For anyone looking to pick up a peach Primetime or a grape flavoured cigarette, you’re out of luck. This week the legislation to ban flavoured tobacco, which was passed by the former PC government, went into effect in Alberta.
On Sunday, the new NDP government added menthol to the list of banned tobacco flavours, and will give businesses four months to clear out their stocks, or more likely, four months for menthol smokers to stock up.
As a non-smoker, this legislation doesn’t directly affect me, in fact it may even benefit me. If the legislation prompts people to break their habits, it could lead to a reduction in tobacco-related illness, which means less stress on our healthcare system. This is the argument the government makes.
They also argue that menthols and flavoured tobacco target kids, and say that by getting rid of the products smoking is made to look less appealing to youths.
But haven’t we already done a pretty good job of making smoking look unappealing to youths? You can’t pick up a pack of smokes without being bombarded with graphic images of various cancers or rotten teeth caused by smoking, and the schools do a fairly good job of educating students about the negative consequences as well.
I don’t think I will ever forget an instructional video shown to my Grade 5 class where Jimmy the smoker sits down at his girlfriend’s parent’s dinner table and coughs up a lung. I mean that literally. He coughs up a lung, onto the dinner table, and the dog grabs it and runs away with it. It’s bizarre imagery, but the point was made – smoking isn’t good for you, kids.
Which is why I was baffled when one of my friends, who also sat through that video, took up smoking a few years later. And she didn’t start with menthols or flavoured tobacco of any kind. She smoked plain old cigarettes – the same ones as her mom.
It’s hard to teach kids that they shouldn’t smoke when they come home every day to lingering second-hand smoke throughout the house.
Is taking away menthol cigarettes really going to create a generation of non-smokers? Or is it just going to penalize people who are old enough to make their own decisions and choose to engage in riskier behaviours?
Recently the government also moved forward with banning anyone under 18 from a tanning booth. Same issue – the government says it’s bad for you, causes cancer, and teens don’t know any better. But why don’t they know any better?
At what point do we stop relying on the government to protect our kids and shift the responsibilities to parents, with the assistance of our educators and politicians?
At the end of the day, you can preach the negative health consequences of smoking and tanning until you’re blue in the face and people are still going to do it. So where do we draw the line between “protecting youth” and infringing on adults making legal decisions?
I’m not sure where that line should be, which is why I enjoy my comfy seat in the newsroom rather than in the legislature – thank goodness.
