Calgary Goes Smoke Free - January 1st 2007

NO IT DOESN'T!

As of today, Calgary becomes officially smoke free. What that means is that smoking is no longer permitted in all indoor, public areas and some limited areas outdoors. Partitioned smoking rooms are allowed to remain in business premises for one more year as long as they are not accessible to under 18’s and as long as noone has to pass through these rooms to access other areas of the building. By 2008, these rooms must all be closed. Smoking will also still be allowed in Bingo halls and casinos for another year. The loudest protester that I have noticed so far in the local media has been a specialist tobacco shop that is no longer allowed to let customers try their products on the premises. Who exactly is being protected by that decision? If you choose to go to a store that only sells tobacco and smoking products why would you be surprised to find people smoking in there? It’s as absurd as the law suit a few years ago where McDonald’s was sued because their coffee was hot!

As is typical in Calgary, yet another draconian and unnecessary by-law has been passed that targets the wrong problem and will actually make the real problem worse! Now, before continuing, let me say that I am not a smoker (or at least not in the last thirty years) I won’t go to places where people smoke, and I have no sympathy whatsoever for the nicotine addicts. This new bylaw will not affect my behavior one jot but it will jeopardize my health.

The real smoking problem in Calgary are the hordes of addicts who work downtown and have to leave work at regular intervals to smoke in the street because their employers chose not to provide them with ventilated smoking rooms. Since the new legislation forces businesses to close their existing smoking rooms, this will force even more addicts onto the streets. These poor saps typically congregate around building entrances and on cold days are not surprisingly as close to the door as they can get without actually being indoors. Anyone attempting to enter the building must run the gauntlet of second hand smoke. This is the situation that is most worrying for non smokers because the situation simply cannot be avoided. The new bylaw makes a token attempt to address this problem by stating that non smoking areas outdoors will include:

• Outdoor patios
• Within three meters of an entrance or exit to a building, excluding areas marked “employees only.”
• Within one meter of transit platforms, shelters, stations and transit vehicles.

Clearly the city council has not considered the effect of twenty or so addicts clustered in a tight ring three meters from their office building entrance!

The correct solution to the problem that would protect the city’s air quality and the health of the non smoking portion of its citizens would be to:

• Ban smoking in all outdoor public areas, including streets, sidewalks, public parks, etc.
• Provide closed off but ventilated public smoking rooms in most major buildings with mandatory air scrubbers to clean the exhaust.
• Hike the tax on tobacco to pay for the provision of these public places and to encourage the addicts to quit.

This gets the addicts off the streets and means that children won't get the idea that smoking is cool because they're less likely to come across it.