Ash's "Smokers Should Be Charged With Homicide, Sentenced to Death" Release Removed?

I was browsing the net when I came across a page about one of ASH’s more extreme press releases.

(As ASH has called for denial of health treatment of smokers, for children to be seperated from their parents and pushed for segregation in public places, it has to be pretty bad to be extreme for ASH!)

This press release called for smokers to be charged with the homicide of passive smokers.

“Action on Smoking and Health has decreed that exposing others to secondhand smoke in any circumstance, including in the home, should make all smokers liable to criminal prosecution for homicide with depraved indifference, punishable by death in areas of the United States.” (Source: Forces)

I immediately searched for the original release, only to find a blank page.

Smoking Akin to Deliberately Infecting People With Aids

We can get some of the contents from the Tobacco Analysis site;

“As the evidence that secondhand tobacco smoke kills tens of thousands of Americans each year multiplies, the potential for civil – and possibly even criminal – liability for subjecting other people to it grows, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America’s first antismoking organization.”

“He notes that criminal liability has been imposed upon people who, knowing that they have the AIDS virus, nevertheless expose others to it by having sexual intercourse with them, even though the risk that their sexual partner will actually come down with AIDS as the result of such exposure is quite small.” …

“At some point, deliberately and repeatedly subjecting another person to a substance the federal government has ruled to be the most deadly carcinogen to which we are exposed moves beyond mere negligence (the mere lack of sufficient care) and battery (which requires an intent to cause harm) to a depraved indifference to the consequences (the requirement for criminal homicide), says Banzhaf.” (Source: Tobacco Analysis Blog)

Professor Michael Siegel comprehensively destroys the argument, pointing out that the risk of someone dying from passive smoking is ‘exceedingly’ small.

So I wonder why the press release has gone?

Was it so provocative and extreme that even ASH had second thoughts? Did PR Inside remove it out of taste? Or is it just an error?

I’ve written to PR Inside to find out – it’ll be interesting to see their answer!

Related posts:

1. Smokers – Sentenced to Death
2. FDA/ Health Groups Persuade Smokers to Stick to Cigarettes
3. Push Suicide Inducing Drug to Mentally Ill Smokers say Big Pharm Scientists
4. Smokers (and E-Smokers) of the World, Unite
5. Smokers Beaten to Death in Malaysia

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