Smoke and Mirrors

The British Columbia government has recently enforced laws prohibiting smoking in the vicinity of public buildings, backways, sideways, on the roof, whatever, which includes outdoor patios and whatnot. Laws have also been enforced that make shop owners cover all tobacco products behind the counter. They also send out hired minors to buy cigarettes, whence the store owner is fined $500.00 for selling them without asking for i.d.

Odd position for a government that takes in roughly around $500 million annually through tobacco tax. And the Federal government takes in around $6 billion. There are the government associated help lines to quit smoking and anti-smoking ads and campaigns, in the schools, on t.v., on the radio and everywhere; all of them telling us of the formidable addictiveness of nicotine (exaggerated claims), speaking in sober heavy tones of the difficulties of quitting smoking and if you're quitting, then we can...

We are enormous dupes. The addiction to cigarettes is psychological by more than half. No, it is not largely chemical. It is precisely when someone is "helped" in a barage of serious campaigns to quit smoking, that the difficulty comes in to play and screw around with them. So it goes round and round, with their trials of quitting smoking and then, on an urge, taking it back up again, the fear of "giving it up" becoming enlarged - because they have got it pummeled into their poor heads, courtesy of their government, that quitting smoking is this mighty big thing.

So, as with the HRC, we see government interference accomplishing the extreme opposite of what it is telling us it is doing. But in the case of the anti-smoking campaigns, and their very obvious opposite effect, in light of the money that is brought in through tobacco tax...it's enough to make you think that the government knows precisely what it is doing.