So, the Nanny State in it’s unending moral superiority has decided that it should be illegal for adults to purchase and consume flavored tobacco products, as of July 5th 2010.
It was already illegal for children to purchase and consume tobacco products, so this new law does nothing but ban a product in a way that would have made the prohibitionists proud.
Instead of strengthening educational programs for children and enforcement policies against retailers that allow the purchase of tobacco products by children – which is the real problem here – our comrades in government and various lobby groups figure it is just easier for them to get rid of them all together.
Now if youth want to smoke they will simply move on to the myriad of other tobacco products that are still, and after July 5th, will still be available. Is it the plan to ban those now too?
More likely, youth will simply move on to illegal tobacco products that are much more affordable if they want to smoke.
Congratulations!
Perhaps now that same fervent mindset which led to this law will be applied to something useful, such as eradicating obesity, or reducing adverse medical events – both of which kill upwards of 17,000 Canadians each year. —Dartmouthy
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2010.
“decided that it should be illegal for adults to purchase and consume flavored tobacco products, as of July 5th 2010”
really? I read the paper almost every day and haven’t heard about this!
since when?
and why?
stooooopid lawmakers…
Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920s and it won’t now. What fucking foolishness – if kids want to smoke, they’ll smoke.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/st…
In my opinion, with the knowledge we have now, smokes should not be taxed, and people who smoke should waive their public heathcare in regards to smoking related issues…
And no shit it will never happen… Just stirring the pot…Idiot smokers… GO!
Can I waive my public health care in general Logic? I’d like to. I don’t want anyone else paying for my healthcare, or my retirement for that matter.
I’m more than happy to get my tax dollars back and pay for the healthcare that I want out of my own pocket, and not have to listen to anymore holier than thou anti-tobacco nazis.
Give me a choice in the matter and I’ll gladly take you up on the offer.
I wonder what will happen to tobacco products like cigars that have things like rum infused glues?
At any rate, this law is ridiculous. It’s all purported on the basis that these products ease kids into smoking. However, these products have been on the market for years, and it’s only going to open a new market for the smugglers.
oh, this is national!
lovely…
well there goes the odd mint cigarillo …
I’ve casually smoked cigarillos for years and I haven’t started smoking cigs regularly. By “casually smoked” I mean I go weeks or maybe months without smoking any. Laws like this are why alot of liberals are laughing stocks.
dartmouthy, who really gives a flying fuck what the gooberment wants anymore. they can take the old bag that was her, and shove their stupid laws up their wazoo.
and also, don’t forget where this was reported from, lala land of the north, calgary.
It is all about the tax revenue. These “flavoured cigarettes” are actually classed as cigarillos and thus can be sold under lower tax rates. They plugged the hole.
This NDP government has very effectively self destructed. The NDP *was* a socialist party for the working people. They get into power and the first thing they do is raise cigarette taxes. Who smokes? The poor. Who voted NDP? The poor.
Not so smart. I had such high hopes for more. Oh well, just goes to show that democracy really is horrifically broken and is best ignored.
Next, they follow through on banning cigarillos in in order to force the poor to pay higher tax rates.
Then they raise the GST. Three strikes, you’re out. (And I didn’t even vote – and I never will now for sure.)
There are a number of employers in this city who provide smuggled tobacco to their employees so that they can survive.
And all you righteous non-smokers can fuck right off immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 – go immediately to the fuck you zone.
I intend to make a freedom to information act inquiry to determine to the total annual tobacco products taxes revenue in Nova Scotia. Then I will obtain the total operating budget of the nova scotia department of health. Then I will post both. Then you will all shut the fuck up and be thankful.
If a 2% hike in the GST will bring in a half a billion in two years, imagine what the tobacco taxes are raking in.
It’s almost as bad as the dope racket. The two are linked though – shame and requirement for camouflage are excellent tools of exploitation.
Fuck the police, fuck the NDP, fuck the government, fuck democracy. Bring back the Queen! She’ll let us smoke.
I remember hearing about this when I was still in high school, about 2-3 years ago. I don’t care about it really, until someone told me that this ban includes things like flavored papers and such….does anyone know if this is true?
Oh, and oldhand, go to the Congo or something, I’m pretty sure you can do whatever you want there; you’ll love it! No democracy or any silly smoking laws.
Oooh it stings so melectric. Please stop. Such a powerful counter to my arguments. OK now get ready to counter this. (I’m sure it will be brilliant)
Oh right, it’s national. I forgot. (NS NDP bitch stands however – and while on the subject why has no one questioned that the first MLA expense audit in provincial history happens in the first months of the first NDP government in provincial history? Coincidence? I think not)
OK, now on to the national issue and Health Canada. (the idiots)
Part 1:
Back in the late 90s Health Canada was running a series of anti-smoking TV ads featuring big scary pictures images related to the toxins in tobacco smoke – prominently featuring arsenic as most people recognise and fear it. So I called them up and asked them if they knew why arsenic was present in tobacco. They admitted they did not. So I explained to them that soils naturally high in arsenic and more commonly agricultural lands contaminated with arsenic from old pesticide use have been banned by the FDA for food use. However, it is perfectly OK by them to grow tobacco on it and poison the smokers. I further explained that all the other toxins they mention (e.g. benzo-a-pyrene – one of the worst) would also be present in sawdust cigarettes and all the contaminants they mentioned were also present in automobile exhaust.
The ads were pulled that day.
Part 2 (actually earlier, but related directly to part 3):
In the early nineties cigarette manufacturers responded to changing Health Canada labeling requirements and monitoring by modifying filters to game the system. Resulting in filters far more flammable than the previous generation of materials. (around 1993 my ashtry started catching fire all the time where it never used to). I never called to complain.
Part 3:
This is the worst – almost a deal breaker and almost enough to drive me to those awful smuggled ones mentioned earlier ($20 for bag of 200 – you all know the ones I’m talking about…).
In 2009 I noticed that my cigarettes would go out if not being sucked on madly. WTF? Then I noticed that they no longer got stale and dried out like tobacco has done for the last 100 years but instead got wetter and wetter until they were unsmokable (particularly bad in july and august). I did a little digging and holy fuck what did I find?
Wait first, let me tell you that I smoke the most expensive brand available because it has no additives – just tobacco – that is all.
OK, now get this. I found out that Health Canada had mandated that cigarette manufacturers add GLYCOL (FUCKING GLYCOL!!!) to all cigarettes in an amount such that it keeps the moisture content so that the cigarette will self extinguish if not being active smoked (read madly sucked on). Glycols are hygroscopic (take up water from the air).
So I had this nice (overtaxed) additive free tobacco product that I loved and HEALTH CANADA fucking adds glycol to it!
There are limits on glycols in drinking water, that I guarantee are far less than what Health Canada has added to my tobacco. Fuckers. That is pure evil. Pure evil.
Add to that that it changes the entire quality of the smoke and burning temperatures. See the more incomplete the combustion the more of those heavier toxins will be produced, and since you have to suck madly to keep it lit, you’ll get more of them. Fucking complete idiots at Health Canada. Complete idiots.
Summary: Fuck you Health Canada – stop fucking with my tobacco products, you are not helping. The irony is that your activity is doing more damage to the health of Canadians with respect to smoking. More damage. Get it? Stay out of what you do not understand. You cannot regulate that which you cannot comprehend. I’m sorry biology graduates do not qualify to make chemical regulations. Period.
thanks, oldhand. truly informative and greatly appreciated. i also admire your passion. cheers.
Oldhand, It’s been a very long time since the NDP was the party of the so-called working classes. They are the party of university professors and Big Labor, two fields which involve shockingly little in the way of actual work. I would have loved to have paraded the entire federal NDP caucus through my warehouse on September 12, 2001. They’d still be in therapy; weeping into their pillows and pissing the bed. If only the Conservatives could learn to stop fucking over the working poor and lower middle classes; they might actually see how much alike they are.
Why is it that when anyone tries to make any argument about smoking they always have to bring up fatties?
Why don’t we just shoot them — the whole lot of ’em! Then we’ll have more money to treat lung cancer instead of spending it on the fatty diseases!
Good grief.
As long as they aren’t hurting anyone else, people should be able to do to themselves whatever the hell they want .
However, kids should be protected until they are clever enough to circumvent those protections. After that they’re on their own like everyone else.
The herd needs thinning and I don’t want to stand in Darwin’s way!!!
Oh and congratulations to oldhand for managing to get Health Canada to cancel a major ad campaign with just one phone call. I wish I had that kind of influence!
yeah, that sounds a little…
well let’s just say I’m expecting you to claim you’ve secretly been keeping a pair of dodo’s for just you to enjoy…
and perhaps, in your spare time, have figured out that pesky problem of cold fusion getting out of hand all the time….
Troll zzz. No response.
Urban Farmer Bob, yes, the response was immediate and silent. They just quickly and quietly pulled the ad. It was making them look stupid to the environmental scientific community. It was not my influence. I am nobody to them, it was the facts I presented.
It does not make sense for a regulatory body to publicly undermine itself. So naturally when it was pointed out, they corrected the situation.
oldhand…
not our fault you made your reply appear as if you talked to some big-wig and got him all scared the truth would come out….
so he stopped the ads “that day” because of you…..
Troll kalla mik
tungl sjötrungnis,
auðsug jötuns,
élsólar böl,
vilsinn völu,
vörð náfjarðar,
hvélsvelg himins –
hvat’s troll nema Ăľat?
I will miss flavoured blunts.
a lot.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3804…
Here’s why this law is totally asinine. These products in the above link are not covered withinin the bounds of this law. They will still be legal.
Bill C-32 is legislation at its worst.
Rushed through parliament under the guise (and panic inducing refrain) of the protection of children – without study, and without merit in regards to adult consumption.
I guess people in favor for Bill C-32 will now have to lobby their MPs to make an amendment or a new bill that also bans flavored cigars….
And in the meantime nerdlinger we still have some bluntacular cigars – or the internet – or trips to the USA 🙂
TROLL!, our Z-man ain’t no stinkin’ Troll. He’s on the side of the goats in this fight.
Pretty Kitty … Fatties ??
When i first read you post I thought what’s this got to do with smoking a fatty ?
I didn’t realise that smoking a fatty was even in the same realm as tobacco smoking.
I wonder if they will wean the public off tobacco & onto pot, so as to get people more mellow. Yet still allow them to enjoy the revenue stream …which will definately be even higher, (who do you know pays $8 to $10 dollars a gram for tobacco ?) ~;)
Thank GOD the Guvmint is spending our money on developing these laws instead of curbing violence or other social ills…
Why don’t the tax sugar and fast food???
More: the government pot sells for 5 bucks a gram, about half the price of street vendors.
Yes Oceanlady, but it isn’t very good.
IME .
Yeah the gov medical marijuana program was rigged to produce horrible pot in order to show that marijuana has no medical benefit. (Where anyone with half a brain can recognise the medicinal value of quality dope). The goal of course being to protect the existing black market.
The film of their grow ops are laughable. Fluorescent lighting, sativa species. It was immediately obvious the intention was to produce terrible dope (hay). Do they think we’re stupid? I guess so… Like Goebbels said…
The authorities know full well how to grow excellent dope. I have smoked some of it. Best dope in the world, was easily topping 30%. They have storage issues though. They have the horticulture down, but not the product treatment and by-product development. The Lebanese approach might work well for some of their product lines, while an adaptation of Nepalese traditions might work better for others.
Some of that product they produce (not the medical crap) would be awesome to work with. One could pretty easily produce beautiful extracts, oils and isolate pure compounds.
oldhand, are you the weedhog of old?
Nope. If others that I do not know about share my ideas and observations, as usual, I will treat that as partial confirmation of their validity.
Smokers will always be looked down upon by society no matter what nicotine induced justification they come up with. At least lung cancer is on their side.
May I ask a Bill C-32 supporter what their stance is on flavored liquors, or beer? Aren’t those products also targeted at children? Shouldn’t we be concerned the Evil Alcoholic Beverages Industry is preying on our children?
How about McDonalds? They clearly entice children with a toy in every happy meal to sell their fat and salt encrusted menu and to “addict” children, and turn them into profitable adult consumers of its products. Surely (using the same questionable logic from this bill) the Evil Fast Food Industries’ products should also be banned?
I thank Stephen Harper for continuing to prop up the bad parents of this country; Parents too lazy to have a conversation with their kids about tobacco use.
Imagine that, a parent communicating their expectations to their children; and then having to sit back and allow their children as they grow older to have to be able to make decisions for themselves.
Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want a well educated group of young people who grow up to be savvy citizens who are able to think for themselves, sounds dangerous. Let us legislate common sense instead.
Here in our socialist paradise we simply ban products that only the vocal and well funded lobby groups deride as “unhealthy” and “dangerous”… therefore we can keep our citizenry in an artificial bubble of safety forever!
flavoured booze is fine, but i think i’ll take a pass on the smoked salmon or bacon infused vodka…gack
There’s like 10,000 liquers in this world and 9,985 of them taste like licorice. Let me guess, Halliburton has a monopoly on the world supply of anise?
I’m just waiting for the bootleg versions to start to show…
can only imagine how bad they’ll be for ya since they are going to have to add jebus knows what to get it to taste right.
This makes me want to go out and buy a bunch of flavoured cigars while I still can
um,… mindsnap… it IS July 5th.
I think you missed the boat on this one.
…god damn….
then again, I’m sure there’s some corner store somewhere that’s more concerned with making money than following the law :p