About fifteen years ago I was walking through a Vancouver park with a friend of mine, a strict vegetarian who was obsessively concerned with her health and with what went into her body. When she saw someone about ten or fifteen yards away from us sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette, she became agitated, and started talking about her right to breathe clean air. Thing is, the smoker was actually downwind from us; my acquaintance was not being tormented by any actual violation of her lung-space, but rather by her own thoughts, by the idea that her well-tended health was being violated, and she seemed mulishly, self-righteously unable to see the distinction.
I mention this because the executive director of Action on Smoking and Health recently called for a ban on smoking in parks and playgrounds in Edmonton, and now City Council is debating whether or not to implement the proposed ban. The chief executive of the Lung Association of Alberta, who has come out in support of the proposed changes, noted that “In the indoor world, we started with small areas that were smoke-free…and moved on from there.”
Boy, have they ever moved on. It might be hard to get overly worked up about a ban on smoking in playgrounds – although even that is probably a bit of an overreaction – but…city parks? The last time I checked, the outdoors is a pretty big place.
Even Edmonton’s Mayor Stephen Mandel, who has a tendency to see the city as a community league or a social club that every resident has voluntarily joined, said “There are all kinds of rules and regulations, but where does government start and where does government finish?”
Well, if the nanny-statists have their way, it finishes one precisely-measured finger length inside the opening at the end of your alimentary canal:
Anti-smoking advocates upped their demands on Wednesday, calling on the province to outlaw smoking in provincial parks.
Seriously.
Keep your curtains drawn and your bathroom door locked at all times, folks…
Horny Toad – exactly! 🙂
And I also go around the neighbourhood with one of those plastic thingys to pick up garbage.
My problem isn’t with liberties. I just think today’s society is so lame that it has to be regulated.
KevinB, I grew up like that too. But things have changed. Kids grow up under house arrest, and have no idea how to behave when they are finally let outside the house at age 16. This is why young pedestrians drive me crazy. They don’t know how to safely cross a road.
Not too far away from me, there’s a farmer who’s had his field burned three out of the last five years by people throwing lit cig butts out of the window. A ban on smoking while driving? Unrealistic. But how would this guy feel?
Again, it’s because people have no sense of responsibility. And then we pass laws, so they become less responsible. And we pass more laws, etc etc.
Until we start disciplining each other, (telling teens not to swear in public on the bus), and telling other people’s kids how to behave, and telling guys on the bus to give their seats up for women/elderly, we’re not going back to a civil and sensible society.
They started with the smokers.
Us farters are next, you just watch….
Exactly, SDH (11:21), it’s about the creeping encroachment by nanny-statists, which has happened so gradually that now even the most reasonable people are inured to the inevitability of it.
A couple of months ago a NY State Assemblyman (a Democrat, naturally) introduced a bill that would prohibit chefs from using salt:
“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food.”
The Assemblyman “says his bill is designed to save lives.” That’s always the angle: “I’ve got my fingers up your (*) because I’m looking out for you…”
Just as anyone reading his bill forty years ago would have assumed that it was a joke, they would have assumed that a ban on smoking in national parks, put in place in the name of protecting the lungs of others in the park, was a joke.
The effect that video gaming and online gaming/surfing/chatting, etc. is having on young people will far outweigh any negative effect of second hand smoke, smoking cigarettes in general, smoking weed, crack or just being a plain old junkie.
Kids are becoming belligerent, fat, illiterate dough-heads right before our very eyes. Anybody see or hear of a ban on ‘net access time or a 1 hour/24 chip that kills PS3?
I’m a tad surly these days apparently. Smoking doesn’t kill people – I kill people. (sarc)
Are you defending my honour, bleetymouth? Thank you! 🙂
(Challenge Bennett to a duel!)
Well loki I have some news for ya. Canada banned the perfect nicotine delivery system that has one of the highest, if not the highest rate for helping people quit smoking. My guess is that there was no way to ban it or tax it being the reason. These moral cops seem to think that putting something in your mouth that even looks like a cigarette, but is not is the same thing even though it is odorless, so much for health risks being the reason for the ban. I’m speaking of the electronic cigarette -you can smoke in restaurants and parks anywhere because it is odorless- tastes like a real cigarette, and contains nicotine (if you want nicotine cartridges can choose not to) but no tar or other toxic chemicals whatsoever. If I would have known about these before the ban, I would have bought them up. This is the stupidest ban by Health Canada to date.
Just because someone smokes, you brainwashed PC(by leftists too boot) zealots (being kind here I can’t say what I really think – this is Kate’s blog) think they are second class citizens. Many of the world’s greatest minds smoked. It is a way to feel superior and to control another person while fooling themselves into thinking they have any real control as to when they will die.
Revnant Dream – dead on analysis.
Kevin B. – excellent comments
Link for electronic cigarettes:
http://www.electroniccigarettesource.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/03/27/electronic-smoking.html
Canada banned e-cigarettes despite them being much safer than patches, gum or Zyban/Champix. My guess is they can not tax them and they can be smoked in public because they are oderless and contain no toxic smoke. Even samoking a fake cigarette is frowned upon by the smoking nazies.
Revnand – superb 100% true
Kevin B. Good comments
“If someone pooped on a sidewalk in front of your house, you’d be up in arms banning pooping on the sidewalk. Smoking is the same thing.
Posted by: Aaron at May 4, 2010 4:31 PM
Oh yeah? How many flies do you see around an ash-tray?
If someone crapped on the sidewalk in front of my house he’d get his arse kicked. You want to stand there and smoke, puff away.
“I think we can all recognize the misogyny in these quotes as being resultant of men who 1) aren’t able to sexually please women or 2) have never had the chance to try.”
That’s what all the homos(no homo) say.
I think Mouth needs a mint.
You’ve officially been Tea-bagged!
Greatest Rap quote evah:
“If a B*%ch doesn’t cum when I cum, the B*#ch cums when I come back”- B-Legit
No not you Mamba, I was referring to the campaign being waged by why I call Coyotes (not Cougars) to convince men they are not simply prey to be devoured by these wily old women.
Since you mentioned it, my mental picture of you is very close to the depiction of the half naked fantasy super chick commonly depicted in murals on the side of a Van in the 1970’s. Am I getting warm?
(Yellow motorcycle body suit, Hatori Hanzo sword, you know the deal.
Now ferchrissake behave, Kate’s back from China.)
*cough* – I am strongly opposed to these gratuitous state infringements upon our freedoms!
Thanks for the E-cigarette link no-one. Doesn’t surprise me in the least that they’d ban it as smoking of conventional cigarettes does the following things:
(1) it brings in government revenues
(2) it ensures that people die early and aren’t a drain on the socialized medical system.
(3) employment of the otherwise unemployable on reserves as people seek means of not paying high cigarette taxes
I can think of numerous elderly COPD patients who would have benefited from electronic cigarettes as they weren’t able to get down to less than 2-3 cigarettes/day. Not much for someone who’s young with healthy lungs but guaranteed to decrease the lung function of a 70 year old with COPD fairly quickly. Also a lot safer than smoking a real cigarette while wearing oxygen, but again, got to reduce those medical costs somehow.
When people start to cut scenes of smoking common to that era, from great movies from another time. Just for Modern neurotic behavior to hide it existed is like ancient Egyptians scrubbing the name off statures or King lists, the ones they didn’t like. Magnifying the ones they did.Trying to disappear there names.
Like wise with this habit. Like the obsessions against smoking are going to last anymore than the Greeks or Romans prohibitions before them.
JMO