Legislative Lunacy
It's really great that we have stiff laws in Ontario where smoking is no longer permitted in public places, including one's workplace. Took long enough, before the government understood that when ill people were in a hospital it ill behooved other ill people, and even the doctors who attended them, to smoke unrestricted, inflicting discomfort and potential future ill-health on the non-smokers among them. Seated at a restaurant no longer means having to ask beforehand for the non-smoking section, even if nicotine floated about everywhere.
Just little irritants in the lives of non-smokers, nicely cleared up when no-smoking regulations took effect. It's become fairly universal, and much appreciated. Other than by die-hard smokers, incapable of weaning themselves off their unfortunate addiction, despite all the medical literature which points unerringly to nicotine as the causative in provoking lung cancer, along with other incidentals like heart disease, et al. The idea that non-smokers had rights too was long in coming.
And now things are getting out of hand, in reverse. If people wish to smoke regardless of the deleterious effect on their health, they should have the freedom to do so. That their cost to the health care system is enormous is without doubt, but then people who eat themselves into obesity causing diabetes, heart and stroke problems, also cost the public health care system dearly. Quite a few people were upset when a new law came into effect making it illegal for people to smoke in a vehicle that also carried children. Too bad.
But now, a trucker who, while driving alone in his rig, relaxed by having a smoke, was ticketed and fined $305 for smoking in the cab of his truck. Bothering no one, he was alone, doing his thing in a rigorously stressful occupation. But the truck - as interpreted by the Smoke-Free Ontario Act which states "No person shall smoke tobacco or hold lighted tobacco in any enclosed public place or enclosed workplace" - was classified as his workplace. Clearly, this legislation is badly in need of clarification; at the very least amendment.
Carry this further: what of the real estate salesperson who operates largely out of his/her personal vehicle. Because that person conducts a large part of business while driving to and from real estate appointments, using a cellphone, perhaps even a computer and even a printer (let's hope while pulled over at the side of the road), if that person also lights up, they're ripe for being pulled over and chastised by a stiff fine. That vehicle too can be construed as a workplace, and even if they are there alone, bothering no one else, they've run counter to the law.
At a stretch, consider the workplace of the sex trade worker. Forced by law to ply their trade on the streets, rather than in the relative safety of a bawdy house - which legislation explicitly outlaws - the very street, the street corner, the bar or restaurant where some clients can be met, are also their work places. If the woman standing at the corner, surrounded by storefronts enclosing her in her workplace environment, takes out a cigarette, can she too be fined?
Is this not lugubriously absurd? Whose intelligence is being abused here?
Just little irritants in the lives of non-smokers, nicely cleared up when no-smoking regulations took effect. It's become fairly universal, and much appreciated. Other than by die-hard smokers, incapable of weaning themselves off their unfortunate addiction, despite all the medical literature which points unerringly to nicotine as the causative in provoking lung cancer, along with other incidentals like heart disease, et al. The idea that non-smokers had rights too was long in coming.
And now things are getting out of hand, in reverse. If people wish to smoke regardless of the deleterious effect on their health, they should have the freedom to do so. That their cost to the health care system is enormous is without doubt, but then people who eat themselves into obesity causing diabetes, heart and stroke problems, also cost the public health care system dearly. Quite a few people were upset when a new law came into effect making it illegal for people to smoke in a vehicle that also carried children. Too bad.
But now, a trucker who, while driving alone in his rig, relaxed by having a smoke, was ticketed and fined $305 for smoking in the cab of his truck. Bothering no one, he was alone, doing his thing in a rigorously stressful occupation. But the truck - as interpreted by the Smoke-Free Ontario Act which states "No person shall smoke tobacco or hold lighted tobacco in any enclosed public place or enclosed workplace" - was classified as his workplace. Clearly, this legislation is badly in need of clarification; at the very least amendment.
Carry this further: what of the real estate salesperson who operates largely out of his/her personal vehicle. Because that person conducts a large part of business while driving to and from real estate appointments, using a cellphone, perhaps even a computer and even a printer (let's hope while pulled over at the side of the road), if that person also lights up, they're ripe for being pulled over and chastised by a stiff fine. That vehicle too can be construed as a workplace, and even if they are there alone, bothering no one else, they've run counter to the law.
At a stretch, consider the workplace of the sex trade worker. Forced by law to ply their trade on the streets, rather than in the relative safety of a bawdy house - which legislation explicitly outlaws - the very street, the street corner, the bar or restaurant where some clients can be met, are also their work places. If the woman standing at the corner, surrounded by storefronts enclosing her in her workplace environment, takes out a cigarette, can she too be fined?
Is this not lugubriously absurd? Whose intelligence is being abused here?
Labels: Health, Human Relations, Justice
posted by Pieface @ 6:32 PM
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