Taste of the yesterday

Every society has its own traditions, customs and civilizations which vanished or replaced with the passage of time. Food culture and taste have no exceptions. The taste of yesterday foods has been either vanished completely or replaced with new foods due to change in manufacturing methods and techniques and eating habits of new generations. The taste of yesterday was not merely a taste but it has many facets of culture and traditions. The generation who witnessed these traditions and taste has also been replaced by new generations. However we can see still some food items in towns and villages of Pakistan.

Here are some food items which tastes are still in the memories of old generation of Pakistani society.

Laddo peethiyan

An all season item made of gramme flour, salt and chilli fried in mustard oil were tasty, easily digestive and chewable by young and old. Served with tamarind sauce and sliced radish added charm to the taste. These were sold by vendors in luke-warm form under a coal stove. Vendors are now rarely seen selling this item.

Buntay wali Bottle

It was a popular summer season soft drink. It consisted of lemonated carbonated water served in pilled bottles chilled in icy water. Its opening sound with a thumb was a great amusement for children. The thick glass made bottles are no more seen.

Baqar Khani

It was mixture of flour churred 

in pure butter, milk and baked

 in oven to give it a brownish 

look. These were taken with

 sweetened milk or saltish 

Kashmiri tea as a breakfast dish.

Burf wala Golla

Made of crushed ice, sugar syrup and mixed with different edible colors was an eager likeness of children. These were available in rectangular shape pierced on small wooden sticks. Ice-cream has now taken its place to a greater extent.

Das and Lounchirray

Das is a form of Kultcha, baked of fermented flour and lounchirras made of cooked gramme flour, served with pickles and green chilli was a popular breakfast food of rich and poor. These were sold hand to hand in the early morning hours. A peculiar traditional dish served in wedding ceremonies as a breakfast.

Fresh Soft Gatta

Prepared with flour, sugar and elettaria cardamom. It was easily shapeable, full of fragrance and was children’s most favorite item because it could be easily wrapped on small sticks to make edible toys on children’s demand. Vendors carried it wrapped on a portable bamboo along their shoulder.

 

Gatta Elleichi Wala

Prepared with flour, elettaria cardamom and sugar was once a favorite sweet meat of Pakistan. It was crisp, sweet and full of fragrance. The melodic voice of vendors during early wintry nights in streets and enclaves is no more heard.

Golla Kababs

A favorite dish liked by all. These were made of minced beef grinded with fresh onions, salt, pepper and several traditional masalas. This package was then made into five to six small balls and were pierced on iron bars being wrapped with thread and were baked on burnt-out coal fire. Specially a traditional dish of Lahorites and Karachites.

Khajla and Pheuonee

Khajla made of two layers of churred flour milk and butter having in between a third layer of cooked coarsely ground flour with a filling of cooked halwa with different dried fruit like almonds, coconut and dried small grapes. Pheuonees were taken with Kashmiri tea or hot milk. These items were sold like hot cakes during festivals like Ramdan, Eid, Miraj Sharif and were also served in marriage parties.

Lahori Porra

Delicious and tasty 

Lahori Porra made of 

churred flour, milk,

 pure butter and fried in

 pure butter oil was a 

favorite breakfast item 

particularly when taken 

by soaking it in saltish 

Kashmiri tea. Now

bread and butter have

taken its place but it 

had its own taste.

Maroonda

The sweet, tasty and easily chewable Maroonda made of rice and brown sugar being handy and light in weight, no doubt, was liked in all walks of life. It was common selling item, now rarely seen in urban areas.

Qatlumma

Made of white flour, pure butter covered with a thin layer of spices, flour of gramme, dried seeds of sour pomegranate and fried in oil was an essential festival food was item like Eid, Urs, and other seasonal Mellas. Its orangish red colour gave a quenching look.

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Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, the great Urdu and Persian poet

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, the great Urdu and Persian poet of the subcontinent, was born in Agra on December 27, 1797. His father and forefathers were Seljuk Turk soldiers of fortune who sought employment in the armies of princes. His father married into a distinguished and prosperous Agra family but died when Ghalib was just five. Ghalib spent most of his childhood in his maternal grandparents' home and received education in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, logic and philosophy. He started writing in Urdu at a very young age and in Persian when he was 11. He grew up into a handsome youth, married in his teens, and had several children, none of whom survived too long.

His was born forty years after the battle of Plassey, which gave the first clear signal of the control of British power over India, and died on February 15, 1869, twelve years after the turmoil of 1857, which ended with the removal of the last Mughal Emperor by the British. As such, Ghalib lived and witnessed the fall of the Mughal period in our cultural histo­ry

Ghalib's ancestors had migrated from Central Asia to the subconti­nent in the middle of the 18th cen­tury. Although he lived in Delhi where the language of his contem­poraries was Urdu and he himself was a great Urdu poet, such was his love and respect for Persian, the language of his ancestors, that he wrote most of his poetry and prose in that language.

In this respect, Ghalib was a liter­ary offspring of those great men of letters who had started migrat­ing to the subcontinent from the eleventh century and had estab­lished a tradition of Persian poetry and prose under the patronage of Muslim kings and nobles, some of whom Ghalib considered as his models. In fact, Ghalib's pupil and his first biographer,Altaf Hussain  Hali, has lamented that Ghalib did not really belong to the times he lived in; he should have been born a couple of centuries earlier because he deserved to be a court poet for emperor  Akbar or Jehangir.

Be that as it may, Ghalib was a true representative — and the only one without a rival — of the two layers of the central tradition of our culture in the last phase of the Mughal period; the culture of the social elite with Persian as its liter­ary language and the culture of the common city residents with Urdu as their language. Ghalib himself belonged to the social elite, and although he took great pride in his Persian poetry and prose, Urdu was his language, and he was a great poet of Urdu, in fact generally considered the greatest.

It is this representative character of Ghalib as a poet which has fascinated our critical opinion during the last hundred years. It is a mea­sure of Ghalib's greatness that he has not only aroused the interest of the critical opinion, which, needless to say, represents the sophisticated literary elite, but also that of the uninitiated common man who admires him and loves and quotes him whenever he can without  perhaps  having read or understood him thoroughly.

Now the question is what are the factors responsible for the vast appeal of Ghalib's poetry for the generations that followed him as against the generation to which he belonged?

The answer to this question entails an understanding of the salient features of the classical tradition of the Urdu poetry prior to Ghalib and the singular contribution made to it by Ghahb's individual talent.

The most outstanding aspect of our classical poetry was that it reflected a sensibility developed by a well-established culture with a set of generally accepted values and norms. It followed a pattern, in as  much as the classical Urdu poets had a clearly defined "idea of the poetic" which more or less determined the nature and scope of thoughts and feelings considered suitable and worthy    of  poetic treatment.  A poet did have his individual characteristic as a practitioner of the art but what he expressed in his poetry were not his personal and individualistic experiences. These experiences had a direct hearing on relationship with the experiences of the community because he shared and believed in the community's values and norms.

The commonality of interests between the poet and his community created such a sense of kinship between them that the poet became a true representative of society. He gave voice to the thoughts and feelings of the collective consciousness rather than his own within the limits placed by the prevalent "idea of the poetic". He accepted these limits and did not crave for the freedom to transgress them and enter into his own private and personal world and dig out the unusual, the original and the fanciful. His main concern as a poet was to pick up the commonplace and the oft-repeated and express it in a manner which was new and refreshing. As such the criterion of quality in our classical poetry was skill of expression, the skill to give poetic form to a given content.

These were some of the salient features of the classical Ghazal poetry prior to Ghalib. It is in the context of this literary tradition that one has to see the change that Ghalib brought to bear on it. His voice, so deep and resounding, seems to rise from a new and different horizon. It was the voice of a poet who thought and felt differently.

Ghalib had a strong personality and he was very conscious of it. He was also conscious of the extra-ordinary creative gift nature had bestowed on him. This conscious-ness was responsible for Ghahb's urge to express himself in a manner distinctly his own. He had the weight of tradition behind him and yet he stood out as in individual in his own right.

Ghalib deviated from the tradition of Urdu poets of giving expression to the collective thoughts and feelings of the community and instead gave expression to the thoughts and feelings of his individual personality. In this respect, he was, in the history of Urdu poetry, perhaps the first Romantic in the sense of the English Romantic poets, although he had traces of the English Metaphysical poets also, particularly in his use of the self-satisfaction.

The classical Urdu poets were concerned with the experiences of the collective consciousness; Ghalib, on the other hand, was concerned with the experiences of his individual consciousness. In the classical tradition the worth of a poetic experience is judged in its relationship to the value system of the community. In the Romantic tradition, it is judged in its relation-ship to the vision of the individual poet.

Thus it is only in Ghalib that we see for the first time in Urdu poetry, an interaction between tradition and individual talent. He did not defy tradition altogether and yet he carved out a new and different path for himself. There is, no doubt, an element of the traditional in his poetry, although his individual stamp is apparent in the treatment of the subject there also, but his main achievement is that he spoke like an individual and spoke in an authentic voice.

As a result, Ghalib discovered new realms of thought and feeling and gave new dimensions to the ones already discovered. He added new shades of meanings to words so much so that a study of his poetry becomes a veritable exercise in appreciating meanings of meanings. What he says is, of course, significant but equally significant is what he leaves unsaid. He creates a sense of the infinite while dealing with the finite.

Ghalib was acutely conscious of the decay and order and lifestyle that he knew. This is reflected in the feelings of melancholy in Ghalib's poetry. He was not at peace with himself, nor indeed with the world around him. Out of day and night, something which might not be exactly called a joy, but which was certainly enough to live by, had indeed taken flight. No wonder Ghalib ceased to be a serious poet as the age he represented came to an end in 1857. He only wrote some pieces of poetry in the remaining twelve years of his life.

This is indeed significant. Ghalib ,the poet, became Ghalib, the letter ,writer in Urdu. He spoke, but spoke in a different manner. His Urdu letters, which he wrote to his friends and pupils, are indeed contemporary history. They contain reports of actual incidents as well as pictures of destruction in Delhi. They also reveal with much sadness the suffering of a man who saw the sarcastic away of something which gave him nourishment while it lasted.

The "still, sad music" of Ghalib's soul expressing itself "in the other harmony of prose" represents not only his personal mood but in fact the mood and temper of a whole generation. In his letters, Ghalib summons up remembrance of things past and gives vent to his feelings of loneliness and melancholy. He recalls with a feeling of nostalgia his old friends and associates and their happy meetings; he talks about the familiar sights and scenes of the Delhi which was no more. He tells the tales of desolation and what it had meant to him and others in a whispered voice. He longed for the joy of living, which he once had, in spite of his personal hardships, in the company of his dear ones in the Delhi of his memories. He complains about the rain and the drought and his own physical ailments. But in all this, his innate sense of liveliness never misses a chance to delight in the lighter side of life, — flashes of his typical wit and humour brighten up the text of the letters whatever the subject matter.

          Ghalib's zest for life, which he kept up in spite of the series of unfulfilled wishes and dreams, now shows itself in his interest in basic human associations and in common events of day to day life. It is the human element in Ghalib's letters which distinguishes them from the vast literature of letters of eminent writers. There is also the other element of an acceptance of life, which is now clearly distinct. Ghalib seems to have developed a detached and objective attitude towards things, even towards him-self. At one place he says, he has become a spectator of his own self which he now imagines as some-thing outside his being. It is because of this attitude that one finds a kind of restraint in his lamentations. He is trying, even in his agony, to be at peace with him-self and with the world around him.

Ghalib's world, in his poetry and prose, is a very different world and one realizes how different it is only when one enters it after a passage through the world of his predecessors. It is a world inhabited by intensely human experiences of a lively and rich personality with a new and refreshing mode of thought and feeling. Ghalib was conscious of his extraordinary personality; but he had the breadth of vision and a catholicity of outlook which enabled him to see far beyond himself

He had a truly sensitive, free and open mind ready to perceive and absorb. That is why, while Ghalib always remained Ghalib, he could also be you and me and many others. He was not devoted to a particular view of life nor did he make an attempt to systematize his thinking. He was as large as life, and had a real zest for it and a rare insight into affairs. In short, Ghalib's world is a world which is vast and varied and immensely interesting. 

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to All; The Rest of the Story Will Return on Monday, January 7

Pakistani Girls Mobile Numbers

Searching mobile numbers of Pakistani girls is  a very popular search among young generations. Some may be successful to find one real number of a GIRL but most of them failed in this try. I admit this is not true for all but many young boys are crazy to find girls mobile numbers. I am wondered to see that when I searched "Pakistani Girls Mobile Number" (honestly it was my first time) on a popular search engine, there were more than 700 thousands webpages as result. In the same time, when I make research via a Keyword Tool, I found that about 73 thousand people searches exactly this term only on a single search engine while many others used different search engines and different search terms e.g. Pakistani Girls Mobile Numbers List and Pakistani Girls Number etc. While there are many others who searches for mobile numbers of girls of their own cities e.g. Islamabad Girls Mobile Numbers, Karachi Girls Mobile Numbers, Peshawar Girls....., Gujranwala Girls, Lahore Girls, Multan Girls, Sargodha Girls, Faisalabad Girls, Dera Ghazi Khan(D.G.Khan) Girls,Dera Ismail Khan(D.I.Khan) Girls, Hyderabad Girls etc. So, if you sum up all these individual monthly searches it will become a very big number.

Websites with Pakistani Girls Mobile Numbers 

There are many websites that are exploiting young generation by making absolutely wrong claims that they have a large numbers of girls' mobile numbers. Usually these numbers are fake and if any website has real numbers those may be collected through illegal sources like Easy Load Shops, mobile service centers, public toilets etc. Some evil minded people also put numbers of their ex. girl friends or numbers of their rivals just to tease them. Social Media Websites are another source of spreading personal information as some websites ask his users to put his mobile phone number but user is mostly unaware that how to use this number make private. These numbers are more than 95% fake and false and 5% is of those which are collected by illegal sources. These illegally collected numbers available on these websites have destroyed the life of innocent Pakistani girls.

Low cost Call and SMS Packages

Amazingly low cost call and SMS and unlimited daily and hourly packages are very encouraging and supportive for bad and evil minded boys. These packages give them liberty to make unlimited calls and send unlimited messages. If they don't have or can't approach a mobile number of a girl then they start making wrong phone call and messaging  on anonymous number in thrust of a girl mobile number. Once they find a suitable mobile number after several attempts, they offer friendship and compel  girls to make friendship with them. Most of the boys tell fake name , fake status and fake location to the girls and blackmail the innocents girls.

Earning Tool.

Some evil genius people use this technique as tool to earn money. Some boys have girls like voice and make fool to crazy boys and get easy load daily just for talking some time. Some boys also use their girls friends to make fool and earn money from crazy guys. In big cities peoples hire call girls having nice voice to rob the people. Sometime girls having nice voice but having ugly and  unattractive features put their numbers on websites to get easy load from crazy guys

Conclusion

It is very pity that Pakistani youth which has immense potential to deliver in every field of life is busy in such stupid, time wasting and nonsense activities. It is nothing but waste of time. The mobile friendship result is always detrimental and harmful.

Instead of wasting time in such fruitless and harmful activities please focus on your studies and become a successful person in your life  so you can find  and get your ideal  life partner in a decent way.

In Ironic Twist, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Argues that Some Cigarettes Convey Reduced Risk, While Tobacco Companies Emphasize that All Cigarettes are Equally Hazardous

It used to be that the cigarette companies tried to convince the public that their brand - which was slightly different from other brands on the market - was safer than those other brands. Anti-smoking groups pounced on the tobacco companies, arguing that no cigarette was safer than any other cigarette, even though cigarettes differ in terms of ingredients, additives, flavorings, and smoke constituents.

In 1998, Philip Morris introduced Accord, a cigarette that heated rather than burned tobacco. Because of the absence of combustion, the cytotoxicity of the smoke produced was substantially lower than that of conventional cigarettes. Philip Morris was attacked by the anti-smoking groups, which argued that even though the Accord product was completely different in technology,  it still delivered tobacco-derived smoke and was therefore just as harmful as the company's other products.

That was in 1998.

When Winston advertised that it contains no additives (without making an explicit reduced risk claim), R.J. Reynolds was attacked by the anti-smoking groups, which placed pressure on the FTC. The Commission eventually forced R.J. Reynolds to put a disclaimer on Winston packages and advertisements emphasizing that the lack of additives does not convey any reduction in health risk.

That was in 1999.

The Rest of the Story

In 2012, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is arguing to the FDA that despite very slight differences in product design, brands of cigarettes that are not identical raise substantially different issues of public health. The Campaign is arguing that despite these very minor differences, cigarette brands that are not identical are substantially different in terms of the public health risk that they pose. Thus, the Campaign argues that such products should not be deemed substantially equivalent.

This is the opposite of the position that the Campaign and other anti-smoking groups have traditionally taken. Previously, when faced with drastic differences in product design (Winston had no additives; Accord involved no combustion), the anti-smoking groups argued that despite these drastic differences, the products were substantially equivalent with regards to the public's health.

Now, all of the sudden, even minor differences render cigarettes substantially different in terms of public health risk.

How did it come to be that major differences in cigarette design used to be of no substantial public health consequence, while today, even minor differences are of substantial public health consequence?

Quite simply, the difference is that in 2009, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and other anti-smoking groups were successful in convincing Congress to enact the Tobacco Act, and so those groups are now under pressure to make it seem like the Act is going to accomplish something in terms of public health protection. So those groups are trying to convince the public that by strictly regulating very minor changes in cigarettes, the FDA is providing enormous protection to the public's health.

In other words, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and other anti-smoking groups have reversed their public positions because it is now politically advantageous to make the opposite argument that they made previously.

In an irony of epic proportions, the tobacco companies, in responding to the FDA's proposed guidance on the interpretation of "substantial equivalence," argued that all cigarettes are equally hazardous because all involve the combustion of tobacco and so minor differences in design are not going to render any particular cigarette brand substantially safer than any other brand.

In other words, the tobacco companies adopted the precise argument that the anti-smoking groups used to make.

How ironic that there was a complete, 180-degree reversal in position:

The anti-smoking groups used to insist that even major changes in cigarette design have no appreciable impact on the public health risks of a product. Now, they argue that even minor changes result in substantially different issues of public health risk.

The tobacco companies used to imply that changes in cigarette design rendered a product safer. Now, the companies are telling the truth and acknowledging that minor changes in cigarette design are not going to have any substantial impact on protecting the public's health.


(Note: The arguments provided to the FDA by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the tobacco companies are summarized in the following article, which I used as a source for this post: Greenwold ME [senior consultant to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids]. What standards should FDA apply in ruling on applications for substantial equivalence for tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009? FDLI Food and Drug Policy Forum. Volume 2, Issue 18. September 26, 2012. Washington, DC: The Food and Drug Law Institute.)

European Council Tobacco Product Directive Does Include a Ban on Electronic Cigarettes

According to the official Tobacco Product Directive released yesterday by the European Union, most electronic cigarettes will be banned and not allowed to enter the market unless and until extensive clinical trials are conducted and the products can be approved as pharmaceutical agents. Only electronic cigarettes with less than 2 mg of nicotine will be allowed. Since most electronic cigarette cartridges contain more than 2 mg of nicotine (and many users report that cartridges below this level are ineffective), this amounts to a de facto ban on electronic cigarettes.

The relevant text from the Directive (Article III, Section 18, Number 1) states as follows:

"The following nicotine-containing products may only be placed on the market if they were authorised pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC:
(a) products with a nicotine level exceeding 2 mg per unit, or
(b) products with a nicotine concentration exceeding 4 mg per ml or
(c) products whose intended use results in a mean maximum peak plasma concentration exceeding 4 ng of nicotine per ml."

Since electronic cigarettes were not authorized pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC, they must be taken off the market and cannot enter the market unless they contain less than 2 mg per unit. Keep in mind that most electronic cigarette users start with cartridges that contain in the vicinity of 12 to 20 mg of nicotine. The implication of this policy is that electronic cigarettes will not remain available as an alternative to cigarettes for smokers who want to reduce their health risks.

The Rest of the Story

There are only two goals I can think of that would logically justify this policy of keeping a much safer alternative to cigarettes out of the possible access of smokers:

1. The goal of punishing smokers for having the desire to undertake the "act" of smoking by making sure that option is not available to them other than the real thing; and

2. The goal of  protecting pharmaceutical company profits by insulating them from competition from products that appear to be more effective than anything they currently have on the market.

If the goal were to protect the public's health by doing everything possible to get smokers off of cigarettes, then this policy failed miserably. In fact, it does just the opposite: it helps ensure that smokers will remain on cigarettes and that a significant proportion of them who would otherwise have been able to find an acceptable, safer substitute will no longer be able to do that and will instead remain on cigarettes.

The policy protects cigarette sales and pharmaceutical sales at the expense of the protection of the public's health. Essentially, the policy protects cigarette company and pharmaceutical company profits at the expense of the health of smokers.

The rest of the story is that because of this policy, the substantial decline in cigarette consumption that is predicted for the United States due to the widespread and rapidly growing popularity of electronic cigarettes will not occur in Europe. Now we have to hope that the FDA will not take any further actions to inhibit the ability of smokers to take advantage of this potentially life-saving innovation in the U.S.

Financial Analysts Recognize Value of Electronic Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation/Reduction, While Anti-Smoking Groups Continue to Ignore the Evidence or Pretend that It Doesn't Exist

While many anti-smoking groups and government agencies deny that there is any evidence that electronic cigarettes can be helpful with smoking cessation or reduction, financial analysts now recognize the value of these products, based on overwhelming evidence of their effectiveness: the actual sales data.

In an article in the Winston-Salem Journal, Richard Craver cites financial analysts who predict that electronic cigarettes are so effective smoking cessation/reduction tool that they will put a large dent in cigarette sales, enough to lower tobacco company payments to the states under the Master Settlement Agreement.

According to the article: "The swelling popularity of electronic cigarettes may add to the regulatory and revenue tension between tobacco manufacturers and states. ... So much so that Herzog said recently in a note to investors that e-cig sales could grow fast enough to affect the payments states receive from the landmark Master Settlement Agreement. ...sales of e-cigs are about $300 million a year and the products have about 2.5 million users, according to Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association. There are projections of $1 billion in annual sales within a few years, Herzog said...".

The Rest of the Story

The anti-smoking groups fail to accept the evidence because they don't want to accept it. They are against electronic cigarettes on ideological grounds, and no amount of scientific evidence is going to get in their way. Not even these sales figures and projections, which demonstrate that smokers are finding these products to be enormously helpful for smoking cessation or reduction - so much so that electronic cigarettes, unlike any previous smoking cessation product, may actually produce a substantial dent in cigarette sales. The reduction in cigarette use is projected to be large enough to actually result in reduced payments to the states under the MSA.

Electronic cigarettes are projected to substantially reduce cigarette sales because they are the first product on the market that addresses both the pharmacologic and physical/behavioral/social aspects of the smoking addiction. It is precisely because the mimic smoking that these products are so widely acceptable among smokers and why they are so effective in substituting for cigarettes.

Ironically, it is precisely because these products mimic smoking that anti-smoking groups can't stand their thought, even though they are demonstrably safer than cigarettes and are literally saving people's lives.

Sadly, the scientific evidence is of little importance in the modern-day anti-smoking movement. Ideology trumps science in the movement in 2012.

Leaked Copy of European Commission's Draft Tobacco Product Directive Contains De Facto Ban on Electronic Cigarettes

Tomorrow, the European Commission will present its proposed Tobacco Product Directive. A draft copy obtained by Christopher Snowdon over at Velvet Glove, Iron Fist contains what amounts to a de facto ban on electronic cigarettes, as Christopher reported last week.

Based on the draft copy, Snowdon reports that "nicotine containing products that either have a nicotine level exceeding 2mg, a nicotine concentration exceeding 4mg per ml or whose intended use results in a mean maximum peak plasma concentration exceeding 4 mg per ml may be placed on the market only if they have been authorised as medicinal products on the basis of their quality, safety and efficacy, and with a positive risk/benefit balance." Because most electronic cigarettes contain more than 2 mg of nicotine, they would be regulated as medicinal products, which would require companies to conduct a long series of formal clinical trials, costing tens of millions of dollars and taking an average of eight years to complete.

Thus, for all practical purposes, if adopted as apparently drafted, the directive would essentially amount to a ban on electronic cigarettes in the European Union.

The Rest of the Story

It's hard to figure out what the purpose of this aspect of the directive is, but its effect will be to increase tobacco-related disease and death in Europe. If approved as drafted, the directive will prevent smokers from having access to a much safer alternative to cigarettes that has been shown to be effective in helping to keep smokers off of cigarettes, or at least, to cut down significantly on the amount they smoke.

Thus, the effect of this directive would be to protect cigarette sales in Europe at the expense of the public's health.

We can only hope that a more sensible strategy will be substituted for this deadly one once the proposal is fully vetted.

I will provide readers with an update, if necessary, after the directive is officially released tomorrow.

Why Has Most of the Anti-Smoking Movement Been Swindled into Thinking that Preventing Small Cigarette Changes Will Protect the Public's Health?

Last Friday, I revealed that the FDA is boasting to the public that it is protecting the public's health by making sure that tobacco companies do not make minor changes to cigarette ingredients, additives, or packaging. According to the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products: "Small changes in ingredients or additives can make a cigarette more ... harmful."

As I pointed out, this is a dramatic change in its public position, as in the past, the FDA has always maintained that no cigarette on the market is any safer than any other cigarette, as small differences in additives or ingredients between brands do not confer any significant health protection. In fact, the FDA has always maintained that all tobacco products are equivalent in their health effects. Even today, the FDA continues to claim (in contradiction to its statement that small differences in additives make cigarettes more or less hazardous) that: "To date, no tobacco products have been scientifically proven to reduce risk of tobacco-related disease, or cause less harm than other tobacco products."
  
The FDA goes on to assert that anyone who implies that any cigarette brand is safer than any other cigarette brand is committing a "health fraud." 

The FDA was joined in this abrupt change in position by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which also argued last week that preventing minor changes in cigarette additives or ingredients is essential to protect the public's health.

Today, I found out that one of the foremost tobacco control researchers and advocates - Dr. Stan Glantz - has also abruptly changed positions and is now arguing that by preventing minor changes in cigarette additives, the FDA is serving the public's interest by substantially protecting the health of smokers. On his blog, Dr. Glantz writes: "This is an example of government doing its job to protect the public."

The Rest of the Story

Let's be very clear. Cigarettes are such an extremely hazardous product that minor changes in additives, ingredients, or packaging cannot possibly result in a substantially safer cigarette.

But this is precisely what the FDA, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and Dr. Glantz are arguing. Their argument that the FDA is serving an important public health protection function by preventing minor changes in cigarette additives implies that such minor changes are relevant to the harmfulness of cigarettes. That is, they are implying that minor changes in additives can produce a substantially safer cigarette. Because by asserting that minor changes in additives can produce a more dangerous cigarette, the automatic corollary is that minor changes in additives can produce a safer cigarette.

Like the FDA prior to last Friday, and like most of the anti-smoking groups prior to their lobbying for the Tobacco Act, I reject this notion. It is my opinion that the FDA is spending countless time and resources squabbling about nothing. Most of the applications for substantial equivalence designations amount to minor changes that will have no substantial consequences for the health of smokers, and in my view, this effort is largely a waste of time.

Moreover, it diverts attention from where action is urgently needed: in replacing existing cigarettes with alternatives that are actually substantially safer. What is needed are not minor changes but major changes. Of course, one example would be trying to convince smokers to use electronic cigarettes as an alternative to the far more hazardous tobacco cigarettes. But the FDA and many of the same researchers and groups arguing that small changes in additives are critical will not even acknowledge that a major change - completely eliminating the tobacco - is a crucial public health advance.

Most importantly, this change in public position by the FDA and the anti-smoking groups sends exactly the wrong message to smokers. It suggests to smokers that minute differences in cigarette additives and ingredients can produce major changes in the health effects of smoking. This is not only incorrect but it is damaging because it takes the emphasis off the need to quit smoking and gives smokers hope that by merely changing brands, they can substantially lower their risk of disease.

Let's not forget that there are cigarettes on the market that contain no additives. Specifically, Winston cigarettes. In 1999, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was forced by the FTC to change its labeling to indicate that "No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette."

However, if the FDA, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and Dr. Glantz are correct that additives can increase the toxicity of cigarettes, then R.J. Reynolds was - by definition - initially correct in its implication that the absence of additives confers less health risk. If the FDA's assertion is correct and if it is true that preventing changes in additives protects the public's health, then Winston cigarettes must be safer than cigarettes that contain certain additives. Are the health groups willing to admit this? Or are they bamboozling the public by claiming that the FDA is actually protecting smokers from more harmful products by not allowing additional additives?

The rest of the story is that this change in the anti-smoking groups' position on this issue was stimulated by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids' propaganda campaign in support of the FDA tobacco legislation. The Campaign, in order to convince the anti-smoking groups that the legislation would actually accomplish something in terms of health protection, was able to blind much of the rest of the movement into falling into the previously scorned-upon belief that by regulating additives, the FDA could reduce the health hazards associated with smoking.

To be honest, I don't believe that the FDA is accomplishing any meaningful public health function by disallowing new products that are not precisely identical to existing products. I do not believe for a moment that the public's health would be any more at risk if the FDA took a liberal, rather than strict interpretation of the "substantial equivalence" clause.

In contrast, I do believe that the FDA is harming the public's health by discouraging the use of electronic cigarettes and by adopting a stringent construction of the evidentiary requirements for modified risk product claims.

If the FDA and the anti-smoking groups are being truthful in their claim that cigarette additives make cigarettes substantially more dangerous, are they willing to admit that Winston cigarettes do confer some degree of safety compared to some other cigarettes on the market? If not, then it seems to me that they are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (and the FDA) are Obsessed with Fake Protection of the Public's Health by Preventing New Cigarettes that are the Same as Old Cigarettes from Entering the Market; Meanwhile, Existing Cigarettes Enjoy a Free Ride and Continue to Kill Hundreds of Thousands

While existing cigarettes - the most toxic consumer products on the market - continue to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the FDA continue to obsess about new cigarette introductions, thus creating a fake impression that they are protecting the public's health. In reality, they are doing the opposite: endangering the public's health by ensuring that safer products do not get into smokers' hands.

According to a breaking report from Michael Felberbaum at the Associated Press, the FDA has prevented the tobacco companies from introducing almost any new products in the past 18 months, despite having submitted nearly 3500 applications and although many of these products are almost identical to products already on the market.

Moreover, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is gravely concerned about a few new cigarette brands that are very similar to existing brands, while doing everything it can to prevent a truly safer product - electronic cigarettes - from taking hold in the market.

According to the article: "They have the burden of demonstrating that new products and product changes won't increase youth tobacco use, won't increase toxicity and won't wrongly deter people from quitting," said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The group has raised concerns about new products that it says were illegally introduced without review by Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco company, and No. 2 tobacco maker Reynolds American Inc. Philip Morris USA's Marlboro Black NXT - a cigarette that can be switched to menthol by crushing a capsule in the filter - and two new styles of Reynolds' Pall Mall menthol cigarettes shouldn't be allowed to be sold without FDA approval, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids argues. The companies, however, believe they are complying with federal law. The FDA says it is investigating. It's essential that the FDA move "strongly and decisively to make public either why these products should be allowed to be marketed or to get them pulled off the market immediately," Myers said."

While the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids are urging the FDA to pull these new cigarettes off the market, they are not calling on the agency to pull existing brands off the market, and have in fact discouraged the agency from removing existing menthol cigarettes from the market.

The FDA, although working diligently to keep any new cigarettes from being introduced - cigarettes which are virtually identical to existing ones - has done nothing to regulate existing cigarettes to make them any safer.

The Rest of the Story

The rest of the story is that the Tobacco Act is working exactly as I predicted it would: as a way to protect the existing cigarettes on the market and block any real possibility of competition from what could be truly safer products.

While the FDA is obsessing about whether a cigarette with a slight change in its name should be allowed on the market, pretending to be in some way protecting the public health, it has taken no steps to address the lack of safety of existing cigarettes. The FDA has not taken a single action that will make existing cigarettes any safer for smokers. And at the same time, it has done everything it could to prevent a truly safer product - electronic cigarettes - from gaining any foothold in the market, thus protecting the profits of cigarette companies over the health of the public.

It was discouraging to see that Dr. Deyton - the director of FDA's Center for Tobacco Products - embraced the approach of obsessing about minor changes in cigarettes that, an action that does nothing to protect the public's health.

According to the article: "In an interview with the AP, Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said the agency is working with companies to get more information about products and hopes the industry will be more transparent about its reasoning that product changes don't affect public health. Small changes in ingredients or additives can make a cigarette more addictive or harmful, Deyton said. "Though cigarettes seem like a very simple product - chopped-up tobacco rolled in paper ... we know that cigarettes are highly engineered. They're technologically incredibly sophisticated," said Deyton."

Is the FDA actually suggesting that different brands of cigarettes on the market - each of which contains different ingredients and additives - have different levels of safety? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. This is precisely what it means when you suggest that the agency must monitor for small changes in additives or ingredients because those changes affect the safety of the product in a way that is material to the public's health.

According to this reasoning, the FDA is lying on its web site when it says that no cigarette is any safer than any other cigarette. Clearly, the agency does not believe this is true.

It sends a terribly destructive message to the public: that there are indeed safer brands of cigarettes on the market and that smokers should be concerned about the exact additives and ingredients in their brands.

This is utter nonsense. There is no meaningful difference in the safety profile of any of these cigarettes, as the FDA itself acknowledges on its web site. And to suggest anything else to the public is not only disingenuous but also damaging to the public's appreciation of the dangers of smoking and of the utter futility in trying to protect one's health by switching to one brand of cigarettes over another brand.

The only way to protect oneself by switching tobacco products is to use an entirely different class of products. Case in point: switching from cigarettes to electronic cigarettes would indeed offer tremendous public health benefits.

Sadly, this is the one type of benefit that the FDA is trying to prevent smokers from taking advantage of. 

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill Politician , Statesman , Nobel Laureate Writer

Born: November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace

Died: January 24, 1965, Hyde Park Gate

Education: Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (1894), Harrow School, St. George's School, Ascot

Parents: Jennie Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill, a British politician and statesman known for his vision­ary leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, was the most charismatic wartime leader who led the British nation to victory against all odds. A noted statesman and a great orator, Churchill served as prime min­ister twice (1940 -45 and 1951-55). He is the only British prime to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

During the First World War, he was First Lord of the Admiralty. After the war, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the Second World War, he was reappointed First Lord of the Admiralty. On May 10, 1940, he became Prime Minister. He led Britain as Prime Minister until the victory.

After the war, his party lost the elections but in 1951 he became the prime minister again. He is regarded one of the most influential men in British history.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

— Sweat and Tears Speech (June 4. 1940).

Lee Kuan Yew ,Politician, Lawyer, Nation developer

Born: September 16, 1923 (age 89), Singapore

Spouse: Kwa Geok Choo

Party: People's Action Party

Children: Lee Hsien Loong, Lee Hsien Yang

Education: London School of Economics, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Lee Kuan Yew created a country and a nation out of a lump of land worth almost nothing. He shaped the small territory at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula into a country, and then developed it into a dynamo of development and progress. From the primitive fishing village, Temasek, he built Singapore into an 'Asian Tiger'.

Lee was a third generation Straits Chinese. He grew up speaking the Malay, Eng­lish languages and the Cantonese dialect, and later taught himself the Japanese, Mandarin and Hokkien for he wanted to learn all the languages spoken in Singapore. He studied at Singapore's Raffles College and then went on to Cambridge. His Christian name was 'Harry Lee' which he dropped after Cambridge for his original Chinese name. Coming back to Singapore in 1950, he started practicing law and got into politics.

As the co-founder and first secretary-general of his People's Action Party (PAP), he led the party to eight victories from 1959 to 1990, and oversaw the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. From 1959 to 1990 he remained the Prime Minister and still holds great influence as its Senior Minister, a post especially created for him.

On 16 September 1963, Singapore became part of Malaysia but the Malaysian Central Government, ruled by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), became worried by the inclusion of Singapore's Chinese majority and the political challenge of the PAP in Malaysia. In 1964 race riots took place in Singapore as Chinese and Malays attacked each other. Subsequently, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia. A separation agreement was signed on 7 August 1965. It was a heavy blow to Lee. Later, Lee brought his country an efficient administration and spectacular prosperity.

"I, Lee Kuan Yew, as Prime Minister of Singapore, in this current capacity of mine do hereby proclaim and declare on behalf of the people and the Gov­ernment of Singapore that as from today, the ninth day of August in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five. Singapore shall be forever a sov­ereign democratic and independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of people in a  most and just equal society."

- Address on 9 August 1965 on creation of the Republic of Singapore.