You can not help feeling sympathy for the attacks. Do you smoke for 20 years?. Were you familiar with cigarettes – the taste of toasted first thing in the morning, their comforting strength between your fingers, they almost magical potential to suppress the desire to constantly that overcomes you when you go too long without nicotine.

And you have experienced first-hand torture of quitting (several times, actually), the memory that lasts even after 28 years. Sometimes you think about the cost, knowing that if you keep your habits at the same rate, you can now see approximately $ 100 per week to keep toxic fumes. You would be an outcast, too, was sent to the butt-strewn patch of rain or snow for every trembling break.

Thus, you are not indifferent. When you see those smokers on television, explaining why they are going after the tobacco industry – which they argue that they tricked into smoking and thus ruining their lives – you will feel a slight shiver something like sympathy.

But it’s very, very small. A landmark class-action lawsuit against the Canadian tobacco industry began in Montreal last week, a group that represents nearly two million smokers Quebec damages of $ 27 billion. He argues that the industry knowingly marketed unhealthy products and they got their dependence on constantly and helpless.

A 65-year-old lead plaintiff complained that she had tried to quit smoking, but “not working”.

Not their fault, it seems. And he began to smoke when no one seems to know what is harmful. (Is not it strange memory? Generationally, this is my people. And yet I can not remember a time when I did not know that smoking was dumb).

And while all eyes are on the case of Quebec, the provinces across the country, including Ontario, are working on their efforts to sue tobacco companies for smoking-related healthcare costs. All that is the legal way, it seems, ever since Big Tobacco in the United States was ordered in 1998 to pay $ 206 billion.

Revenge is sweet, I think. But not this slap in the face of a bad guy makes no sense? They even do not you?

Do not get me wrong. I hate smoking. As a long non-smoker now, I hate the smell and dirt. I hate that led to a long and painful death of his father from emphysema, and that it probably contributed to her mother’s death from lung cancer, contracted two full decades after she actually quit smoking.

And I hate the tobacco industry, which, no doubt, was tireless campaign for years against the initiative to reduce smoking – that is cut into profits. Tobacco Execs was duplicitous, self-serving, dedicated to the promotion of their venom.

Personally, I would put all of the deadly industry right out of business. Outlaw tobacco. Period.
And no, I do not think that the resulting black market in unregulated product is reason enough to do the right thing.

This is a question of principle. If the government really believes tobacco is only harmful because of its legislative initiatives suggest, then why did he allow his sales? How about honesty? How about: “We are closing you because your product harm and murder?”

Oh. Wait a minute. Could it be that drug use is over? In recent weeks, the debate was heated on the Ontario government plans to increase the problem gamblers in the province, adding more space and more opportunities for more people to lose more money. Many observers have noted that the government did not want to dam the rich (if dishonest) income stream, a gambling addiction all its own.

Well, he is also addicted to tobacco, one he shares with the Fed. Buy a pack of cigarettes in Ontario, as well – with the provincial and federal taxes on tobacco, as well as provincial and federal shares of HST – more than 60 percent of the cost goes to the government. In any other province except Quebec, the taxes are even higher.

That’s a lot of money. This is a huge amount to go missing if, say, in an attack by some politicians doubt ill advisedly proposed closure of the Big Tobacco.

Therefore, we will not hold your breath. But we could at least hope for a slight decrease in blatant double standards by which governments work? “We think that you’re angry, and we are planning to sue the pants you” is not rational to live with, “What about that, you can create a revenue stream as well?”

It’s like a concussion, as hacking smokers lighting and offer some unseen third party adheres to the things in his mouth and forcing them to breathe.

The devil made us do it, drug addicts and the government continues to talk about the tobacco industry, the most convenient devil. Instead, they may try to look in the mirror.

Tags: tobacco Industry