Vancouver Muslims Smoke, Canucks Don’t
Filed under: Immigration, Legal Matters — marc moore on September 27, 2007 @ 8:27 pm CEST
Mark Steyn writes that a proposed city bylaw in Vancouver, Canada would exempt Muslim “hookah lounges” from the no-smoking ordinance:
In Vancouver, infidels can’t smoke but Muslims can:
Vancouver’s hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.
In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges…are essential for immigrants from hookah-smoking cultures, because it helps them deal with the depression common for newcomers and gives them places like they have at home.
This is ridiculous on several levels.
First, government entities should not be in the business of banning any legal action and smoking is, for the moment, still within the domain of the permitted. By all means, allow us non-wheezers to have clean spaces to eat, drink, and recreate in. I despise smoking - it is disgusting. But city-wide bans? That is not the purpose of government. **
Second, any law, whether good, bad, or indifferent, should be applied equally to all people under its sway. Wasn’t that the purpose of civil rights marches, to eliminate preferential treatment based on skin color? Now it’s suddenly acceptable to extend “courtesies” to a small minority based on their religious preference?
Third, though immigrants to Vancouver may well be homesick, particularly during the rather dreary winters that seem to last forever in the Pacific Northwest, that is not a valid reason for applying a double-standard to public behavior. Indeed, the anxiety immigrants experience is a necessary precursor to assimilation into the culture of their new home. Temporary disorientation is normal, expected, and on the whole, quite desirable. Those who adapt to it become better citizens; those who fail will return home.
Which is as it should be.
** Side Note: Mark Silva says that Hillary supports local smoking bans, Obama, while preferring local control, would support a nation-wide bad, and Crazy Kucinich says, “I’ve been breathing a lot of second-hand smoke here. You bet I’d support a national law.”
1 Mike C.
September 27, 2007 @ 8:51 pm CESTAnything for multiculturalism.
2 Matt Eckel
September 27, 2007 @ 9:06 pm CESTIt’s not about discrimination. City-wide smoking bans (while I disagree with them as well, even though I’m no fan of cigarettes) are meant to protect non-smokers from having to breathe in smoke when they are going about their daily lives in restaurants and bars and shopping malls and insurance offices. You can reasonably argue that in a hookah lounge, the smoking is the centerpiece of the attraction, and that anybody who enters such an establishment does so in full cognisence of the fact that they are going to be dealing with some second hand smoke, in the same way someone going to a rock concert can expect loud noise at a level that might get people arrested for disturbance of the peace if it were to happen on a street corner. The same applies to places like a cigar bars, which are often given similar exemptions on a case-by-case basis by city officials (at least in Boston, Montreal and DC where I have lived). In Boston, for example, the smoking ban doesn’t apply to any business that makes more than 60% (I think that’s the number) of its revenue through tobacco sales. The point is that in a hookah lounge or cigar bar, anybody who goes in has no reason to expect a smoke-free environment. The same thing doesn’t apply in a restaurant. Again, I disagree with the law, but this exemption does follow reasonably logically from the law’s premise.
3 Interested
September 27, 2007 @ 9:18 pm CESTI live in a city that was amongst the first to institute a city-wide ban on smoking in public places or within 25 feet of an entrance to such location. The problem with such laws is they do not give the proprietor the option to section off their restaurant complete with a separate ventilation system to accommodate their smoking customers.
When I smoked it ticked me off, now that I am a non-smoker it still ticks me off. Trying to regulate morality is nothing new for this very liberal city, but it is just a matter of time till it spreads nationwide.
Until then it will be selective discrimination, and selective taxation as well.
4 Nihat
September 27, 2007 @ 10:11 pm CEST“The problem with such laws is they do not give the proprietor the option to section off their restaurant complete with a separate ventilation system to accommodate their smoking customers.”
By an large, proper sectioning off hasn’t been done. Separate sections for smokers are generally a joke. But it could be done certainly. However, I have an issue even with people’s expecting a smoke-free atmosphere when they go to a restaurant or bar. That’s not people’s, but non-smoking people’s expectation. They can stay away from places that has a “This is a smoking establishment” on the door, can they not? Given the steady decline in smoking, they should have no worries about not finding a non-smoking establishment for themselves. So, as usual, free market offers the resolution. And this is entirely about regulating morality. As you all seem to say.
5 Interested
September 27, 2007 @ 10:21 pm CESTI do agree, my main point was - if your going to do it in such a manner, let business sort out a decision, I know several in my old stomping grounds of NH that went non-smoking on their own free will prior to the attempt to make the state non smoking. Several hotels designated non-smoking rooms on their own. Let bars/restaurants’ do the same.
It sure is.
6 marc moore
September 28, 2007 @ 2:18 am CESTI presume the premise is that 1 smoker can easily ruin the meals of 50 people. From that perspective smoking bans make sense.
However, I think that most of us agree that’s not a proper function of government.
I vote with my wallet; I won’t eat anywhere that allows smokers’ discharge to foul my air.
To me the interesting angle is the all-to-common pandering to Muslims. Why is the city doing that when it’s counter-productive?
7 Nihat
September 28, 2007 @ 6:24 am CESTMarc, to follow your angle (which, if valid, is important enough), let me ask. What would you have said about Muslim immigrants’ adaptation pains if smoking bans weren’t a popular indulgence of governments today? I don’t know how hookah lounges look like in Vancouver, but they are probably better compared to smoke specialty stores, where people actually smoke and no non-smoker is found (it is so at least where I live in the States). Matt Eckel has already made this point, and I doubt if this really is an example of pandering to Muslims.
8 Michael van der Galiën
September 28, 2007 @ 9:02 am CESTI’m not sure in how far it’s legislating morality and in how far it’s protecting other citizens from unnecessary harm inflicted upon them because research has shown that passive smokers inhale a lot of harmful substances.
In a way, you could say that it’s more moral legislation to make it illegal for people to use cocaine, because cocaine users are the only true sufferers, while with smoking the surrounding as a whole suffers.
9 Xel
September 28, 2007 @ 11:19 am CESTI think Vancouver should change the law so that it does not apply to businesses that either rely on a clientele that want a place to smoke or lounges that are only geared towards smoking. However, if a tobacco-lounge or equivalent starts selling drinks there could be a problem.
I mean, there is no legitimate reason to provide an exemption based only on the geographical origin of the establishment/general clientele, is there?
Once again I find myself not disgusted with a Steyn opinion (the other agreement is a distaste for the war on drugs). That’s another seal of the apocalypse rupturing right there.
10 Kate
September 28, 2007 @ 1:26 pm CEST“That’s not people’s, but non-smoking people’s expectation. They can stay away from places that has a “This is a smoking establishment” on the door, can they not? Given the steady decline in smoking, they should have no worries about not finding a non-smoking establishment for themselves.”
It’s not about your wallet, or choice for patrons…it’s about protecting our workers from breathing in toxic smoke while they’re on the job. All workers should be free from deadly secondhand smoke. Nobody is telling a smoker they can’t smoke…they’re just telling them to do it outside away from non-smoker’s lungs. Simple as that. Why don’t people get it? It’s not about rights. It’s about HEALTH.
11 Interested
September 28, 2007 @ 4:29 pm CESTUmmm,
No it’s not.
Workers freely look for jobs in those establishments, just as workers freely use subway stations or train stations or bus stations with various toxic fumes in abundance. A non-smoker has no right to order where a smoker can be in a public place. Both are taxpaying, law abiding citizens.
To further expound, if business were allowed to decide to either section their establishment, or retain it smoking or retain it non-smoking than customers choose to visit it or not.
That’s where it so simple - you have the power to choose, you do not have the power to force your views on someone else.
12 Matt Eckel
September 28, 2007 @ 5:05 pm CESTTaking the philosophy aside for a moment, it’s also worth pointing out that, at least in my experience, plenty of non-Middle-Easterners go to hookah lounges. I lived in Montreal for a time, where hookah lounges are relatively common, and they were frequented by people of every imaginable religious/ethnic/cultural background. Patrons tended to be a bit younger (these places tend to be popular with college students) but other than that there was no “typical” customer. As I said in my previous comment, I don’t see this law as carving out an exception for Muslims or Arabs so much as carving out a reasonable exception for establishments for which smoking is clearly the principal raison d’etre, and in which neither employees nor customers can have any reasonable expectation of a smoke-free environment.
13 Xel
September 28, 2007 @ 6:51 pm CEST“As I said in my previous comment, I don’t see this law as carving out an exception for Muslims or Arabs so much as carving out a reasonable exception for establishments for which smoking is clearly the principal raison d’etre, and in which neither employees nor customers can have any reasonable expectation of a smoke-free environment.”
Tell that to our very own “correspondent to the world”, Mark Steyn…
14 Nihat
September 28, 2007 @ 7:03 pm CEST“Nobody is telling a smoker they can’t smoke…they’re just telling them to do it outside away from non-smoker’s lungs.”
Definition of ‘outside’ is expanding, too. Some non-smokers are predisposed to classify as ‘inside’ places they walk by. E.g., patios, sidewalks, parks… And smoking is not allowed in some such open-air places. I’ve been to a such a park in San Fransisco. The Vancouver ordinance is quoted above to be banning it in taxis passing through the city. Whover this may be protecting from whatever, I sure hope the taxis there are zero-emission vehicles, and traffic is never congested in Vancouver. Or, there is a lot of toxic exhaust fumes to be inhaled by innocent people.
15 BIG TOBACCO
April 8, 2008 @ 9:36 pm CESTDear antismokerIt’s yer old buddy, Big Tobacco. I just wanted to thank you for making smoking cooler to kids than ever. Hiding them in the stores, that is brilliant. I would have never thought of that. When I was a kid I remember how badly i wanted to see the hidden magazines vs. the regular magazines. Also, I really appreciate you getting all the smokers to join together and smoke outside so they get to be seen ten times more often. I would personally like to thank all the quit smoking companies such as niccorette for reminding smokers who wish to quit that they cant do it by themselves. Possibly the smartest form of advertising i have seen since we got hollywood to smoke in movies. Hey if you are interested we now offer all sorts of candy flavored cigarettes for the little ones. Ooh and just to top it all of, they are really expensive so you have to be rich to smoke them. Hey kids, don’t you want to be rich? Then invest in big tobacco. We are getting more free advertising then ever! Yay! luv big tobaccop.s. yer all a bunch of minion sheep.