I'll Huff And I'll Puff

      Pardon me while I go on a short rant here, but the claim made in this article is nothing less than utter bullshite. The claim: that banning smoking in bars and restaurants encourages people to quit smoking. To the simple-minded, this might seem viable. To those of us with any practical experience, this is self-justifying terditry (another Dr J-ism). This does not encourage people to quit, at least not "quit" cigarettes properly; instead, it creates a culture of beggary, as people (by the barful) claim to be "non-smokers" but then proceed to beg and pleade smokers in such establishments to bum one or two or several when they're among their company. These people are not "causal smokers," as the term is often bandied about; rather, they are "closet smokers," smokers who hitch themselves onto others for the sakes of their own financial and personal convenience. (They are otherwise known as "leeches.") People will still go outside if they want to smoke. The damage to be done here is in the alternate form of "quitting": the people that will quit going to restaurants and pubs because it has now become an inhospitable environment.

      Let's also get another thing clear: governments don't give a good god damn about the "health of smokers" and encouraging them to quit. I assure you, they do not. The banning of smoking from all establishments-- to the point even of removing the options of "Smoking Only" establishments which would be an "Enter At Your Own Risk" proposition for all concernced, clients and staff-- is a gesture of political pandering to the convulsive streak of Puritanism in North America. Governments, we're stumpingly told, tax cigarettes highly "because of health concerns"; they ban public access to smoking areas to "save people from exposure"; they make rules for the operation of smoking-allowed establishments so financially prohibitive as to discourage establishments from going against the directed grain. But the concern for public health is HORNSWOGGLE. If any government was really that concerned about smoking as social endemic, they would BAN it, or they would criminalize it: they would discourage access to the supposedly dangerous substance rather than discouraging one's right to use it. Why don't they do this? Because of the obvious: TAXES. Governments would make the whole-hog shift to criminalization if they weren't benefitting greatly from the revenue gathered by taxation (and, they wouldn't encourage tobacco farmers, as various levels of government, including the federal and provincial Liberals currently, do). Governments have a choice: they can make tobacco illegal, depress certain agricultural and industrial area, lose taxation revenue, but take a clear and consistent stand on smoking as public health issue; or they can keep it legal, continue to take in taxation revenues (hefty ones, at that), but make themselves complicit inheritors of that which they dissuade. Governments are like children watching their parents with a swear jar: they claim not to want to be around the damaging language, but they also wait for mommy and daddy to swear so they can benefit from it; they may not like mommy and daddy swearing all the time, but they know it's inevitable, so (g'all darn it!) they're gonna get what they can out of it. It's win-win! Hypocrisy triumphs again.

      So, let's get this straight. This whole process is NOT about public health; never has been, never will be. It is about political appeasement, about putting on "responsible" social airs, about laying claim to a pretense of moral authority. But this is all blatantly hypocritical. Imagine the government selling you what it describes as a poison, but then telling you that you can't use it anywhere publically. If the government is the crack-peddler, it has to allow people to run their crack-houses. If it's legal, there's no constitutional rationale for "banning." Limiting, yes; governing and controlling, yes; but banning, no. By my reading of it, the bylaws introducing such measures are profoundly unconstitutional and illiegitimately intercessional on the rights not so much of smokers but of business operators, all of whom -- and not the governments, which will, of course, be out in force to levy heavy, heavy fines for breaches of the new laws-- will be paying a price for all this, a price which, of course, will not be the government's problem.

      Added note: has anyone considered the idiotic implication of these bylaws? Minors-- from babies to adolescents-- can now enter bars again. Oh, I'm absolutely certain the kids in these bars-- especially those 16, 17 and 18 year-olds, lurking in the corner, pretending just to be having Cokes-- will have no trouble getting around the serving regulations. Congratulations, you moronic, hypocritical municipal governments, you may have created a monster perhaps even more damaging than smoking. Give it time, people, give it time.

      Rant over. I'll now shut the bloody hell up. As soon as I imagine the possibility of a group called MADAS: Mother Against Driving After Smoking.

ADDDENDUM: I'm reminded that laws governing the permission/banning of smoking in public places is generally under municipal rather than provincial or federal jurisdictions. Municipal governments, however, receive funding from both levels of government; and, more importantly, it seems to me highly bizarre that municipal proclamations should be able to override things which the national constitution does not prohibit.