About this blog

In this day and age there is a disastrous competition of various protagonists fighting against the free choice of individuals who wish to decide on how to live their lives and which risks they are prepared to take. At the forefront of postmodern lifestyle prohibition you will find smokers – who are denied personal freedoms with ever-extending smoking bans, heavy taxation and other regulation. Not only were smokers deprived of free choice, they were and increasingly are, demonized and exiled to the outdoors to be driven away from there, too. They face ever rising extortionate taxation, the so-called ‘sin tax’, which also funds antismoking propaganda, as well as monstrous graphic warning images on tobacco products.

Netzwerk Rauchen is an independent nonprofit organization based in Germany. Since 2006, we have fought for the human rights of people who expect their personal lifestyle choices in areas such as smoking (in particular), drinking and eating not be corrupted by restrictive government intervention. As a major part of our work, we have debunked various aspects of the passive smoking fraud. Our activities mostly focus on the German speaking world, but we have always been eager to link and co-operate with fellow organizations and individuals around the globe. The new blog, smokingbandits, hopefully provides the platform for such an opportunity.

Many bloggers and activists worldwide are fighting against prohibition with very fine blogs and strong organizations inside their countries. We all need to compare notes internationally; how tobacco control measures have affected people in different countries, e.g. tobacco product taxation, extend of smoking bans etc. etc.

For this purpose we chose English as the main language for this blog. Translations of blog posts into other languages, initially French and German, are available. As voluntary activists, though, we would welcome people to become involved in order to get more articles and comments written and translations done. Please contact us and join the fight!