Smokers Rights Canada

The following is my response to a National “we-[especially-Terrence-Corcoran]-would-never-accept-a-dime-from-the-tobacco-industry” Post article entitled, “Shaming smokers makes it harder to quit: study.”

In short, the smokescreen, pardon the pun… I mean, the article… is about a study/report by a group of UBC researchers. The very first sentence of the article sets the [bullshit] tone: “Years of anti-smoking laws and campaigns have amounted to a public shaming of smokers… ” (emphasis mine, throughout). And the crap continues…

One study subject whined, “You really are labeled as a bad person if you smoke.”

And Kirsten Bell, lead author of a paper just published on the issue, joined the chorus of whiners, claiming, “People are made to feel really, really bad about their smoking and are treated quite badly…”! In her very next breath, however, Bell provides a very small glimmer of truth when she says, “They [smokers] feel really negatively about themselves…”

Bell goes on to suggest that there is some sort of a contrast between “how smokers are treated and the NON-JUDGMENTAL, ‘harm-reduction’ approach now widely applied by public health to people with other addictions.”…the clear — and FALSE — implication being that we (anti-tobacco activists) and/or “public health” people are ‘judgmental’ toward smokers.

My point, as alluded to by Gar Mahood (Non-Smokers’ Rights Association, Toronto): Whether it be the ‘OPINIONS’ of smokers themselves, their drug [nicotine] dealers (the pushers in pinstripes at the tobacco industry) or any of the industry’s well-paid (albeit with blood-stained money) puppets, ‘the tobacco-control movement has NOT tried to stigmatize smokers, individually or collectively.’

As smoking bans continue to expand, many smokers (and even some non-smoking ‘sympathizers’) – especially those who belong to so-called “smokers’ rights” groups – have developed a major “Woe is me!” (or, “Woe are we!”) mentality. They are whiners who want all of the “freedoms”, “choices” and “rights” that were once thought to be part of the smoking ritual, but none of the responsibilities that normally go along with all such freedoms/choices/rights. NONE WHATSOEVER!

Support Errol Povah in his Journey for a Tobacco Free World: http://tobaccofreeworld.ca/

I would also suggest that many smokers have a serious love/hate relationship with smoking, cigarettes (often thought of as their ‘best friends’… always there for them, through good times and bad, blah, blah, blah) and, ultimately, themselves! Deep down inside, many of them desperately want to quit, but won’t/can’t…for one valid — or, most likely, INVALID — reason or another.

Bottom line: No legitimate anti-tobacco activist that I know – and I know many of them, from all over the world – is the least bit interested in the “public shaming” of smokers…or has ever ‘labeled’ any smoker as a “bad person.” Nor has anyone I know ever “treated [any smoker] quite badly” or in a ‘judgmental’ way…unless, for some warped reason, you somehow consider reasonable and ever-expanding smoking bans to be part of treating smokers badly.
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A story by Carole MacNeil on CBC News: Sunday documenting the cave-in by the Federal government on the prosecution of the tobacco industry for corporate involvement in criminal activity. Features interviews with Neil Collishaw of Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada and former tobacco executive Paul Finlayson.

Part 1(Quicktime video, 14 minutes)

Part 2 (Quicktime video, 8 1/2 minutes)

This letter appeared, with no response, on mychoice.ca:

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LETTER FROM IMPERIAL TOBACCO

Dear Arminda,

As you know, Imperial Tobacco Canada has advised MyChoice / MonChoix that regretfully it will be unable to continue its support of the organization in 2009. The growth of illicit trade in Canada, which now tops 40% in Quebec and Ontario, has forced the company to refocus its strategic objectives. Imperial Tobacco Canada has been very pleased with the success of MyChoice over the last four years. In 2004, Imperial Tobacco Canada and the other members of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council (CTMC) provided financial support for MyChoice to become a reality in Ontario. In 2005, the CTMC assisted MonChoix in Québec to become active. In 2008, Imperial Tobacco Canada decided to continue its financial support of these organizations when the other members of the CTMC dropped out.

Imperial Tobacco Canada has watched with pride as MyChoice and MonChoix grew from a concept to a virtual organization with over 50,000 members. With you as its president, MyChoice / MonChoix has become a rational and clear voice for the rights of smokers with governments and the Canadian media. It is our hope that you will be able to continue your valuable work representing the views of smokers.

Imperial Tobacco Canada hopes that MyChoice / MonChoix will continue to articulate the opinions and views of smokers to the greater society and we wish you and the organization good luck in all your future endeavours.

Thank you.

Imperial Tobacco Canada

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No response from Ms. Mota.

Article by Keith Fraser in The Province: Tenant seeks injunction to stop neighbour smoking, or click here for a PDF.

Mina Erian Mina, a retired actor living in Vancouver’s West End, has suffered various health problems, including respiratory injuries, bronchospasm, reduced chest expansion, chest tightness, aggravation of coronary artery disease, loss of sleep, fatigue and anxiety due to a smoking neighbour.

This is, to start with, a “good news” story. A court in Quebec ruled in favour of Olesia Koretski, a landlord who had a problem with a smoking tenant.

The case was actually pretty cut and dried. The words “no smokers” were clearly visible on a form filled out by the tenant as part of the lease application, but the tenant proceeded to smoke pretty much non-stop after moving in on August 1, 2006.

You can read a story about this by Jan Ravensbergen in the Montreal Gazette here: Final bell sounds in smoking battle. This article, however, leaves an important issue unresolved: Who paid for the legal costs of the tenant, Sandra Fowler?

The article mentioned mychoice.ca and its tobacco-industry-appointed President, Arminda Mota. It also mentioned that mychoice.ca was funded with $2.5 million from the tobacco industry (a lot of money for a web site), but didn’t mention that the tobacco industry is the sole source of funding for mychoice.ca.

Most important, neither Mota, Fowler, or anyone in the tobacco industry was willing to confirm or deny whether the tobacco industry paid Ms. Fowler’s legal expenses.

The public, especially members of the public who are landlords, need to know this. If landlords run the risk of going up against the tobacco industry every time they rent an apartment to someone, it becomes “the cost of doing business”. And asthmatic and pregnant women such as Ms. Koretski have the right to know that the tobacco industry regards them as targets.

So, if you’re an investigative reporter, make some phone calls. You might have better luck with getting answers than Jan Ravensbergen did.

“It is not the government of Canada’s policy to allow children to import tobacco products into Canada.” – John Brent, spokesman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day

Are you sure, John?

The news from mychoice.ca is that Nancy Daigneault is no longer president of it. She has “moved on”, but there’s no indication of where she went.

One one hand, the job market for professional liars like Daigneault has been pretty good for the past few years. On the other hand, if a prospective employer were to ask her for a list of what she actually accomplished during her tenure as president of mychoice.ca, it would be a very short list.

The new president is Arminda Mota. Huh? How did that happen? The “members” of mychoice.ca (they have now raised this to 45,000) certainly didn’t get a chance to vote on it. So, who made this decision? British American Tobacco? The Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council? It’s a good question to ask if Ms. Mota should ever appear on a radio phone-in show.

One of her first actions as president was to discontinue the forum on the mychoice.ca site. The excuse given for this was that mychoice.ca had its budget cut, and they couldn’t afford it any more.

Here’s the real story. You can buy a hosting account from Dreamhost for $100/year that provides pretty much unlimited bandwidth and disk space. Dreamhost also supplies a one-click install for phpbb. There is, of course, an administrative cost; somebody has to check the site each day and remove spam postings, as well as postings that might attract the attention of lawyers looking for a defamation case. Or law enforcement officers looking for threats of violence.

Mychoice.ca had a guy on the payroll to perform this function. It’s hard to believe that they couldn’t afford to pay him. Even it you’re dumb enough to believe this, if mychoice.ca really had 45,000 members, instead of 45, they should have had very little difficulty locating an volunteer to take on this responsibility.

It’s just another example of the contempt that the tobacco industry has for their loyal customers.

From Frank magazine: “Joni Mitchell’s lament for our desecrated environment”. Song titles include “Big Yellow Fingers” and “Wild Smokers Don’t Run Very Fast”.

Click here to view the full-size image.

This time, it’s from George Jonas instead of Terence Corcoran. Here’s a response:

Editor, National Post;

With the publication of If you won’t shoot, don’t Taser by George Jonas (Nov. 24), the public discussion of the relationship of tobacco with death and disease has gone full circle.

People in Denial about this relationship have put considerable energy in identifying alternative causes for the many illnesses caused by tobacco; chlorine in swimming pools, x-rays, increased radiation in the environment, even “bad karma”. To relate just one of many cases I am familiar with, Californian Mary Herrin chose to identify her doctor as the cause of her two heart attacks, instead of her cigarette habit; Ms. Herrin died at the age of 58.

What Mr. Jonas has now given us, based on what he calls his own “mini-inquiry”, is that the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport was caused by Dziekanski’s cigarette habit, not by over-eager use of tasers by the police. Jonas, however, was not willing to blame Dziekanski for his own addiction to cigarettes. Nor was he willing to blame the manufacturers of the cigarettes Dziekanski consumed, even though those manufacturers lied to the public for many years about the adverse effects of their products, including the addictive nature of them.

Instead, Jonas chose to blame “Big Nanny”.

This is silly nonsense. No “nanny”, big or small, deprived Dziekanski of the ability to communicate in either of Canada’s official languages. No nanny separated him from the relatives he was supposed to meet at the airport. No nanny caused him to “create a disturbance”, attracting the attention of the police. No nanny caused the police to over-react.

George Jonas may well be looking for a big nanny to change his diapers for him. Good luck with finding a volunteer.

Robert Broughton

Here’s a worthwhile article by Bryan Farrell in In These Times: Tobacco Stains: The global footprint of a deadly crop.

Excerpt: “Without even factoring in the paper wrapping, packaging and print advertisements—which require as much paper by weight as the tobacco being grown—nearly 600 million trees are felled each year to provide the fuel necessary for drying out the tobacco. That means one in eight trees cut down each year worldwide is being destroyed for tobacco production.”