August 2007

<p>Simon Chapman is a professor in public health at the University of Sydney.&nbsp; He is a sociologist with a PhD on the semiotics of cigarette advertising.</p>

<p>For the past several years Crazy Al Gore has been bellowing like an irritable steer that man-made climate change is propelling the earth to an apocalypse of floods and chiliastic flames.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Ever get the notion that you are surrounded by bobbleheads, spouting the same message over and over?&nbsp; You’re not paranoid nor are you alone.</p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">We close our Focus on </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;"> with a cross section of the social and moral disintegration of a nation that has chosen the &lsquo;road to health&rsquo;.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">From </span><st1:state><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">New Jersey</span></st1:place></st1:state><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;"> comes the latest information on the economic devastation caused by smoking bans. Here it is&hellip;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p>As the collectivist, neo-Communist (or neo-Fascist, if you like&hellip; we are all confused, anyway) mentality spreads like a cancer across the West, catering to the collective health promotion becomes the essential ticket that any shyster needs to be &lsquo;believed&rsquo;</p>

<p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana;">When religion used to be more important than health in the West, the end of all prayers used to be &ldquo;Amen&rdquo;. Now that the veneration of health has become the religion, all the prayers must end with &ldquo;smoking kills&rdquo;. </span></p>

<p>Here it is, once again. The umpteenth, hollow argument against smoking bans. Is this simple ignorance, faith or superstition &ndash; or is it just the desperate need to obtain acceptance by conceding, for the most part, that the prohibitionists are on the side of the angels?</p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="">Fear the Canadian &ldquo;health&rdquo; Gestapo. They mean business. The crime is tobacco! What are you <strong>prepared to do</strong> about it?…<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p>The Canadian city of Montreal, once known as relaxed, welcoming and chic, has become a harassment zone for smokers, property owners who are forced to put out ashtrays for smokers (is this to enhance social intolerance?), and apparently for anyone from whom revenue in the forms of fines can be squeezed.</p>