Interesting feature in the Edmonton Journal this morning on "Great Strides in Medicine." It quotes Axel Meisen of the Alberta Research Council and includes the ban of smoking in public and work places as one of the "Great Strides" accomplishments.
"Anti-smoking laws and campaigns reduce public smoking""A clear understanding and acceptance of the link between smoking and health led to the banning of smoking in most public spaces. It's a global phenomenon, Meisen says.
'In the past, smoking was seen as a personal right, but knowing it endangers the lives of others has made most smokers more careful.'"
I helped make this happen in Alberta. I was assisting a coalition of public health advocacy and professional groups in the lobbying effort. The Libertarians hate this law but the common good has to trump individual sovereignty on occasion. This was one of them.
Anti-smoking laws in public places are immoral. The private property owner should be able to decide what to do on his own property. Danielle Smith has been clear on property rights; no one else has.
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone say anti-smoking laws are immoral? Smoking is dangerous, we all know that. I was a smoker for a number of years up until 7 1/2 months ago. I am so glad I finally quit and never had a problem with not smoking in public places. My children are non smokers and frankly their health comes before my smoking no discussion needed there.
ReplyDeleteI have an idea how to eliminate smoking that I wish would have started before I was born. how would it be that if you are not 18 by Jan 1 of 2010 you can not smoke. In order to smoke you must have a smokers I.D. card. What this would mean is when you are 55 years old if you were not 18 as of Jan 1 2010 it is illegal for you to smoke. This would eventually eliminate smoking completely. So who would have aproblem with this? perhaps the goverment that profits from smoking but not too many others I assure you of that. This isn't about rights, it's about peoples health and the health of our children. I wish it would have never been legal for me to smoke, maybe then I would not have to live with thet fact that i smoked for 30 years and I still may be in danger of becoming ill from having done it for so long. Be sure to check out my blog at www.joealbertan.blogspot.com
Joe Albertan is NOT a true conservative if he doesn't recognize and accept basic property rights.
ReplyDeleteI have more sympathy for Ken Chapman's arguments even though I don't agree with them - at least he's consistent and not a phony conservative.
I am not a TRUE conservative - never have been and never aspired to be. I have however been a Progressive Conservative and that is an enormous difference.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't care less if someone smokes themselves to death. What I hate is someone else's stink and pollution fouling the air I breathe. That air is MY PROPERTY. It impacts MY HEALTH and I have a claim on it. For the record, I also hate all the do-gooding social engineers who pretend they are interested in my health. You don't know me and you don't give a damn about me so stop the self righteous crap please.
ReplyDeleteI am all about protecting my property which is my air and my health. Other people are free to do what they want.
To Joe Alberta: while your sentiments may be well-intentioned, your proposed solution requires greater thought. What you are proposing is adding yet another prohibited substance to the long (and growing) list of prohibited substances.
ReplyDeleteAside from the debate around individual rights and freedoms v. "the greater good" (which is very often in the eye of the beholder), the indisputable fact is that prohibition creates a black market.
And black markets criminalize non-criminals, boost the revenues of organizaed crime, and increase the level of criminal activity (both violent and property offenses) in our communities.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse has quantified the "costs" to Canadian society attributable to the use (not abuse) of legal and illegal substances. It's research shows that the costs associated with the use of alcohol exceeds the total costs of all other legal (like tobacco) and illegal (like marijuana, cocaine, herion, etc.) substances combined - by a factor of almost 10:1.
We know what happened in the 13 or so years of alcohol prohibition; we know what the result of 90 years of drug prohibition has been; we know what has happened in prisons with the banning of smoking; hell we even know what the result has been from the 1000% increase in the price of tobacco (through taxation - dramatically increased smuggling and further increases in the "products" available to organized crime to grow their profits).
Over the course of the last Century, here's what we've chosen to do:
With alcohol, we've chosen to (in varying degrees from jurisidiction to jurisdiction) "control" distribution and funnel the majority of profits to government;
With tobacco, we've chosen to control distribution to a small dgree, and funnel some of the revenues to government, but the majority of profit goes to capitalist undertakings (big business);
With marijuana and other illegal drugs, we've chosen to hand everything over to organized crime.
Why? Because of ideology.
The same ideology that says, "We need a law,and once we have that it will fix everything."
Anonymous at 9:48 - how do you feel about the billions in tax dollars spent on the healthcare of smokers and their preventable diseases? How do you know we don't care about you? How can we when we don't know who you are?
ReplyDeleteOr how about the kids that have no legal capacity to choose. Joe Albertan is way, way off base.
ReplyDeleteExactly my point Ken. The diseases caused by smoking are PREVENTABLE and we pay billions because of these diseases. This comes down to taking responsibilty for ones own actions and some people just can't face that. As far as kids that have no legal capacity to choose, I can tell you I wish there had been something in place when I started smoking to keep me from ever starting, it was a choice I would have rather not had the option to make. I have taken responsibilty for my actions and I quit because it was of my own admission "stupid". To turn this into a debate about rights is irresponsible and avoiding the real issue and that is the health of those in our society. We don't allow access to hand guns in Canada and that has a direct effect on our crime rate involving guns, smoking kills more people than guns do in the U.S. and they have one of the highest murder rates in the world. Smoking can be campared to having loaded guns on the street, the only differeence is people point the gun at themselves.
ReplyDelete