Smoking war heats up

Wolfville started the idiocy  of a ” no smoking in the car with kids bylaw”  [the mayor was so proud of it] and it has been picked up by various municipalities and provinces (NS and Ont.)  since, jumping on the bandwagon. The whole idea of such a  law was idiotic as we pointed out at the time but most idiotic of all was the age of the “child” specified, 19 and under (16 and under in Ont) . At a certain age the “child” is old enough to choose to smoke a legal product [if he did not buy them himself] and it was predictable that eventually this would be pointed out to the authorities in no uncertain terms. It has happened.

…Const. Tammie Hartford, pulled over 20-year-old Port Hope resident Tory Ashton and wrote him a $155 ticket for smoking in his vehicle with a person under age 16 present.

Ashton was transporting several passengers, including a 15-year-old girl. While the ticket was being written, the girl — who is a smoker — got out of the car and legally lit up a cigarette.

Of course.  The police tried to tell our Council of the difficulties and implications (although in much too nice a way) but we think the Council members of the day didn’t have too much respect for the opinions of the RCMP.

It’s only a matter of time before someone “snaps” after being pulled over under Ontario’s new law forbidding smoking in a vehicle carrying a minor, a police officer said Monday in response to a quirk in the legislation that was made evident during a weekend incident.

“People got mad enough when they couldn’t smoke in bars anymore or bingo parlours,” said Sgt. Bryant Wood, a police officer in the eastern Ontario town of Port Hope.

“Now you’re telling them they can’t smoke in cars. At some point somebody’s going to snap along the way here.”

The police should be concerned about something else. What are we teaching our children and even our adult citizens? That laws are stupid, that’s what. And then we wonder why they no longer have respect for authority, including the police who are told to enforce these idiotic laws.

Wood, who has been a police officer for 16 years, said he anticipates that as more people are written up in Ontario for the new driving violation, problems will arise.

“The problem is people believe they have the right to smoke,” he said. “It’s their vehicle, it’s their free will to be able to have a cigarette.

“Generally speaking, I think we’re going to run into a lot of bad attitudes when we pull people over for that. It’s going to become almost a human-rights issue for them.”

We remember that civil liberties were barely mentioned in passing when the issue was rubber stamped discussed here at Council [one can certainly not call it debate and even discussion is an inaccurate term for what passed as consideration].

“They” say this over regulation legislation is “working” , that this is just a glitch. But it is working in ways “they” know nothing of, to turn our citizens into resentful serfs.

Chickens come home to roost. We hope our mayor thinks about this when he reads this story. Pass it on to him will ya?