -- using it as a vehicle to try to remake the American way of life.’’

Opinion: Obesity forecast is overblown

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Evidence based public health policy?  Yeah right! 

Government-Funded Medical Research Is Hazardous to Your Health

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California food police gone wild: LA County health enforcers conduct door-to-door raw milkconfiscation operations

‘’ In a bombshell revelation of the depth of the food police state that now exists in LA County, California, NaturalNews has learned that the LA County health department has unleashed door-to-door raw milk confiscation teams to threaten and intimidate raw dairy customers into surrendering raw milk products they legally purchased and own.’’

NEWS DIGEST MAY 6, 2012

High school students do not appreciate in the least that the Ontario Ministry of Education limited their choices of food in the school cafeteria.  Some now leave their school to eat elsewhere where they can choose what they want causing losses of revenue to the school cafeteria.  When will governments learn that you can drive a horse to water but you cannot make it drink?   

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An excellent column in the Globe & Mail about how we are being manipulated and medicated for profit.  

Isanybody normal any more?

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Another good opinion piece about how insecure and fearful of living (or is it of death?) some of us now are.   

TheLand of the Free, and the Home of the Neurotic

''Ontario, in particular, has gone crazy in terms of safety''

Analysis:Playgrounds without swings just aren’t playgrounds

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It doesn't matter how many people still smoke and how many kids they tell us are starting every day, the neo-prohibitionists will never give research for a safer cigarette the time of day. Who is more guilty, those who stifle all progress towards a safer product or those who attempt to better a product for which there is still a considerable demand and for which there will always be a supply even if they succeed to put the legitimate tobacco industry out of business.  

ControversialChina Tobacco Research Withdrawn from Prize Competition

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The following video is more than just a discussion about plain tobacco packaging which is presently being debated in the UK. It's a must watch to discover or rediscover many of the shenanigans in tobacco control.