Vancouver Coastal Health Hypocrisy
On the weekend, I happened to be on the east side of the city with my son. We went to lunch at a favorite Chinese restaurant of his called Lok’s on East Hastings (a very eclectic palate for an 8-year old!). The food is wonderful and the prices are unbeatable. On our way through town I thought I might visit a cigar shop I’ve enjoyed over the years for some pipe tobacco. I don’t smoke my pipe very often (maybe a half-dozen times per year) but always enjoy the particular blend this shop features.
After about fifteen minutes in the shop, one of the attendants said, “Mr. Tsakumis, we really value your business here, but the rule by Coastal Health is that minors can’t be in this area, if they were allowed, we’d have to cover all our tobacco products, I’m so sorry…thank you for understanding”
Well, bloody flipping marvelous for Coastal Health. I’m supposed to leave my kid in the truck? Is this a “healthy” choice? Not a chance. Besides, smoking isn’t allowed in cigar stores anymore (if it was, I would have gone when I was alone) so what’s the problem? My son actually enjoyed being there and seeing James Bond’s picture on the wall (Pierce Brosnan had visited) along with a bunch of other celebrities. “Look Dad, Arnold even signed a picture!” No harm, no foul. Just an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon spent by a father and son, who enjoy each other’s company like nothing else. I’ve been under tremendous pressure lately, over a number of issues, and spending time with my boy is as cathartic as it is therapeutic. My old man was always busy when I was a kid. We went for walks, from time to time, and I listened to a catalogue of what I hadn’t done to please him over the course of my life. Not so with me and ‘Rocky’, so going to the cigar shop or to his favorite bakery, or to the park with our mitts and bats, means more to me than I could ever find the words to express.
But I digress… the point behind Coastal Health’s objections to minors visiting tobacconists is that it “sets a bad example”
Jesus Murphy…
I have a few observations:
1) Coastal Health hasn’t ONCE commented on the new evidence directly linking marijuana use to schizophrenia in the young. Not a word, but if I take the little guy with me for a twenty-minute run through a cigar store where smoking is forbidden, I’m a bad Dad? What a load of bull!
2) Their absence of a position on pamphlets handed out by drug legalization nitwits (working for Coastal Health) showing “best ways” for addicts to fill their veins full of the hell that is killing them is unconscionable. But a young kid having the dangers of tobacco explained to him by his Dad (and best friend) in a cigar shop is somehow bad?
3) Where is their advocacy for more treatment and detox beds? Why are they not telling the government(s) that drug treatment is what matters, not Insite and other related hocus pocus?
4) They have doctors on the payroll who are pushing the lie that marijuana is “less harmful” than alcohol. Additionally, there are doctors on the DTES, one in particular, who continually claims that the federal government has a “political agenda of ideological failure”, where Insite is concerned–all while he’s standing next to NDPers Libby Davies and Jenny Kwan. (Ms. Davies son Leif Erikson worked for Insite as recently as last year and Ms. Kwan’s husband works with the Portland Hotel Society, that runs Insite). This isn’t political?! Libby and Jenny aren’t part of a “failed ideology” considering the lack of advocacy for real treatment and their personal family best interests in maintaining the status quo?
5) Where was/is Coastal Health when 5,000 baked idiots smoke dope at a legalization rally and thus break the law, right in the heart of Vancouver? No public statements about what a bad example this sets for kids?????
So, soft-peddling on drug treatment; free-licence for legalization advocacy from their own; permitting lies about any “safe use” (for example, there is no such thing as a “safe injection” unless it’s administered by a medical/healthcare professional), drivel, lather, pish, choke, cough, spit…
But let me get this straight: I shouldn’t take my kid to cigar store because that might set him on the wrong path in life.
Vancouver Coastal Health is the Mecca of medical terrorism; they are a pharmacological theocracy: The premise of their existence is good enough, but they are oft represented by extremist radicals, whose positions are contrary to our greater good–they piously wrap themselves in a flag and detonate (in this case bad policy) which results in certain death.
Sound familiar?
Add this to the list of endless regulations, bylaws, and counseling points. I am surprised that the Parental Police did not come and take you away. All this claptrap regulating the law abiding, yet we let career criminals with dozens of convictions wander about unfettered.
Let me just check that sign post coming up…… yes indeed, as I thought, …..we are in the twilight zone.
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Absolutely. I was polite to the guy, and felt sorry for him, but what a load of shit for Coastal Health to be playing that game. They sit on their thumbs when it comes to drugs, but I buy a bag of pipe tobacco for five dollars, say hello to a couple of people, and I’m committing a crime because I had my boy with me??? That’s INSANE. Frankly, I was recognized by a woman who used to watch ‘The Standard’ so I stopped to talk to her for a few minutes and the owners dog was doing tricks for my son, otherwise, we’d have been in an out in a flash.
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The tobacco law this proprietor refers to is actually courtesy of the provincial government which came into effect at the end of March, 2008. Any store that sells tobacco products must keep them all hidden from view if they allow people under the age of 19 years. If they wish to display their tobacco products openly, they cannot allow minors into the store. We have a few such stores in Coquitlam, and they have a sign on the door banning anyone under the age of 19 from entering the premises.
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Correct. On the one hand Gordon Campbell restricts funding for sports programs and cuts swaths through education budgets, on the other he installs Draconian rules regarding the civilized use of tobacco. Cigarettes is an entirely different matter. But he went way too far on the encouragement of cities and municipalities being able to deny your liberty to smoke outside. The policing of people’s liberties has just gone too far–period.
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It is mete and fitting that cozy relationships like you mentioned are exposed to more and more of the public. The poverty industry is huge, as is the illicit drug business, and the fact that politicians of both the left and the right are profiting from it should be public knowledge. I remember talking with the late Bruce Erikson (his unofficial office was usually a beer parlour) and it was obvious that he was not in it because of Christian charity. It’s no wonder that people like Libby Davies and the American draft dodger Jim Green were attracted to his schemes; poverty advocacy is a money pit, that does not extend to the poor.
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10/10 Nice work.
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“ It’s no wonder that people like Libby Davies and the American draft dodger Jim Green were attracted to his schemes; poverty advocacy is a money pit, that does not extend to the poor.”
Watch for announcements of resignations enmasse by CEOs and other executives of the Canadian Banks (winners in yesterday’s BC budget, again) and other corporations so they can jump on the poverty industry money train. Hell, maybe that’s where Gordo plans to go, he will fight homelessness in Maui next year – as if he will need to find a job after almost a decade of fleecing the province.
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Um, let me be the bearer of some news…Maui might very quickly become the last place Gordo will want to go back to…
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