Welcome to the second, less frequently-posted decade of RevMod.

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Thursday, August 21, 2003

Ralph Klein is right



Something you don't hear from me every day, I know.



A club for alcoholics � that has to get a liquor licence in order to allow its members to smoke � is getting support from Premier Ralph Klein.



The Keep It Simple club, for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics � many of whom smoke � offers its members a bar-like setting, without the temptations.



But under new city smoking regulations, the only way for the club to allow smoking is to get a liquor licence, since bars are exempt. However, they can't get a liquor licence because they have no intention of serving alcohol.



...



[Premier] Klein says the City of Edmonton should have a "stupid rules committee"...
Edmonton is hardly alone... perhaps Calgary's council can join in, and bring the Calgary by-law that has bar patio customers having to go into the non-ventilated bar to light up.



I can't find it online, but a few months ago, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham (alluded to in my last post) took time away from his anti-war, anti-Bush editorials to rally against increasingly odd and repressive anti-smoking bylaws. He argued that the issue has almost nothing to do with health, and everything to do with a wave of moral puritanism and judgementalism toward (predominantly) the poor, who smoke at much higher rates than others. This Edmonton club is the best example of the absurdity of that wave. When drug and alcohol addicts no longer feel welcome in this sanctuary, they'll find themselves drifting back to the addictive behaviors, and I personally suspect that the dangers of even one more alcoholic on the road far outweigh the danger of all the second-hand smoke the entire room could produce.

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