Friday, December 3, 2004

If you won't quit, we will force you to

The tactic this time is untended cigarettes and the number of deaths and injuries resulting from smoker carelessness. I bet unattended candles cause more fires in Canada each year, but never mind, the authorities have spoken and drown me out.

Fires linked to unextinguished cigarettes took 356 lives and injured another 1,615 people between 1995 and 1999, according to a report by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs.

Such fires often occur when a smoker falls asleep while smoking or drops a lit cigarette into an upholstered chair, where it can smoulder for hours before causing a fire.
Check out this recent bit of proposed totalitarian regulation, encouraged by a private member's bill. In the name of public and private safety, the nanny state wants a law which would make it mandatory for Canadian sold cigarettes to include something?? a brand new chemical I suppose, which causes an untended cigarette to go out. I wonder what harm "reduced ignition propensity" cigarettes do to the people who smoke them. Plus, I bet cigarettes are not as appealing anymore, because you will probably have to keep relighting them because 'untended' is a rather vague indication of how long it takes before the cigarette goes out. No doubt they do taste like shit too. Cigarettes likely wouldn't be half as harmful if the government stayed out of the business of regulation and left it to consumers to make their own informed choices. Treat people as if they are sheep, and it is more likely that they will become sheep. But I suppose, oh dear ministers of public interest, you know all about that don't you?
Cigarettes will be designed to go out when left untended under regulations proposed by Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh. The so-called "reduced ignition propensity" cigarette has been promoted as a way of avoiding the thousands of fires caused every year by untended cigarettes.

Tobacco manufacturers oppose the regulations, saying smokers would rather use contraband or roll their own than smoke the fire-safe products.

Manufacturers say the reduced-ignition cigarettes frequently go out and a cigarette that has been relit after going out tastes awful.

The regulations would require cigarettes manufactured or imported for sale in Canada to meet the standard by October.

Dosanjh warned the cigarettes should not be called fire-safe, because a burning object is never fire-safe.
This one is right up there with the frenzy over marijuana grow house fires.
The Federal Government are a bunch of bullies. How come we are often the first country to introduce such draconian national controls standards?

1 Comment:

Ian Scott said...

All I do is shake my head the more I read this stuff.