It’s odd how some people dismiss public health measures in Flin Flon as somehow pointless or undesirable because of past air pollution.
One such comment appeared on Facebook over the summer after Mayor Cal Huntley went public with city council’s plan to restrict smoking on Main Street.
“Kind of funny how Flin Flon is worried about cigarette smoke after all those years of smelter smoke,” read the comment (or words to that effect).
Such statements presuppose Flin Flonners were unbothered by decades of smelter smoke or that because they lived here, they somehow controlled government air regulations.
Neither of those statements is true. Plenty of locals hated smelter smoke, and some were pressuring the government to clean up Flin Flon’s air – not necessarily by closing the smelter, mind you – at least as far back as the 1970s or ’80s.
Now, seven years after the copper smelter shut down, city council is poised to embark on another clean-up mission for our air, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Council has carried first reading of a bylaw to prohibit smoking within 16 feet of the entrance to any publicly accessible building, including businesses, government buildings and churches.
If the bylaw passes final reading, as it likely will, it will be the law of the land effective the evening of Oct. 10.
Council is responding to public concerns over pedestrians having to walk through clouds of smoke, as well as the accumulation of unsightly cigarette butts.
Do you have a right to walk near a public building without breathing in, however briefly, a cloud of smoke laced with the 4,000-plus chemicals mixed in with commercial tobacco?
Or does the person purposely inhaling those 4,000-plus chemicals have a right to do so in some reasonably convenient location, such as within 16 feet or less of a building entrance?
Councillors felt like the time had come to take a side. They are about to choose the former.
Some will view this decision as draconian, an easy way for council to score points by further marginalizing smokers, one of the last groups in society still seen as acceptably marginalizeable.
Some may also view this move as politically risky given Flin Flon’s high smoking rate – nearly 50 per cent higher than the national average, according to the latest stats. Might council pay a political price come next year’s election?
In all likelihood, the bylaw will be implemented with little fuss. As much as smokers are treated as second-class citizens these days, they are generally respectful of the wishes of the non-smoking majority.
A side story relates to how electronic cigarettes may be treated in all
of this.
Mayor Huntley is on record as saying “smoking is smoking,” and that
so-called vaping should also be banned from entrance areas.
He admits he’s only one of seven votes, however, so the final decision on whether to include vaping in the bylaw will be up to council as a whole. It’s unclear what they will decide.
It’s interesting to watch governments approach vaping given how relatively little is known about any health implications it presents.
It’s widely accepted, in the public sphere at least, that vaping is less harmful than tobacco and that anything that helps people quit smoking, as e-cigarettes do, is beneficial to society.
