p2pnet.net OT News View:- I quit smoking quite a few years ago. It was hard, hard, but worth it. No longer is my life ruled by having to stick a piece of rolled up paper filled with burning leaves into my mouth at regular intervals, and I feel genuinely sorry for people who still have to do that.

It’s not only an addiction, it’s one of the worst, and I speak from experience.

And I don’t have a problem with people who still smoke, although I tend to steer clear of them not because I’m afraid of the pollution – anyone who lives in a city gets worse than that all day, every day – but because I don’t like the smell.

I also don’t like people who treat smokers like they’re criminals and I especially don’t like the attitude of Ontario health promotion minister Jim Watson who lit into Sean Penn for lighting up at the Sutton Place Hotel during a news conference at the Toronto Film Festival, breaking the province’s no-smoking law.

Penn will apparently escape with a warning, but according to The Toronto Star, David McKeown, Toronto’s chief medical officer of health, “said the Sutton Place Hotel will be issued tickets totalling $605 for breaking the tough new Smoke-Free Ontario Act, which bans smoking in enclosed places in the province.

“McKeown found after an investigation that the hotel broke the act in two ways: The hotel officials did not provide proper signage warning people of the new provincial act and they did not give Penn notice that smoking is not permitted in enclosed public places. Not providing proper signage will cost the hotel a fine of $240 and not advising Penn of the new law has resulted in a $365 fine – if the hotel chooses not the fight the charges.”

OK, Mr Watson. But I trust you’ll now drop the millions, if not billions, of dollars the province hypocritically rakes in every year from tobacco taxes; or, that you’ll at least channel every last penny of it towards helping people to stop smoking, and to treating people who’ve become seriously, if not fatally, sick from the addiction?

JN

Also See:
The Toronto Star – Actor smoked, hotel charged, September 14, 2006