The right to light
Do smokers constitute a discriminated minority?
Dylan Ferguson Staff photographs david ian lipnowski
As society continues to make strides to stamp out all forms of discrimination, wielding political correctness as a sabre to cut down the bigotry and intolerance that have stained past generations, the social acceptance crusade has necessarily left certain groups out of the great love-in. Whether they have yet to have their issues sufficiently addressed, or their issues are so petty and small the sabre whistles harmlessly over their insignificant heads, some minority groups have fallen through the cracks, and can still be mocked and abused without violating political correctness.
Take the American Appalachian people, better known as hillbillies. Perhaps unlike any other ethnic or cultural group of people, hillbillies can be publicly insulted without raising any great social ire. Is this because they do not have a strong public voice, because they are not a significant or well-defined group, or simply because they are stupid, gap-toothed cow-tippers who will bugger you the minute you turn your back?
There is another minority group that arguably belongs on the list of acceptable discrimination. Smokers.
You would be hard-pressed to find any thinking adult in Canada who is not completely familiar with the hazards of smoking. Lung cancer, strokes, emphysema, erectile dysfunction, and many others. In brief, shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life. Yet, according to the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS), 19 per cent of Canucks aged 15 or older were smokers in 2005, amounting to about 5 million people. That figure, I might add, includes the author.
The addictive nature of cigarettes doubtless keeps people puffing, but, despite what anti-tobacco ads would have you believe, there is no way all upstart smokers owe their habits to subversive ad campaigns and camels that look like penises. People start smoking for a variety of reasons: because they find it soothing or pleasurable, as a cultural statement, or just a time-filler. Or perhaps Kurt Vonnegut was right when he said, “The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honourable form of suicide.”
Since those words were spoken, it has become much less honourable, and an individual’s right to choose their own fairly sure suicide — to trade longevity for pleasure — is precisely what is at stake in the anti-smoking crusade.
Tobacco smoking is generally considered a vice, but for many individuals it is also an important part of their lifestyle. And not only for jazz musicians and film noir stars. As Colin Irving, a Winnipeg security official and daily smoker told me, “I enjoy the culture of smoking . . . the different methods, the magic tricks . . . You make friends smoking outside bars. And I like the way people bum cigarettes; people rarely give things to each other anymore.”
As the number of smokers has steadily declined from the 1950s, when a slight majority of adult Canadians partook in the hazy pastime, public opinion against smoking has been on the rise. In 1997, psychology professor Bryan Gibson did a study of smoker-nonsmoker relations and found that those who don’t light up are generally scornful of those who do. His study, published in the journal Social Issues, found that nonsmokers considered smokers to be stupid, immoral, and likely to fail in marriage and work.
Not everyone would agree that this opinion is discriminatory. Nonsmokers often argue that smokers are engaging in a selfdestructive habit that kills millions, and should be discouraged by all means. Nevertheless, obesity and high cholesterol kill over 50 per cent more people than tobacco (6.3 million versus 4.8 million annual deaths worldwide), yet treating an overweight cheeseburger-gobbler with disgust and disdain is certainly not acceptable.
From a political standpoint, one aspect of their vice that has proved a constant irritant to smokers is the hefty taxes levied against cigarettes. In Canada, taxes account for between 70 and 75 per cent of the price of a pack of smokes. The common justification for this is that smoking costs the government by putting a strain on healthcare through the illness it incurs. Not to mention the loss of labour due to premature death. Tobacco taxes are intended to recoup the government’s losses to alleviate the smokers’ burden on society.
However, though these things are not easily calculated due to the inherent difficulty in definitely ascribing a certain illness to a certain cause, it is doubtful that the total cost of the “smokers’ burden” even approaches the total tax revenue governments glean from tobacco users. An in-depth 1992 study for the Canadian Public Policy journal written by André Renaud and Jean-Pierre Vidal estimated the cost related to smoking at $669 million for Canada in 1986. An impressive figure, but
Cigarette taxation basically amounts to a flogging of smokers, if you agree that their burden on society is greatly outweighed by their tribute to Caesar. It is argued that these excess taxes serve as a discouragement to people who would take up a deadly habit, but if smoking is a personal choice or, indeed, part of a certain lifestyle, punitive taxes could be called unjust or even unconstitutional. Also, cigarette taxes are regularly raised without consulting smokers’ groups. In catchphrase terms, that’s taxation without representation.
I asked some of the students puffing away in the cold outside campus if they felt discriminated against, with reactions ranging from “definitely” to “not at all.” Dan Martin, a 24-yearold arts student, says he does not feel discriminated against, but adds, “I think [cigarette taxes] are ridiculous, the way they keep going up, and I think we need more lobbyists to lobby against that.”
Though lobbyists and pro-smoking groups are definitely out there, they seem to be curiously silent, probably because of the overwhelmingly anti-smoking atmosphere of today’s society.
One vocal smokers’ rights forum is built around the website mychoice. ca, which is funded by, yes, the tobacco companies. Specifically, the Canadian companies Imperial, Rothmans, Benson and Hedges, and JTI-Macdonald. Despite the friendly, happy layout, mychoice.ca is couched in manifesto rhetoric and declares, “there needs to be a limit on how far governments can go to impose their will on the legal choices of minority groups. For too long smokers were bullied into silence as governments, urged on by anti-smoking activists, engaged in a policy of ‘denormalizing’ them.”
Their people, however, would not speak to me, due to a policy that forbids them from associating with students’ groups on the grounds they might be perceived as encouraging young smokers. This is typical of the careful and elusive public relations policy Big Tobacco has had to adopt in the modern climate.
One smokers’ rights group that was more than willing to talk to me is the independently funded Forces International, which declares itself the largest human rights organization defending smokers. Maryetta Ables, their “general,” spoke to me from her office in West Virginia.
“We do not fight or argue for smokers’ rights. In the current legal environment, there are no smokers’ rights,” she said. “From a legal standpoint, [tobacco laws] are discrimination . . . It is infringing on the public’s rights.”
It’s a pointed argument, but not necessarily an accurate one.
“It’s not a human rights issue,” Patricia Knite says flatly. Knite is the communications director of the Manitoba Human Rights Council, whom I asked about the notion that smokers should be protected against rights abuses. “Anyone can file a complaint, and if a smoker files a complaint we would certainly look into all possibilities. As a matter of fact, I think it’s even been tried in other provinces, but to my knowledge it’s never gotten anywhere . . . There are 12 characteristics that are protected . . . It’s pretty hard to squeeze smoking into any of those.”
Knite is definitely right about that. The 12 characteristics protected under the Manitoba Human Rights Code are similar to those of like codes the world over: ethnicity, gender, age, and such groups that genuinely, incontrovertibly need protection. Smoking, despite the assertion of groups like Forces, is simply not a human rights issue by virtually any accepted definition.
Nonetheless, the fact that the issues facing smokers are not traditionally categorized as rights does not necessarily protect them from facing forms of discrimination.
Professor Arthur Schafer is the director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. He weighed in on the notion of smoker discrimination.
“We’re discriminating against them in the sense that we let other people engage in risky behaviour — eating too many Tim Hortons doughnuts, or engaging in hanggliding, or whatever it might be . . . without imposing punitive taxation.” Despite this, Schafer supports the taxes. “I think the difference is, or what makes it justifiable to do that . . . is that most smokers begin when they’re young and vulnerable and continue
Cigarette taxation basically amounts to a flogging of smokers, if you agree that their burden on society is greatly outweighed by their tribute to Caesar.
when they’re powerfully addicted. So I don’t see it as willfully adopted autonomous behavior for most people most of the time. They’re forced to smoke, or compelled to smoke, by their addiction. By making it difficult for them to smoke by restricting areas and heavy taxes, we’re helping them to overcome the addiction that we permitted them to fall into in the first place.”In other words, whether or not there is a place for smoker discrimination in our society depends on if you consider smokers to be the victims of addiction who need intervention, or, as many of their number state, simply individuals exercising personal freedom.
Which way the pendulum swings is very directly related to society’s perception of smokers. Almost everyone would have labelled smoking an acceptable pastime back in Bogart’s
“We let other people engage in risky behaviour — eating too many Tim Hortons donuts, or engaging in hand-gliding, or whatever it might be . . . without imposing punitive taxation.” – Arthur Schafer
day. The reason why today’s smokers are held in low regard, or as victims of an industry, is the very same reason why far fewer people light up — the enormous weight of evidence that has proven just how hazardous and addictive a habit it is.Perhaps the tobacco-loving set has been victimized and abused by this perception and they deserve fair representation. Or their discrimination might be socially acceptable because it is socially beneficial. Regardless, as long as we are autonomous individuals, a certain sector of the population will continue to enjoy their French inhales, tin vanity cases, and their fairly sure — if no longer fairly honourable — suicide.
