Burn Smoker, Burn!

Somewhere along the way, the well-intentioned idea to inform smokers that their habit was more likely to kill them than a round of Russian roulette turned into a modern-day witch hunt in the name of second-hand smoke, child welfare and balanced budgets. We are told that smokers cost money, they kill innocent people, and quite frankly, they smell bad and have yellow teeth. And being an ever-congenial bunch, smokers have let themselves be kicked out of offices, bars, restaurants, and just about anywhere a non-smoker might cross paths with them, and obediently retired to their homes and basements to puff quietly and await that final edict to seal their fate.

If modern smokers had lived in Salem a few hundred years ago, they would have politely strapped themselves to a pole and lit the match.

Admittedly, there's not much good one can say about a habit that causes more forms of disease and ultimate death than a politician has promises, and it was only right that we took the time and effort to set the public record straight on the subject after decades of doctors helping people pick a "better, cooler smoke," and parents buying little Johnny a pack of Luckys on his sixteenth birthday. However strange it might seem to anyone who has ever tried to smoke a cigarette and enjoyed that lovely sensation akin to having just inhaled a super-heated blast of acid mixed with cement dust, the fact is people somehow manage to have another, and another, and before you can say "Where'd that monkey come from?" they're hooked better than a gaffed trout.

Smoking kills over 45,000 people annually in Canada, so do keep that in mind the next time you have the urge to pave your lungs with tar.

But it's the crusade against the "ravages of second-hand smoke," as Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman likes to put it, that has me wondering whether the government, doctors, and people who think nothing of a jaunt to the corner store in a smog-spewing SUV to buy some Twinkies have either their priorities or their minds in order.

At best estimate, second-hand smoke kills approximately 1000 people a year in Canada: 300 from cancer, and 700 from heart disease (though no one seems to have considered the possible effect of constant nagging and disapproving faces from family and friends). Yet, the most recent estimate of deaths from air pollution is 5800 annually in Ontario alone, and climbing at roughly the same percentage rate as the gross tonnage of your average luxury car. Auto accidents kill 3000 people a year in this country, and obesity and diabetes rates are rising so fast Stats Can keeps running out of graph paper trying to keep up with them. Even so, I see more and larger vehicles on the roads every day, with drivers spending more time dialing their cell phones, combing their hair, or sipping their coffees than paying attention to what they're doing with their speeding, 4000-pound missiles, while they drive to the local fast food outlet to snack on Big Macs, french fries, and corn dogs and wonder why they don't fit behind the steering wheel when they're done.

If the anti-smoking brigade ever tackled these problems, we'd all be riding bicycles and eating rice cakes by week's end.

Then there are the children to consider, though the next time someone waves at their nose like Queen Elizabeth dealing with a sudden swarm of tsetse flies at the first whiff of cigarette smoke, go take a good look at their child's safety seat in the back of their car and see if they've got it installed properly. You see, the newest rage is banning smoking in cars because all that smoking residue leeches into the air and will turn your children into tumours before their twelfth birthday. Yet, in a recent enforcement blitz of drivers by Ontario police, 85 per cent of drivers didn't have their child's seat properly installed. Of course, the fine for smoking in a public place in Ontario runs up to $1000 for a first offense and $5000 for the second, while the fine for not securing your child properly in a moving vehicle is a paltry $90.

What was I saying about priorities?

And contrary to popular opinion, smokers are more cash cow than expensive patient. The federal tax take from tobacco in Canada tops $3 billion, and in Ontario that number is $1.5 billion and soon to rise. Couple that with the little-mentioned but all-too-real fact that people over 65 accounted for a grossly disproportionate 43 per cent of health care spending in 2001, with smokers having about as much chance of reaching that age as a chicken has of surviving a highway crossing during rush hour, and you might take to stuffing cigarettes in people's mouths every time you see a budget shortfall on the horizon.

So why the furor, fervor and overall obsession over smoking, and particularly second-hand smoke? Smokers have been warned ad nauseam, to the point that you could make a good case for having them committed for taking up the habit. There is a long list of troubles and public health concerns that far outweigh that of second-hand smoke, and between tax dollars and early mortality you couldn't have a better, more financially supportive member of society than a smoker.

But, then again, I assume there were some witches a while back that wondered what all the fuss was about, too. Who ever said it had to make sense?