A CHALLENGE FOR THE CRD TOBACCO POLICE

Took a run out to Sooke River Hotel the other day to break bread with my
old fishing buddy Don Rittaler. Thought we might reminisce a little about
Wednesday mornings a dozen years ago when we used to hit the waters off The
Bluffs at first light, catch a few salmon, and have me back in the press
gallery at the legislature before the bureaucracy was fully awake.

I hadn't seen Don for two, maybe three, years. But he hadn't changed much.
Still clutching a bottomless cup of coffee, still smoking like a chimney.
Still the genial mine host a pub owner should be. Genial, that is, until
mention is made of his current difficulties with the newly formed Capital
Regional District anti-smoking patrol. They are threatening him with dire
punishments if he continues to defy their latest edicts of no ashtrays on
tables - the first step towards a total smoking ban set for January 1999.

With an RCMP escort, two smoke-ash checkers have already attended to
photograph the offending ash trays in the air-filtered Castle pub and
launched legal action against Rittaler. I mention the visitations only
because I know you wonder from time to time where your tax dollars go. As a
non-smoker (for the past 12 years) I confess I haven't been staying
up-to-date on the determination if the CRD to tell people where they can't
smoke.

I had a vague recollection of bans on smoking in public places. I've
noticed office workers huddled in drafty doorways, outcasts for a puff on
the magic dragon. The problem, not being mine, I paid little attention to
details. But who thought of today's 60- 40 smoking-non-smoking ratio as
lead-in to a total "no smoking" ban in pubs?

Even to a reformed non-smoker, who now regards as an abomination the smell
of stale smoke in his jacket after an evening with cigar-smoking friends,
that is ridiculous.

Nobody makes me sit with cigar-smokers when I make my occasional gesture of
good will toward the economy of Scotland. I don't enjoy the smoke, or the
temptation it sometimes brings, but I do enjoy good company and understand
the pleasure my friends find, and once I found, in the leaf. And I cannot
countenance any law that might force them to change their lifestyles and
adhere to mine.

I am not debating a ban on smoking on premises a citizen has no option but
to attend. I am not talking about no-smoking on the public transport some
must use to get from A to B, or the workplace where we must earn our
living.

I'm talking about a village pub where entrance is forbidden until we reach
adult age and are therefore, presumably, capable of adult decisions; about
an establishment we can enter because it permits smoking. I am talking
about the right of smokers to smoke, and the right of non-smokers to
withdraw their custom from such an establishment and take it elsewhere.

CRD ashtray patrols insist that they, and their insipid politically correct
bosses, are doing what they must simply to take care of us. Smoking is
bad, secondhand smoke is worse, they say, and we shall not allow either
wherever people congregate indoors - except for incense burned in religious
ceremonies because that's holy smoke.

If the CRD is so concerned about our public health, so determined to force
us all into a lifestyle of their moulding, why doesn't it totally ban the
sale of tobacco throughout the region? And after the ban, give the walking
smoke detectors the power to arrest anyone caught puffing the noxious weed
in back alleys or dark doorways.

That isn't going to happen because there isn't a public health officer or
Dudley Do-Right politician dumb enough to suggest it. Not, even, if they
sincerely believed they have a duty to ban sin by legislation is there any
one in the CRD, politician or health officer, with the courage to try.
Instead they tell pub owners it's okay to sell cigarettes, but heaven help
them if more than 60 per cent of the buyers smoke 'em on the premises -
after they've asked for an ashtray.

They tell them they can't let their customers smoke because it's unhealthy,
but it's okay to let them sip demon rum which is ... well, best not to get
into that or we'll have a law which says it's OK to sell grog, as long as
nobody's allowed to drink it.

CRD directors should explain to their over-zealous health vigilantes that
there are some things you cannot legislate out of existence. And that as
far as smoking in pubs goes, they should butt out. Or open a smoke-free CRD
tavern and see how it plays.