The Shuster Project

Tobacco Industry Fraud & False Claims Issues

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To: The Board of Directors – National Organization for Women

From: Robert X. Shuster – Executive Director – The Shuster Project / The New Dance Project

            http://www.RXShuster.org

           177 Andrew Avenue – Naugatuck – CT – 06770-4359

Telephone: 203-723-1690 – 203-723-9266

Email: Rshus177@aol.com   

Re: NON-Health related tobacco industry fraud and false claims

Date: 6/28/99

To the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women,

Around approximately 1992-93, I sent a letter to the then President of NOW, inviting her to participate in what has now become The Shuster Project/The New Dance Project which is endeavoring to reveal fraudulent tobacco industry policies, practices and procedures on a nationwide basis.

That “participation” was intended to make your organizations membership, including smokers, non-smokers and female business owners of retail outlets selling cigarettes and tobacco products, more knowledgeable about their liabilities based upon the fraudulent policies, practices and procedures of the tobacco industry.

Also, that “participation” was intended to give a voice to taxpaying women adversely impacted financially within the individual states by the same fraudulent policies, practices and procedures of the tobacco industry as they relate to state tax revenues.

By working with your organization, we could have back then and still can educate NOW to exactly what those fraudulent tobacco industry policies, practices and procedures are, how they directly impact the various segments of your membership, and what could have and still can be done to address and correct them.

This would have also included the practice of “targeting” girls and women with exploitive and luring methods of advertising and marketing activities.

In addition, it would have been invaluable, and still can be, to get the input of women sales representatives and executives of the tobacco companies with the courage to speak out relative to these fraudulent business activities.

I wonder if your Executive Board knows how many women tobacco company representatives have been seriously injured as a direct result of practices and policies within the tobacco industry, alone, and feel intimidated or unable to speak out about it?

My Web site now gives them a voice to speak out in a way they presently could not before, with a secure response form that will insure their complete anonymity, yet allow them to speak out and tell of their plight(s).

There are more injured and disabled women in such physical condition as a direct result of the tobacco industry and their employee policies than you know.

I would ask that you only visit my Web site, http://www.RXShuster.org, to get a feel for the “inside” documents, guides and memorandums being revealed, to see what I have begun to expose.

Please keep in mind that after considerable delay, the Web site was launched on May 14^th of 1999.

Also, please keep in mind that the Web site is at slightly more than 1/16 of 1% of planned content.

I believe the President of your organization then and still is a Ms. Ireland who’s only response, after I had started my initial communication(s) to your organization through your Hartford, CT chapter and through your “channels” was a confusing response about not being able to allocate financial resources to these topics at that time.

At no time were “financial resources” ever asked for, mentioned, expected or required of your organization.

What was clearly extended to your organization was the opportunity for your President and Executive Board to become directly knowledgeable about fraudulent tobacco industry issues as they pertained to women.

Fraudulent tobacco industry issues that you had never had access to and still have never had access to before.

And my invitation would have made that information and it’s various solutions and corrective initiatives known to your Board and your entire membership, with the opportunity to address the various states Attorneys General, as I am now, and help influence those corrective initiatives.

The end result of my invitation being ignored by Ms. Ireland had the effect of prolonging the damaging effects of the tobacco industry’s business frauds which continue to be perpetrated against retail storeowners of all ethnicity’s and both genders.

Unfortunately, the businesses owned by women in redlined areas take the brunt of the worst of the tobacco industry’s discriminatory practices.

As I was still organizing this immense project and contacting the various heads of the organizations which represent the majority of the negatively impacted peoples, businesses and segments of our society from this tobacco industry fraud, I was not inclined to engage in repetitive communications with your non-responsive Ms. Ireland.

With the launch of my Web site, it is time to at least attempt to now alert you to what I have revealed, to date, that benefits your membership and open the doors once again for your organization and it’s full membership to participate in a wide field of issues.

Efforts are underway to also give detailed information to the 50 states attorneys general, first, relative to the most egregious of tobacco industry fraud which has cost the individual states, collectively, tens of Billions of dollars in tax revenue losses going back decades.

In view of this, I am limited as to what I can reveal to you but to the present, and growing, content of my Web site.

You need to get my Web address to the retail business owners within your membership who sell cigarettes and tobacco products: http://www.RXShuster.org.

The Manufacturers Code dating system, for one thing, is something they should have.

They should call the individual tobacco companies to get the current code “interpretations” for the individual tobacco companies, as it is certain that these Redlined stores will have cartons of cigarettes which are old and undoubtedly stale.

There has probably never been a tobacco company representative in their store….ever, to check and rotate stock and remove the old cartons.

The issue you as a Board of Directors should get involved with directly is the issue of “Redlining,” which is employed by ALL of the tobacco companies.

This practice removes mostly ethnic minority owned stores, many owned by women, from receiving cigarette display contracts and payments.

In addition, the practice of “Redlining” denies the placement of “special offer” promotions which others stores not redlined or otherwise discriminated against by virtue of their location or the ethnicity of their owners receive, thus causing the redlined stores lost business and income.

In the former American Tobacco Company, these stores were referred to as “Danger” calls.

I have sent you the most important aspects of what you can find within my site, presently, which pertain to your organizations most negatively impacted segment, specifically women retail storeowners that sell cigarettes and tobacco products.

Another one of many issues earlier participation by your organization to my invitation would have influenced is the allocation of moneys under the present tobacco industry “settlement” with certain states.

Here in Connecticut, for instance, out of the anticipated 3 Billion dollars to be received, 5 million dollars is being allocated to anti-smoking grants and efforts to curb smoking…you do the math.

Another, more critical, issue is the loss of huge income streams which can and will be created by “corrections” of present tobacco industry fraud which total Billions of dollars annually, collectively, within the 50 states.

These are income streams that would have and should have been generating revenues for the states for decades now but, instead, were denied the states by the fraudulent policies, practices, procedures and false claims of the tobacco industry; something my Project is now endeavoring to engage directly.

There are many other tobacco industry issues involving women and your membership that we can together engage to bring about meaningful and substantive and long-term positive change, however, I will wait to see how you manage the information I have provided to you in this correspondence and my Web site.

If you have an Email address that I can send future Press Releases and Site updates directly to your Executive Board membership, I will be more than happy to update you as I can make more and more information available on my Web site.

And please feel free to distribute my Web site address, http://www.rxshuster.org, to your membership as a whole, as there are public feedback and present tobacco employee feedback sections that might be applicable to a large number of women who may wish to participate as well.

Your membership might wish to click on the “Correspondence” button on the left on the main page, go the the “Grassroots” letter and participate in that effort, as well.

Because my Web site is the very first of its kind, it is also a “teaching” site.

As such, I am available three (3) days a week for an hour each day in a chat room I have established within my site for contact with both the media and the public.

The schedules are posted on the main page of the Web site and on the chat room page itself..

If you go to the very top of the main page of my Web site and click on the “Contents” button, you can easily access the chat room near the bottom of the contents list.

I look forward to hearing from you at some time in the near future.

Sincerely,

RXShuster

PS  This letter will be featured on my Web site.

I will contact more organizations and groups giving them the same invitation(s) to participate, some again, some anew and the same access to my site to all.

I learned a long time ago, and even recently, that many news organizations don’t want to be given extraordinary information that they didn’t “uncover” themselves, or that they don’t understand or take the time to learn about.

I’m learning some lawmakers don’t want to be given legislative initiatives to undo corporate fraud and/or be given initiatives which would give them the tools to recover vast sums of money as a result of that corporate fraud for some inexplicable fear that they might be perceived as unknowledgeable alongside a “common” citizen.

And I know firsthand that some heads of organizations with private foibles will ignore receiving information which benefits the vast numbers of the members of their organizations merely to keep their foibles out of the spotlight should they otherwise do the right thing and get involved.

As more people, organizations and politicians access my site, it is important that it is known who has been contacted and informed as to these NON-health related tobacco industry issues, their invitation to be updated and how the recipients of these notifications, including the media, have responded for the good of their memberships, readers and viewers.

This web site is equipped with the "Get 1 on 1" guest response system.
If I am in my office, you can contact me in "real time."
If I am out of my office you will be prompted to send me an e-mail.
I will get back to you as quickly as I can.