Nick Naylor, master lobbyist for Big Tobacco in the just-released film Thank You For Smoking, is adept at making lemonade out of lemons. His creativity in twisting logic and reality is breathtaking -- but that may be the essence of the lobbyist's job.

Tony Soprano (of the HBO mega-series The Sopranos) is a mobster whose stock in trade is intimidation and murder. Nick Naylor, a character in the just-released movie Thank You For Smoking (based on Chris Buckley's 1994 novel), peddles the addictive killer, cigarettes. He blithely sells his product to any and all comers -- age is not a factor in his business. Indeed, in a key scene, Naylor asserted that he would buy his own son cigarettes at age eighteen, if the boy so chose.

One odd thing about the film Thank You for Smoking is the ironic omission of visible cigarette smoking. The ostensible hazards presented for consideration -- alcohol, firearms, cell phones, oil, and fatty foods -- subtly establish the film's risk-filled milieu, yet we never witness an actor smoke cigarettes.

When anti-smoking Sen. Ortolan Finistirre (presumably D-VT) challenges tobacco industry public relations "hero" Nick Naylor, in the film Thank You for Smoking, about the need for a skull and crossbones warning on cigarette boxes, Naylor snipes back that if the senator's goal were really to protect the public health, he'd be trying to put the same warning on artery-clogging cheddar cheese. "The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!" shouts the indignant, self-righteous senator.

This piece originally appeared March 16, 2006 in the Washington Times:
Judging from recent media coverage, soda is quickly gaining on cigarettes for the title of No. 1 Public Health Threat.

A National Review online roundtable about bird flu included this comment from ACSH's Dr. Whelan.

A recent study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the results of which implicated coffee drinking in the causation of heart attacks.

This article appeared in the Washington Legal Foundation's March 10, 2006 Legal Opinion Letter (Vol. 16, No. 7).

A new bill (HR 4167) currently wending its way through Congress has the potential to protect consumers from the current hodgepodge of irrational safety warnings on foods. Under the bill, which has been passed by the House of Representatives, states would need FDA approval for labeling requirements that differ from federal standards. The bill mandates uniform food safety labels nationwide.

Since late 2003, birds in over a dozen nations in Asia and at least seven nations in Europe have been struck by H5N1 "avian influenza" or "bird flu." Since 2003, there have been 175 confirmed cases of H5N1 transmission from birds to humans in Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Turkey, Iraq, and Vietnam.