PUT THIS IN YOUR PIPE

Can laws curb bad habits?

The federal Liberals and Toronto's Board of Health seem to think so.

Thanks to federal legislation, this will be the last summer Downtown Jazz
is backed by du Maurier. Year 2000 will be the last time Rothman's
(through brand name Benson and Hedges) is allowed to have its name
connected with the Symphony of Fire off-site.

It's doubtful how much effect the Liberals' anti-tobacco sponsorship
legislation will have on hardened smokers. If you're puffing two packs a
day, who really cares whether Big Tobacco's pulling for a fireworks show or
not?

What's going to have a much greater impact on Toronto tobacco users is a
proposed anti-smoking bylaw currently before city council. As put forward
by the Board of Health, this bylaw might mean an end to smoking in bars and
restaurants within two years.

While city council debates the issue, they'd better consider how they plan
on enforcing any new anti-smoking regulations.

Two years ago, the former City of Toronto had to rescind a bylaw that aimed
to ban bar smoking. Far from convincing people to drop the bad habit, the
bylaw turned smokers into exiles and renegades. Smokers either fled to
suburban restaurants where the bylaw wasn't in effect or stayed behind and
defiantly puffed away, determined not to give into council's best intentions.

If the mega-council wants to avoid an embarrassing repeat of this fiasco,
they'd better consider two things.

First, any bylaw should be accompanied by an advertising blitz aimed at
raising public awareness. The campaign shouldn't emphasize what every fool
already knows -- that prolonged tobacco use rots your lungs and will kill
you. Rather, the highlight should be on secondhand smoke.

The goal? To create the same kind of positive peer pressure that exists
against drunk drivers, independent of any laws. Anti-drunk driving ads
don't emphasize the injuries inebriated drivers cause to themselves.
Rather, they graphically outline the damage and destruction drunk drivers
cause to others. The message: don't let your friends drink and drive
because they might hurt you or someone else. Likewise, a hard-hitting
campaign against secondhand smoke should have a powerful resonance among
non-tobacco users who frequent tightly packed bars and restaurants.

While peer pressure can play a role in making an anti-smoking bylaw work,
Toronto might also take a page from Amsterdam and open "tobacco cafes."
Rather than hashish, the only thing on the menu in these places would be
cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco. In order not to cut into bar profits,
no booze would be served to the clientele.

Tobacco cafes would give addicts a place to hang out while the anti-smoking
bylaw and smoking awareness campaign took effect.

Serious smokers could puff away -- albeit in a limited number of places --
while the majority of Torontonians get used to the concept of smoke-free
evenings on the town.

Taken together, these suggestions offer Toronto a relatively painless way
to ease itself from the tobacco habit. The alternative is to hope
enforcement and the good will of smokers alone will be enough to translate
council's say-so into a bylaw that works.