For the last week, full-page ads in the Daily News and the Glasgow Daily Times have announced that Dr. Mark Webb will offer a hypnosis seminar in Bowling Green tonight that is 110% guaranteed to make smokers stop, for just $60 with a $10 discount for paying with cash. As a free bonus, the ads announce that Webb will program peoples subconscious minds to make them eat less, yet feel satisfied. But the ads promise things that, according to Indiana authorities, Ohio courts and Webbs own office, just arent true. The ad states that the seminar is presented by the National Institute of Hypnosis, with a Charlestown, Ind., address. According to the secretary who answered at the phone number given for the institute, Webb wont even be appearing in Bowling Green. Hes currently in Phoenix. To operate in Indiana, hypnotists must be licensed and hypnotism schools must be accredited. There was once an accredited National Institute of Hypnosis in Syracuse, Ind., run by John Mason. But no longer. We show that school closing Oct. 31, 1995, said Rebecca Carter, director of regulatory compliance for the Indiana Commission on Proprietary Education. Mason closed the school when he became chairman of the Indiana state board that certifies hypnotists. No school by that name is now recognized by Indiana, and no business called the National Institute of Hypnosis, or anything similar, appears in the Indiana secretary of states corporation records. The ads say that Webb has been affiliated with the institute since the early 1980s a difficult matter at a school which only formed in 1988.That man never went to my school, John Mason said, adding that when he sees a copy of the ad, hell forward it to the Indiana attorney generals office. To do this, hes supposed to be state certified in Indiana, Mason said. I was on that committee, and I dont recall that name. If hes not certified, Im going to bring charges against him. The Indiana Health Professions Bureau lists Webb as a licensed chiropractor, but not a hypnotist and that brings up another issue. After the ad first ran, the Kentucky Board of Chiropractic Examiners sent Webb a cease-and-desist letter Jan. 14, noting that he holds a Kentucky Non-Resident Chiropractic License, but that license is not valid for active practice in Kentucky. It also says that his advertisement of specializing in smoking cessation is not a recognized chiropractic specialty in Kentucky. In short, chiropractic practice has nothing to do with hypnotism, or the promises made in the ad. He can certainly advertise as he is, if he just takes out D.C. and the reference to doctor of chiropractic in his ad, said Mark Woodward, a local member of the state chiropractors licensing board. Nevertheless, the ad has since run again, unaltered. This seminar has been offered in Bowling Green and advertised in the Daily News before, said Mark Van Patten, general manager of the Daily News. But the newspaper had received no complaints or suggestions that the ad was not accurate, and so had no reason not to accept it again, he said. Despite the fact that Webbs is the only name mentioned in the ad (which includes his picture), Webb didnt take out the ad and wont be conducting the seminar, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at the Ramada Inn on Scottsville Road. Instead, the man responsible is Donald Archie Kahl, of Otisco, Ind., a town just north of Charlestown. Neither Webb nor Kahl responded to messages left at their office. Mason fumes at the mention of Kahl, who he said has been a thorn in the side of Indianas certified and professional hypnotists for years. Hes applied to get certified, and he falsified the application on that, Mason said. The Indiana Health Professions Bureau lists Kahls license as pending. The Indiana attorney generals office records two consumer complaints against Kahls practice of hypnotism, both of which are closed. State law prohibits the office from revealing the nature of those complaints. In Ohio, however, Kahl turns up in court records. In 1991, he claimed in various newspaper ads that his hypnotism routine would help people stop smoking, with an extremely high success rate. (The rate cited in his local ad is at least 95%.) A Hamilton County court found that Kahl was unable to substantiate those claims with reasonable clinical evidence, and issued a consent judgment against him. His claims of success were well in excess of what the Centers for Disease Control … found to be successful, said Mark Gribben, director of communications for the Ohio attorney generals office, noting that the CDC has done numerous scientific studies of hypnosis. His method of showing success was that people didnt come back to ask for their money back. That might be because, as Kahl is a traveling hypnotist, dissatisfied customers couldnt find him, Gribben allowed. Its giving hypnosis as such a bad name, said John Masons wife, Mary. People go and dont think theyre getting their moneys worth, and theyre not.