{"id":985,"date":"2008-05-03T10:54:42","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T17:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2008\/05\/03\/persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-every"},"modified":"2008-08-22T11:25:25","modified_gmt":"2008-08-22T18:25:25","slug":"persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-everyone-else-to-their-own-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2008\/05\/03\/persecuting-smokers-and-leaving-everyone-else-to-their-own-devices\/","title":{"rendered":"Persecuting smokers …and leaving everyone else to their own devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an editorial in today’s Times-Colonist<\/em>, Persecuting smokers<\/a>, which includes a reference to BC Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall<\/a> that has me scratching my head.<\/p>\n

The editorial is about the Lower Mainland municipality of White Rock’s plan to ban smoking in all outdoor public places by 2010.\u00a0 This would include streets, parks, beaches: everywhere.\u00a0 The editorial notes that this “looks more like a plan to persecute smokers than a strategy for protecting non-smokers.”\u00a0 Agree.\u00a0 Dr. Kendall, meanwhile, is fully supportive of this plan.<\/p>\n

Why am I scratching my head?\u00a0 I’m just not clear on why Dr. Kendall thinks that banning smoking in all public spaces (including streets, beaches, anywhere<\/em>) would “‘de-normalize smoking’ so that fewer youths are tempted to take up the habit,” while at the same time<\/em> Dr. Kendall also advocates in favor of freely dispensing needles to addicts (who promptly take their needle and shoot up openly on the street or in a park, incidentally also in full view of “youths”) and handing out “crack kits” (pipes, mouth condoms) to addicts, who (again) then openly ingest these substances on the street.\u00a0 There seems to be no concern over the social disorder on the street<\/em> that results from the sort of half-way “harm reduction” that simply involves giving addicts the tools, leaving them to continue as before.<\/p>\n

I don’t smoke, although I used to smoke.\u00a0 I loathe the smell of smoke and ashtrays.\u00a0 But I think there’s something really sick about our increasingly blinkered society that we’ll go after smokers, while we hand the streets over to users (and pushers — oh, yes, so many pushers in Victoria) of hard drugs.\u00a0 It’s as though the nanny state is in overload mode.\u00a0 It can’t “solve” the drug issue, so it downloads it to the street (that’s us).\u00a0 It can’t “solve” the problems of addiction and mental health (and resultant homelessness — and crime<\/em>, typically property crime to support drug habits), so it downloads them to the street (that’s us).\u00a0 But it can appear “forward-thinking” and “health-minded” when it comes to “us” (citizens, who unlike the chronically homeless, can still be fined — the latter are beyond fining), so downloads another nanny-esque ban on us.\u00a0\u00a0 We’re just supposed to hold still and take it, just as we’re supposed to hold still for all the other downloading.<\/p>\n

The editorial disagrees with a ban on all outdoor\/ public space smoking, and succeeds in making a critique of Kendall’s stance on smoking by pointing out that we ban the consumption of alcohol on the street, but “youths” still drink.\u00a0 But it doesn’t make the connection that we have given up on controlling the use of hard drugs on our streets.\u00a0 It suggests instead that: “Smokers are a dying breed. We shouldn’t be so hasty to take away what few places they have left to indulge their habits.”<\/p>\n

Oh really?\u00a0 First, show me that smokers are a dying breed, unless that’s meant literally of course.\u00a0 And second, is this “time will take care of it” attitude what’s letting our streets go to hell with regard to hard drugs?<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an editorial in today’s Times-Colonist, Persecuting smokers, which includes a reference to BC Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall that has me scratching my head. The editorial is about the Lower Mainland municipality of White Rock’s plan to ban smoking in all outdoor public places by 2010.\u00a0 This would include streets, parks, beaches: everywhere.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social_critique"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}