In response to the suggestion that CANCHID institute a dialogue on Tobacco
Reduction Stratagies, CANCHID received the following opinion posting from
a subscriber on a commercial network (@delphi.com):
 
 ------ start of post ------
   I don't think it is any of my business of (if) you smoke, frankly. This
   is a topic that is much overdone.
 ------end of post------
 
This message from the ListManager is to remind subscribers that CANCHID is
a list devoted to education and research and is not a soap box for simple
statements of opinion. I address this message to the increasing number of
subscribers who come from commercial sites (@aol, @delphi, etc.). This is
an open forum on research and education topics as they apply to health in
international development. It is not a "letters to the editor" venue.
 
In the case of Tobacco Demand reduction strategies, the World Bank and a
host of other funding and research institutions, as well as public health
agencies, have concluded on the weight of the evidence that the consumption
of tobacco is a social problem beyond the freedom of the individual to do
damage to one's self. If, on the other hand, a subscriber feels that there
are errors in the evidence or the analysis, the subscriber is welcomed to
raise the level of the discussion. However, subscribers are discourage from
lowering the level of the discussion.
 
CANCHID is a jointly provided service from the Canadian University Consortium
on Health in International Development (CUCHID) and the Distributed Knowledge
Project (DKProj) at York University. CANCHID will be run as a public listserv
so long as it is not abused. Should the incidence of commercial postings and
gratuitous unnecessary postings grow, it will be proposed that CANCHID become
a private listserv, echoing its traffic to a READ-ONLY public site. It is our
hope that new subscribers will understand this point. It is not without some
consternation that listserv managers have turned AOL into a verb (transitive)
when they speak of having been AOLed by postings from new @aol subscribers.
 
Private opinions about the posting from the ListManager should be directed to
the manager and not the list. Sam Lanfranco < [log in to unmask] >