Don't work for tobacco firms, lawyers urged
CHILDREN'S Minister James Reilly has said it is not appropriate for legal firm Arthur Cox to represent tobacco firms and state agencies.
Dr Reilly is currently reviewing the relationship between the State's child and family agency Tulsa and the firm of solicitors representing Japan Tobacco International (JTI), which is threatening legal action against the Government if it introduces plain packaging for cigarettes.
"I fail to see how we send the right message by employing legal firms that are prepared to represent the tobacco industry, whose history in this area is quite appalling, to be quite frank.
"Their inability to come out and tell the truth time after time has been quite shocking ..."Unlike Dr Reilly the eejit liar, of course.
Dr Reilly called on all legal firms to come out and say they would not represent tobacco interests.This is an astounding thing for any politician to say, it's like lessons of history have completely passed him by.
To even suggest that a perfectly legitimate, taxpaying industry should be denied any and all legal representation by order of the state - and simply because it disagrees with the state - is the very definition of fascism. But to do so by way of implied threats that legal firms will be excluded from government contracts if they include tobacco companies as their clients just makes it even more disgusting.
This is the evil place that tobacco control and its hideous acolytes inhabit. They go through their self-enriching lives viewing everything through the prism of hatred of tobacco, while not recognising the potentially disastrous precedents they are setting. Blacklisting lawyers for representing companies exercising their right - in a supposedly civilised free country - to hold politicians to account through the impartial legal system surely has to be a new low.
This is why I despise tobacco controllers. If they were decent people they'd condemn this fundamental abuse of our long-held adherence to democracy and justice, but they won't. They'll just allow Reilly - who also despises e-cigs remember - and his fascist Trojan Horse to go unchallenged.
I am 100% confident I won't be proven wrong.
