Over the past year I've found myself defending people I never thought I'd defend, like Dalton McGuinty and Michael Coren. Today, in that same I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this vein: smokers.
My love has an on-again, off-again, love-hate relationship with cigarettes. My mom has smoked pretty much her whole life. I once ditched a woman I was planning on marrying for a whole bunch of very good reasons, but the straw that broke my back was her taking up smoking and rapidly progressing into a two-pack-a-day hacker. Cigarettes are number one on my personal shit list. They even rank ahead of guns, which serve no real purpose besides killing things but at least don't give their users all manner of diseases and make their clothes stink.
But we've gone way over the line demonizing smokers in this province. Way, way over the line.
I always found it odd, visiting any ol' store in the U.S. and seeing big displays of cigarettes (and booze) right out there on the sales floor as if they were cases of pop or stacks of paper towels. Here in Ontario, things are a wee bit different. If you want to buy alcohol for consumption at home, you must go to The Beer Store or an L.C.B.O. (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) outlet. There are no other legal options short of making your own. Cigarettes are a little easier to come by: just go to any variety store or smoke shop. Most grocery stores carry them, too. You used to be able to buy cigarettes in drugstores before the government decided pharmacies were only for things to make you well, not sick.
Or you can visit an Indian reserve and get your smokes on the cheap. (I know, they're "Natives", not "Indians"...but these are the same people responsible for the terrorism in Caledonia, and until they renounce terrorism and decide that Canadian law applies to them, I 'reserve' the right to call them anything I please...and it doesn't please me to call them "Natives" of Canada.)
Anyway, the stores are right out in the open and they do a booming trade--which isn't surprising considering the difference in price. A large pack (25 cigs) retails in Ontario for nearly ten dollars, after tax, and there's no discount on buying a carton. Whereas on the reserve, you can find a carton of smokes for $12--no tax.
As of June 1 this year, it's the law: no more cigarette displays, and clerks can not legally sell you your poison unless you name it specifically.
This is, pardon my French, bullshit. I'm not alone in my opinion of the bullshittedness of this new law, either.
First and most important, it's bullshit because it won't work. Kids don't get shanghaied into smoking by huge powerwalls in convenience stores. Kids can't buy smokes in convenience stores, or anywhere else: the fines for selling to anyone under 19 are astronomical.
Kids start smoking because their parents smoke...because their friends smoke...because smoking is something the rebellious kids do, and that makes it 'cool'. Or because, as I'll discuss below, it's in their genes. They get their smokes off parents, friends that are of age, total strangers...and yes, the odd store that plays Russian roulette selling to minors. So children can't see the cigarettes they're not allowed to buy. Big flippin' deal.
Second, this law is bullshit because it discriminates against sellers of a legal product. Store owners had to dismantle their old displays and hide away their stock of smokes at their own expense. The law supposedly applies to those stores 'on the reserve' as well, but who's going to enforce that? The Indians have their own police force (on some reserves) and on others a provincial cop ventures alone at his own peril.
Third, this is but one more measure to demonize the addict, rather than helping him or her. First we put gross pictures on the packs, trying to scare people into quitting and keep young people from starting (cool! Gross pictures! Let's collect the whole set!) Then we forced smokers outside into their own little leper colonies, which reinforced how shameful the act of smoking is...but, again...did nothing to help them stop.
I predict it won't be long before Children's Aid will be able to seize your kid and take her away because you smoke. Oh, that'll learn ya.
Several years ago, I wrote a blog entry wherein I asserted that cigarettes are not addictive. I stand by that: for some people, they aren't. Addiction seems to fall along a continuum, just as it does with alcohol: there are many people who can drink a beer every now and again and have no desire to drink any more, while others have one sip of booze and are hooked right through the bag. Cigarettes are the same: we all know social smokers who only light up in bars, or wherever...while some people continue to smoke even after they've been diagnosed with the terminal fruit of years of smoking. I think it's safe to say that if you smoke after somebody tells you the next one will kill you, you're well and truly addicted.
Recent research shows that the susceptibility to cigarette addiction--indeed, the propensity to start smoking in the first place--is genetic in nature. In other words, IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT.
It's not their fault, but we continue to treat addicts as if they were criminals. And for what? Sure, they're killing themselves, slowly, most of them--but they're not harming anyone else overmuch, because, contrary to everything you've heard in the last fifteen years, secondhand smoke just isn't that dangerous.
Have fun with that link. I've gotta tell ya, the more topics I research and studies I actually read, the less likely I am to believe anything just because it's preceded by the words "Studies show..."
So what we have here is a case of addicts harming themselves. What are we doing to help these people quit? Smoking cessation aids are not covered under our health care plan, and the ones that actually have a decent chance of working are as expensive as the cigarettes themselves. Many people are allergic to one drug that has proven effective in people who aren't (Zyban). My wife's most recent experiment with another well-regarded drug called Champix did get her off smokes,until she started suffering from a known side effect: suicidal ideation. We cut the dose in half, trying to find a balance between not smoking and not thinking about killing herself.
She's back on the cigarettes.
It goes without saying I don't want my love to kill herself smoking. Or kill herself trying not to smoke. But to someone with her genetic markers, kicking the habit is very difficult. So I propose we allow her, and everyone like her, to smoke the safe cigarettes, the ones that won't hurt her.
You're thinking candy cigarettes, aren't you? I'm not. I'm thinking of real, honest-to-God smokes...but safe ones. All the nicotene (which is the addictive, relatively harmless stuff in cigarettes) with none of the "tars" and miscellaneous carcinogens.
Impossible? Not at all.
I'll quote from Spider Robinson here, whose idea this is:
Harvard Medical School just released [winter 1997-98] a definitive study of a possible alternative nicotene delivery vehicle. They tracked thousands of subjects, for more than twenty years and conclusively proved this substance is absolutely medically transparent. Smoking fifty cigarettes a day for twenty years has no significant effect on lung cancer rate, emphysema rate, asthma rate, measured lung function or overall death rate. Sprinkle nicotene on it, and all the smokers could live long happy lives, harming no one. Extremely happy lives, if they like. It's called cannabis.
[...W]e can grow cannabis with no psychoactive ingredient--hemp clothing is sold everywhere. So why don't we grow a lot more, steep it in nicotene and make safe cigarettes?
--THE CRAZY YEARS, pp. 39-40
Why not, indeed?
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