Giving up smoking is a New Year’s resolution people have been making, faking and breaking since the discovery of tobacco.
This year, the Ontario government is providing a bit of help, or muddying the waters depending on your point of view, with some additions to the Smoke Free Ontario Act that came into force with the turning of the calendar page.
Now that Ontarians can’t light up in many previously unregulated outdoor spaces, such as restaurant and bar patios, will more people give up the habit, at least in public, or just stay home? We imagine proprietors are hoping for the former.
There’s also a new ban on smoking around Sports fields on public property. It makes sense to ensure smoke isn’t wafting across fields and grandstands and through dugouts, especially where children are playing. However, it’s also going to make intermissions at minor hockey games a curse, rather than a blessing for many puffing parents. Watching a Zamboni make the rounds is sure to be a lot less satisfying than the quick smoke and instant analysis of the first two periods that they’ve become accustomed to. To some extent, it seems questionable to bother trying to prevent outdoor smoking in locations such as these, where anyone not wishing to be exposed to second-hand fumes has only to keep walking to remain unaffected. However, the government seems to be taking an in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound approach this time around, no doubt to the relief of municipalities, which were beginning to come under pressure to enact similar regulations, now redundant, at a local level.
The law will also effectively ban e-cigarettes wherever smoking is already prohibited, as well as banning their purchase by anyone under 19, the same age limitation as regular cigarettes. This despite that the jury is still out on whether the vapor-producing devices, used by many as a smoke cessation aid, pose a significant health risk – or any at all.
So welcome to Ontario, where you can still walk into any bar and buy enough booze to knock you literally on your butt, but could now face stiff penalties for stepping outside to light one up, even if it’s fake.
Patrick Raftis
