I hate you, Judge Marc Beauregard.
You and your policies and your politics suck and I hope that all of your children get lucrative corporate jobs at JTI-Macdonald Corp., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. and become rampant chain smokers.
Enjoy your grandchildren and their horrible birth defects.
(ps – For those of you who may not be aware, I am an aggressive non-smoker. I loathe it. I am on a personal crusade against it. If I wasn’t afraid of the violence and/or legal repercussions of having charges pressed against me, I would rip cigarettes out of the mouths of the people walking down the street, mindlessly blowing smoke into the faces of their young children and baby carriages. I understand that it is a terrible addiction, and that it forms a pattern that is very hard to break, but there is no shortage of information available on how smoking ruins your health and the health of others and the environment, while putting a strain on your finances. I have some pretty serious rage at the government for their cowardly refusal to make smoking illegal. That shit sucks.)
Do you think it might not be as simple as that?
-DL
I thought she was very careful to be clear that she doesn’t think it’s simple.
Let’s all pay attention to the health effects of smoking, but ignore that the smog levels in T.O. are second only to L.A. in Canada and the U.S. Let’s ignore the lax enforcement of even existing environmental regulations on heavy industry in Ontario (which happens to be centered around T.O.). Let’s ignore the vast fleet of trucks that were grandfathered into the current emissions regulation regime. Let’s ignore that even those trucks (incl. SUVs) that are regulated by the regime are allowed to spew much more freely than cars.
The fact that one lives in the GTA has a much more significant effect on ones health than occasional exposure to second-hand smoke.
If you’re going to get all riled up about public health, don’t get distracted by this shell game however personally sensitive you find the issue.
The bloke with the cigarette is giving himself cancer, we’re responsible for everyone else.
That’s like saying “I can kick you in the teeth because you might get hit by a bus anyway.” Yes, I might, but no, you can’t.
I don’t think being mad about rampant smoking equals ignoring the environment. I’ve got lots of anger to go around.
Yeah I am in the same camp as you. I get REALLY mad when smokers get mad at ME for asking them to go somewhere else and smoke. They have the nerve to give me the “maybe YOU should go somewhere else if you don’t like it” speech. ‘Scuse me, you are the one using something that is killing YOU and ME. Jerks. Now I’m mad again.
My Toronto Film Festival recommendation for you:
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING: Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman’s adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s satire of lobbyists and the tobacco industry.
No! No no no no. You are completely missing my point. I refuse to allow anyone to downplay smoking into some kind of red herring that politicians are throwing out there to cover up the immense scandal that is our appalling lack of environmental protection laws. It is a serious societal disease, and just because it is attacking our atmosphere on a smaller scale than, say, SUVs, that in no way counteracts the devastation that it wreaks on individual lives.
The glib remark that we are ALL paying attention to the health effects of smoking is a blatant display of hyperbolized ignorance for the sake of dramatic effect. Clearly, we are NOT all paying attention to the health effects of smoking. Twenty percent of the population of Ontario smokes. I know my math skills are nowhere near as finely honed as yours, but that figure tells me that out of roughly 12.4 million Ontarians, TWO AND A HALF MILLION of of them are NOT paying attention to the health effects of smoking.
The bloke or lass or whomever it is with the cigarette is giving herself, and me, and my friend with her unborn child cancer. He or she is also perpetuating a vicious cycle of demonstration, observation and imitation that I may not be able to protect even my own children from being absorbed by, no matter how sternly I lecture them or what example I set myself. Peer pressure is a powerful motivator.
My very specific, very targeted rant was not intended as an exhibition of tunnel vision, or a blatant disregard for big polluters. Smoking *is* a personally sensitive issue, but it is also a significant factor in public health; one that must be legislated by our “regime” (as you so winningly dubbed our elected officials), not just in where we can smoke and at what age we can smoke, because those are bandaid fixes. If it is clear to the powers that be that smoking is unhealthy indoors and for those under 18, maybe, just maybe it should be shut down as an industry completely. I’m sure that they should get cracking on the Kyoto accord, too, but I am quite confident that we have enough bureaucrats employed at the ministries of the Environment, Transportation, Health, and Health Promotion to fight the battle on both fronts simultaneously.
Lastly, when you say “we’re responsible for everyone else”, I suppose what you mean is that we are responsible for voting for a political party that recognizes the need for action, and then we’re responsible for protesting and writing letters and setting up websites to inform our elected officials of our objections to pollutants. But “we”, the citizenry, and “we” our representatives in government, are actually responsible for EVERYONE: not excluding smokers who voluntarily abuse themselves. In a society where a health care system as comprehensive and forgiving as ours is in place, we have to care about smokers, because they put a strain on our mutual resources. I might get lung cancer or emphezema from breathing in the smoggy GTA air. And if I do, I’d rather not be gasping for oxygen while fighting someone who smoked two packs of DuMauriers a day for twenty years for a hospital bed in the palliative care ward.
I’m waiting eagerly for the book to come out on the 30th. You can bet I will be hunched in the lobby of the Manulife from 11am-noon that day, making my picks and standing in a hideously long line, waiting to get my 10 tickets.
Yay, festival!
(I need a movie icon… will work on that later today)
The film list is already online at the TIFF website, and the schedule will be up on the afternoon of Aug 29th (a whole 1-day head start on the panic!!):
http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2005/films_filmList.asp
If you see an overly energetic volunteer attempting to cheerfully explain for the 347th time how ticketing works to a confused patron, that might well be me 🙂
Pardon me, is that your nicotine addiction speaking?
How can I simplify my hatred of a substance that is so bad for my fellow humans? How can I simplify my disdain for and desire to thwart the industry that has grown up around this substance, when that industry profits from selling poison? When the existence of that industry and its many subsidiaries is an active demonstration of how little regard humans have for themselves or their planet?
Or were you talking about the First Amendment of the United States Constitution? In that case, I will say that you are right to voice your objection. Free speech should be a protected right, and freedom to advertise is a necessary component of running a legitimate business.
Which brings me back to my original proposition, which is that smoking should be made illegal, but the government is too pussy-whipped by the tobacco companies and their addicted constituents to really crack the hell down and do the right thing.
Drug lords can’t advertise, or sponsor sports events, or create brand names or jingles or mascots (although Dave Chappelle may have changed that, see season 2, episode 10 for more details).
So if the government is attempting to legislate against an addictive, dangerous, poisonous substance by restricting the locales where it can be used, by preventing minors from purchasing it, and by saying that advertising it is a hazard to the health of the general public, maybe they should just get some cohones and outlaw it altogether.
That was more complicated, but I think it maintained my original assertion. Smoking sucks.
It’s more like getting angry about one person getting kicked in the teeth, while you yourself belong to a gang that rounds people up en masse to kick them in the teeth. We are all individually and collectively resonsible for the ignoble air quality in the GTA, and even though the health and air quality effects of second hand smoke are much less significant, it’s easy to get on that bandwagon because it involves blaming other people.
But even that analogy is shite because advertising doesn’t kick anyone in the teeth, and, personally, I think that bureaucratic attempts to engineer culture are doomed to failure. Not only that, but Canadians’ seeming willingness to place politically correct limits on their freedom of expression disgusts me.
AND responsible for the dozens of economic choices that we make every single day through which we pay other people to piss in the wind and shit in the well.
I’ve gotta call you out on that last point. It seems backwards to artificially restrict the supply of health care (by declaring a moratorium on private funding) and then use that as an excuse to further restrict the choices of our fellow citizens.
“You’re not allowed to smoke because I pay for your health care.”
“What if I just paid for my own, then?”
“You’re not allowed to do that either.”
“So because you tell me what I’m not allowed to do, you get to tell me what I’m not allowed to do?”
But I agree that smoking is a serious bitch. Not that I think this justifies censorship — seriously, we should trust ourselves enough not to feel suddenly compelled to poison ourselves just because somebody put a logo over a tennis stadium. And if we can’t trust ourselves on that count, then keeping logos out of tennis stadiums isn’t going to solve our problems.
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You know, there’s no better way to relax after a day of crafting arguments at the computer than… crafting more arguments at the computer. 🙂
Where did I mention advertising, or not taking responsibility myself for environmental problems? Again, you’re arguing completely unrelated points, and not even the same ones I’m talking about. It’s impossible to have a discourse that way.
“What if I just paid for my own, then?”
“You’re not allowed to do that either.”
In my opinion, you are, as long as you don’t ever expose me to your smoke.
So I suppose your next rant on LJ will be about the evils of alcohol, how you have alcohol related deaths, how it affects people and how it too should be made illegal.
Right?
If this was a debate on C-span, all of you would be disqualified for unwarranted digression almost as soon as you opened your virtual mouths.
Why can’t we adhere to my topic of choice, in my chosen forum? If I wanted to talk about the environment, or the evils of booze, I would have started a thread on that topic. BUT I DIDN’T.
Please note that I am not wild about booze either. It destroys many lives, and there are a large number of persons who are afflicted with a serious addiction that they cannot control. I do not wish to engage in arguments about how alcohol fails to have the same second-hand effect that smoke does (except on unborn infants, of course) so let’s save this topic for another day.
Why don’t YOU post on your OWN journals about your OWN beefs, and either respond directly and without endless digression to my issue, or just stay out of it altogether.
Learn how to engage in a debate, people. Get some rhetorical manners going, please!
First off, your topic of choice, in your chosen forum is PUBLIC. Meaning it’s up for debate. You may not like the direction respondants are heading, but they’re still valid. You’re talking about making a vice you disagree with illegal. Booze is just as harmful as smoking. Ergo, it should be banned as well. Right?
I’m not for the banning of smoking personally. I don’t have a problem with people smoking. I do agree that smoking should be banned in enclosed public areas as non-smokers have a right to, well, not smoke.
Another thing, just because Big Tobacco advertises doesn’t make non-smokers smoke. Peer pressure, and parents smoking are generally the reasons people start and not advertising. And the lack of advertising has seen Canada lose some large events enjoyed by non-smokers & smokers alike. Most notably the Symphony of Fire. It also was a part of Montreal almost losing the F1 race there and IIRC the former DuMarier Jazz Festival is a shell of what it once was. Not to mention the Players-Forcythe Racing team that helped develop Canadian drivers). If these companies want to throw millions of dollars into these events for the little benefit it gains them, why should we say no? You, me, and a ton of people we know grew up in an era of tobacco advertising. Do we smoke? No. Why? Because we know it’s bad. Ever go to the Benson & Hedges Symphony of Fire? Did it make you want to smoke? My guess would be no. (Personally, it made me want to make Fireworks :)).
I don’t think anyone will argue with you that smoking is bad. It’s horrible and I wish more people (my parents more specifically) would quit. But legislating change like this is (IMO) ridiculous and an abuse of law.
Just my $0.02