POSTING #90

"Remember Smoking"

When I find myself getting depressed about the slow response to the climate crisis, I tell myself:

"Self, remember smoking."

For decades, health providers and scientists tried to convince us---and our politicians---that tobacco smoke, first or second hand, was bad for our health.

The tobacco industry found a few 'experts' who argued that there was no conclusive proof that smoking caused emphysema, heart disease, cancer or other diseases.

And the industry pointed to the jobs that would be lost if the sale and use of tobacco was curtailed. Farmers in south-western Ontario would be bankrupted, and workers in cigarette factories would be laid off.

And there was the question of rights. Surely, the argument went, smokers had the right to light up and enjoy a legal product.

(Kind of reminds you of arguments being made against tighter pollution laws, doesn't it?)

As the pressure rose from anti-smoking groups, and as the scientific evidence against smoking mounted, governments compromised and passed laws requiring public places to have smoking and non-smoking areas.

Just 12 years ago, I remember going into a restaurant in a town in south-western Ontario close to many tobacco farms and asking if we could sit in the non-smoking area.

The server was clearly puzzled. This wasn't a question she had encountered before. She looked around the room---as I did---at all the tables with ash trays.

Then her face brightened up. "It's that table by the door to the kitchen."

We were hungry, had our soup and sandwich and left---smelling of tobacco smoke.

About the same time, a Grimsby family restaurant decided to ban smoking. The owner a pleasant, hard-working woman, in her 60s had been told by her doctor that her breathing problems would continue to worsen if she spent 12 hours a day in a smoke-filled restaurant.

I was thrilled that at least one restaurant would be smoke-free but apprehensive about the impact the smoking ban would have on her business.

We visited the restaurant a month or so after the ban had taken effect. I asked the owner how things had been.

She said that there had some angry customers who had said they would never be back. But some of them had returned, because the food was good and the prices were reasonable.

The thing was, she said, the smokers who did return didn't stay so long---they didn't linger for a smoke over their coffee. They ate and left.

Tables were turning over faster and she was able to serve more people.

And, she added, new customers were coming in, people who had stopped eating out because of cigarette smoke.

For her personally, the change had been wonderful. Her lungs were better and her dry cleaning bills were smaller.

Not too long after that, our politicians worked up the courage to ban smoking.

 I credit part of the willingness of governments to put an end to the policy of smoking and non-smoking areas to a powerful analogy that became popular in an underground kind of way.

You remember, it went something like this:

"Having a restaurant with smoking and non-smoking areas is like having a swimming pool with peeing and non-peeing areas."

Never underestimate the power of an apt and witty analogy!

Although the fight to ban smoking was long, the end came very quickly. Our experience in that tobacco-country restaurant was only 12 years ago, just a blink of an eye in the measurement of social change.

And what about the claim that the tobacco farmers would be bankrupted?

A 40s-something friend who grew up in Simcoe, Ontario was telling me the other day that he worked in the tobacco fields when he was a teenager.

He goes back regularly to see his family and is astounded at the transformation in the farms.

They no longer grow tobacco, they grow peanuts, ginseng and lavender!

The speed of change has been amazing.

Unfortunately, the tobacco industry has now switched its attention to the developing world and is busy recruiting new addicts by offering cheap cigarettes. (I don't know how those executives sleep at night.)

But there are some encouraging signs. Some of the developing countries are moving to control smoking, having learned from our negative example---that smoking today, means health problems tomorrow.

There are so many parallels between the smoking and climate change issues.

I sense, perhaps naively, that we are reaching the point in the climate debate that we reached 12 or so years ago about smoking.

We are approaching critical mass.

Anyway, when I find myself getting down in the dumps about those oil and coal industry 'experts' denying climate change, I tell myself.

"Remember smoking!"

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See you on October 17th for Posting #91 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.