Swingers, smokers, and perhaps, a solution
While we were all gearing up for the holidays, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark ruling on the legality of two Montreal-based swingers’ clubs, L’Orage and Couer a Corps. In essence, the court ruled that consensual sexual activity which takes place on the premises of a private club does not harm the greater society, and therefore should not be criminalized. In the words of Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, “Consensual conduct behind code-locked doors can hardly be supposed to jeopardize a society as vigorous and tolerant as Canadian society.”
In an article in today’s Montreal Gazette, the president of Citizens Against Government Encroachment (CAGE), Daniel Romano, suggests that the Supreme Court ruling may also provide a legal alternative to Quebec’s Bill 112, which will ban smoking in virtually all commercial establishments including private clubs. As the article notes:
Bill 112, which kicks down the closed doors of private clubs to make them smoke-free as well, seems to be a legal contradiction in the making. On one hand, consensual group sex is considered none of the government’s business, while consensual group smoking is not. Arguments over the health risks inherent in both pursuits can and probably will be made before the year ends.
In fact, Bill 112 already contains the seeds of this contradiction, since it allows one exemption to the province-wide ban: namely, cigar rooms, in which the smoking of cigars and pipe tobacco (but, curiously, not cigarettes) is expressly permitted. Leaving aside the obviously class-based distinction the Quebec government makes between different forms of tobacco use (though you’ll permit me to wonder what Jean Charest smokes after a rough day at the office), the bill leaves itself wide open to the court challenge that CAGE and the Corporation des Bars, Brasseries et Tavernes du Québec have already launched.
If the Quebec government has any sense at all–and I’m not sure that it does–it will quietly amend Bill 112 to permit smoking in private clubs; else, it runs the very real risk that the law will eventually be struck down. The move would also lessen the possibility of mass non-compliance, which, given the abysmal lack of government inspectors currently employed by the province (cutbacks, remember?), is not unlikely.
Think of it as a word to the wise–but you didn’t hear it from me.
Goddamn it. Group sex good, smoking bad. I’d rather ban the group sex at L’Orage then permit smoking everywhere. Damnit, though. Group sex good.
HELL NO. I’ve been waiting a long time for my window seat at the restaurant. You smokers, with your transmissible side-effects diseased drug habit have been hogging us healthy folks from our good times for far to long. I’ve been waiting for this ban to pass for ages.
If I were PM for a day, I would criminalize and shut down the tobacco industry for good, then I’d go home.
As a point of clarification, private clubs aren’t “everywhere,” which is precisely the point of the Supreme Court’s ruling. The general public (that is, the “greater society”) is not exposed, since the questionable activity occurs in a private space. It’s a a subtle distinction, but legally, an important one.
N.B. This is a comment on JonasParker’s recent Cheeseorgy post, which I can’t seem to post directly to his site. Ergo, I am leaving it here:
Actually, the suggestion that smoking be confined to private clubs, which would be reserved for paying members and therefore be closed to the general public, is perhaps the most rational contribution to the smoking discussion I have yet encountered. The vast majority of bars and restaurants would be smoke-free, which would serve the 75% of the Quebec population that chooses not to smoke; however, a presumably smaller number of establishments would have the legal right to serve the 25% of Quebecers who are smokers. Non-smokers would never have to set foot in smoking establishments–certainly, no one would hold a gun to their heads–and better, they would avoid being exposed to the large groups of smokers who will be permanently clustered around every bar, restaurant, and cafe door in the province as of June 1st. Trust me, this will happen.
As to your point about no one daring to open a non-smoking bar, I think there is reason to be optimistic. A number of cafes in Mile End, most of which have liquor licences, and at least two bars have gone smoke-free during the last year or so, and neighbourhood residents have naturally gravitated to the ones they prefer. This suggests that the strategy is perfectly viable–it just hasn’t been tried on a larger scale, and I can’t think of a more appropriate city to try it in than Montreal.
Of course, if all else fails, we could always go the route of swinging smoking clubs, but that’s another can of worms entirely! ;-)
Whatever the outcome, thanks for an interesting, and refreshingly reasonable, discussion.
What the anti-tobacco propaganda has ‘’sold” to the non-smokers is that they are entitled to smoke-free places EVERYWHERE they set foot whether they have to or not. I can understand smoking bans in places where one must absolutely have to go like the bank or the post office, but why do they have to go to a ‘’smoking” venue if that doesn’t suit their lifestyle?
The truth of the matter is, that the first purpose of this ban is to FORCE smokers to quit and that is typical of a nanny government. It has absolutely nothing to do with the health of non-smokers, they’re only being used along with the non-proven harm of second hand smoke to enforce this totalitarian nanny law.
If there were as many intolerant non-smokers as the government and the anti-tobacco activists like to have us believe, the free market would have adjusted a long time ago.
Anti-smokers please do not gloat over your victory. Somewhere down the line the hospitality venue losses will be reflected on the prices you will be paying on your food and liquor tabs.
CAn anyone post the complete Gazette article here please ? I can’t get my hands on it.
I have to admit, I’ve never been especially fond of the term “nanny state,” which, to my ears, has a distinct right-of-centre ring. Nevertheless, the government campaign to eradicate smoking, whatever it is called, simply will not work. They may really, really want it to, but it just won’t.
I came of age during the early years of Reagan’s War on Drugs, which politicians firmly believed would eliminate the use of illegal substances. It didn’t. Twenty years later, millions of people continue to smoke pot, snort cocaine, inject heroin, and drop ecstasy, all of which entail risk but none of which are nearly as dangerous as government agencies would have us believe. Tobacco smoking is no different–people will continue to do it regardless of the law, as they continue to engage in all manner of pleasures that are not especially healthful. They’ve been doing so for thousands of years–why would they stop now?
Again, it seems to me that the only reasonable solution is to permit the existence of separate smoking and non-smoking establishments, and to allow citizens to patronize whichever they prefer.
In any case, the Gazette article is reprinted below:
Where there’s smoke there’s a backlash
JAMES MENNIE
The Gazette
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
“Government’s attempt to manipulate public opinion isn’t nearly so bad as government’s literal oppression of businesses,” Dan Romano says. “We have libertarian friends who say this is a great waste of money and government shouldn’t be in that business at all.
“As far as CAGE is concerned … government can attempt to manipulate popular opinion all they want.”
It isn’t exactly Voltaire. It isn’t quite “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It is, however, what you’d expect someone like Romano to say as this smoke-filled war enters its second year.
On one side of this ideological battlefield is Romano, president of the 100-member Citizens Against Government Encroachment (an unimpressive membership until you remember that six months ago it was about 35). On the other is Philippe Couillard - physician and provincial health minister utterly convinced of the necessity of making Quebec tobacco smoke-free.
Couillard’s “manipulation” is an advertising blitz promising that “On May 31, 2006, Quebec will breathe easier,” a campaign that has rumbled along for the past few months but enjoys added visibility during this, the resolution season.
The ads detail the scope of Bill 112, the provincial anti-smoking law that pretty well bans smoking from everywhere except your own home and, maybe, the dark side of the moon. Bars and taverns and restaurants will no longer dither over the abstracts of where the smoking section starts or ends. The government’s taken the guesswork out of it by decreeing there simply isn’t a smoking section.
This kind of in-your-face social engineering sparked the creation last year of CAGE, when Romano and his brother David decided to see if anyone out there shared their distress over the certainty of governments that they know our interests best.
CAGE came out of its closet in May, offering a tour of St. Denis St. to anyone interested in seeing how non-smoking and smoking establishments - bars or eateries - could co-exist, governed not from Quebec City but by the laws of marketplace.
It’s unlikely CAGE’s efforts saw the activation of Bill 112 delayed from Jan. 1 to May 31. Public hearings that suggested Quebecers might have an easier time adapting to the law in a month without windchill can be credited with that.
But CAGE was present in September, when a legal challenge of Bill 112 was announced with a coalition of bar owners. And Romano read with interest last month’s Supreme Court decision that opened the doors to legal swingers clubs - so long as nobody gets hurt and those doors remain closed, so to speak.
“We’re really glad over the decision,” he said. “Not only should these people be allowed to do what they want … but this shouldn’t even be a debate the government’s involved in.
“Exactly the same thing should apply to smoking.”
The rationale behind the court’s decision - that indecent conduct is not a matter of community standards but of demonstrable harm - seemed to uphold Pierre Trudeau’s contention that government shouldn’t get tangled up with what happens behind closed doors.
Bill 112, which kicks down the closed doors of private clubs to make them smoke-free as well, seems to be a legal contradiction in the making, however.
On one hand, consensual group sex is considered none of the government’s business, while consensual group smoking is not.
Arguments over the health risks inherent in both pursuits can and probably will be made before the year ends.
All of which suggests that despite Couillard’s advertising campaign, the only people in Quebec who’ll be breathing easier this year are lawyers.
jmennie@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006