From: John Cannon [jcannon@anotherperspective.org]
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 3:42 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Cc: gary@commercialalert.org
Subject: 02N-029-Request for Comments on First Amendment Issues

Sirs,

The Food & Drug Administration was created to represent and to protect the
interests of the people of this nation.  It is through the American people
that the government is granted its many powers and it is only by the leave
of the American people that it retains that power.

Advertising in this nation has attained its great influence over the lives
and health and habits of Americans nearly to the point of thought control, a
danger often cited in books and stories but never addressed in today's media
nor by the elected and unelected officials in government.  When products can
be sold without even one second of a thirty second ad being used to explain
the benefits of that product but, instead, uses superficial images and short
term desires and even shorter attention spans to sell it, then our
government must use its power to help Americans make sense of the commercial
world.

            A corporation is absolutely nothing but an organized system of
production, sales, and control over particular markets and is meant only to
create the largest possible profits for its owners with little regard for
the process of that accumulation.  This is not, on any level, a human being
and, thus, should never be granted the rights and powers of a human being.
A corporation is not a "person" and no amount of bribery, er, campaign
contributions can ever make it so.

            To allot any Constitutional protections, necessary to the
freedom and protection of the American people, to any portion of a simple
economic system is to both debase the reality of individual human rights as
well as to diminish the rights of real human beings.

            In particular, to allow corporations to enjoy First Amendment
protections of free speech cedes to them a unmatchable power to control the
debate in all areas of human functions.  Precious few Americans can afford
to purchase the media access that corporations so easily acquire and,
frankly, abuse.

            Corporations only seek to create more and more consumers
regardless of their age.  They target our children in continuous waves on
every TV channel and in every magazine and on every radio station and
billboard.  Our children are dangerously vulnerable to these ads and come to
believe that one can only be happy with the newest toys and newest cosmetics
and latest sugary treats.  They come to believe that smoking is cool and
that the consumption of large measures of alcohol is the only basis on which
friends can congregate and enjoy themselves.  They come to believe that
people who are able to play children's games at a slightly higher level are
people that they should idolize, adore, and purchase whatever product these
minimally gifted characters are shilling for at the moment.

            In all respects, the FDA must begin the long process of
reversing these sad and very harmful trends.  It is the responsibility of
every employee in the FDA, from the highest appointed employees in the
biggest offices to the individuals who follow the directives from those
offices to protect the health and minds of our children and of all
Americans.  The FDA has no other job than that.

            It is time to cease advertising prescription drugs.  The
government, out of one side of its mouth, proclaims drugs and drug
addictions are the horrors of our age while, out of the other side of its
mouth, allows the pharmaceutical industry to push drugs that alter a human's
mental state in ways completely equal to the illegal drugs it so abhors.
These drugs must not be advertised since so many Americans slavishly accept
any claim made by this industry and then attempt to force their personal
physician to give them drugs that may or may not be appropriate to that
person's true medical needs.

            The FDA must ban all tobacco and liquor and gambling ads so that
our children can grow up in a world where they, with the guidance of their
parents, teachers, and spiritual leaders, can make intelligent, informed
decisions about their own futures unclouded by the lies, half truths, and
skillful manipulation of advertisers.

            The FDA was founded in order to protect the American people from
the very corporations it now views as equals to actual human beings.  That
view must revert to one based in reality and back to one not created through
the simple distribution of campaign funds and outright bribes.  No longer
can the FDA shill for corporations while pretending to protect the public's
health.  That must end immediately.

            In closing, while it is apparent that those appointed to the FDA
by this administration were named to these posts solely because of their
obedience to party and  ideological purity, they must realize that their
children and grandchildren are as equally damaged and controlled as the
children of the families in the poorest neighborhoods in America.  The time
will come, regardless of religious beliefs, that they will be made to answer
to a higher power for their actions and for the harm that they allowed and
encouraged when they had the power to protect and heal.  Each life that is
lost to the sick pursuit of profit over the safeguards that the FDA is
responsible to enforce is another life that they will answer for in full.

John Cannon

PO Box 162

Olancha, CA  93549-0162