June 17, 1997

Smoking out hypocrisy

By PAUL JACKSON
Calgary Sun Regular readers will know one of my favorite delights is to put a match to a Gaulois cigarette or a fine Monte Cristo cigar.
I picked up the habit of smoking Gaulois as a school kid on my summer holiday visits to Paris, and my love of cigars was inspired by Sir Winston Churchill.
It is my contention the occasional cigarette or cigar poses no harm whatsoever to a person. Rather it adds a refined nonchalance to your personality. A couple of hours watching the sit-coms and talk shows on TV a night will do a person far more damage, both mentally and physically than the occasional puff or whiff.
One of the many reasons -- there were about 1,001 at last count -- I have loathed successive Liberal governments in Ottawa is because they have this hypocritical and sanctimonious stand against smoking. They campaign against against smoking, yet have a 'so-what' attitude towards drugs, pornography and violence.
Then just this weekend I learned the busybody New Democrat government of British Columbia plans to put into play an entire set of legal endeavors against the tobacco companies.
The new rules will allow major class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies, and there'll be moves to recover the supposed $500-million in health care costs the B.C. government allegedly spends on smoking-related diseases. OK, why not sue the food companies because gluttons ruin their health? Or the candy and soft drink companies because sugar ruins teeth?
Well, in my opinion, the New Democrats are just as hypocritical and sanctimonious as the Liberals -- and indeed, current NDP premier Glen Clark's predecessor, Mike Harcourt, was pushed to resign over some sordid fund-raising dealings by his party -- and here they go off again on yet another in phoney moral outrage!
To my mind, as long as tobacco is a legal product, it should face no more restrictions on its sale and advertising than any other legal product. Before the puritanical types start asking whether I'm in favor of allowing kindergarten kids to smoke, of course I'm not.
No more than I believe kindergarten kids should be allowed to drive heavy machinery or have a Labatt Blue for breakfast.
Knowing New Democrats and Liberals for what they are, one might have expected them to wring their hands in anguish over someone lighting a Players' or popping a Camel in their mouths. Fits the pattern.
But last week, Alberta's new justice minister, Jon Havelock, announced he's investigating whether our province should go after the tobacco companies for health-care costs. This from a minister of a supposedly right-wing government. I almost penned a letter to Ralph Klein about this, but figured Klein, who is not adverse to the odd inconsequential vice, might have already laughed in Havelock's face.
Here I must say that I quite like Havelock -- or I did until I realized he seems to becoming a bit of a bureaucrat -- but I do recall that a few years back Havelock actually worked on a Liberal leadership campaign. If I'm wrong, Jon, give me a call. Does Paul Martin's leadership bid ring an embarrassing bell?
Whatever, Martin didn't win the Liberal leadership, and Havelock went on to become a provincial PC candidate and got himself elected an MLA.
Havelock was, by most accounts, one of the hardest-working backbench MLAs in Edmonton, and that led to his job as justice minister. A well-deserved promotion.
Yet something nibbles at my mind about Havelock's sudden conversion to puritanism. Has he already become captive of the bureaucracy? Have the civil servants, who love to tie us all up in red tape, made Havelock forget Albertans voted for Ralph's Team because they wanted to get government out of their hair, not into it?
Jon, take my advice, forget about following in the footsteps of the Liberals and New Democrats. You're a Tory, aren't you? We need fewer laws, not more.