CAGE

How predictable that Ellen Holmes of the Ottawa Council on Smoking and Health is calling on Minto and "all city developers" to make their multi-unit housing "smoke-free." Obviously tired of celebrating the already excessive bans on smoking in public places in Ottawa, the Council on Smoking and Health is looking for new ways to justify its existence by conjuring up new phantom fears associated with secondhand smoke.

In her letter, Ms. Holmes makes a bold claim that the evidence regarding the hazards of secondhand smoke is "irrefutable." I call on her to tell us what the evidence is, without cherry-picking a few studies that support her views. The decades of secondhand-smoke research have produced findings that are inconclusive, even for research into risks for lifelong spouses of heavy smokers.

Ms. Holmes claims that the council receives complaints from tenants who go to great extremes to shield themselves from secondhand smoke in their homes. She might want to share with us how many such complaints are received and what the real stories are: The paranoia and hysteria of a very few cannot justify going after law-abiding people indulging in a legal activity in their own homes.

It is time to draw the line: Either totally ban tobacco use, or drop the theatrics and half-truths being used in an effort to bully others into complying with utopian views of a "public health" dictatorship.

David Wood, Ottawa

PUBLISHED June 14 2006 Ottawa Sun

http://www.ottawasun.com/Comment/Letters/2006/06/14/1631081.html

Thank you for voicing those who seek truth and justice on the Heather Crowe issue. Indeed smokers and liberty lovers were silenced for way too long and a public inquiry on the matter is in order. For no other reason but political, we accuse a big segment of the population of being murderers without conclusive proof.

Smoking being a personal habit, each smoker is attacked and stigmatized on a few politically motivated organizations' "say so." Let's examine the irrefutable proof that Heather Crowe was killed because of someone else's habit before making her a hero.

Yves Proulx

PUBLISHED APR. 20/06

http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Letters/2006/04/20/1541558.html

AS A visitor to Edmonton, I noticed a situation that will be etched in my mind forever. I watched two women in wheel-chairs just off the hospital grounds, one hooked up to an IV, smoking cigarettes, looking cold, excluded, and alone. If that situation was about race, colour or creed, I would imagine that the public outcry would be so loud that the city of Edmonton would probably never recover. There is absolutely no human, medical, or scientific reason why sick patients can't be treated better than that.

Thomas Laprade

Jan. 18/06

Dear Editor, Toronto Star,

In Ontario, smoking costs us 1.7 billion in Health-Care costs,says Jim Watson, the Ontario Minister of Health Promotion.

If all the taxes from cigarettes would be put toward health care costs instead of into a general fund, we would have a surplus in our Health Care System.

Thomas Laprade

Thunder Bay, Ont.