It wasn't easy, but we managed to end the association of the healthy sport of tennis with the unhealthy habit of tobacco in Canada nine years ago.

The use of professional tennis to promote tobacco use has not come to a complete end, however. There is a "Davidoff Swiss Indoors" tournament happening in Basel, Switzerland. Pictures of Roger Federer, who is currently ranked #1 in men's singles, are being used in the promotion of this event, and it features ballboys and ballgirls wearing t-shirts with Davidoff logos.

A web site and a Facebook page have been set up to oppose this event; http://davideathswissindoors.ch/ and Stop the Davideath Swiss Indoors!.

Article in swissinfo.ch: Federer fires up anti-smoking emotions. Includes a poll.

We were pleased to take advantage of this opportunity to network with other environmentalists and discuss our common concerns.

For more information on Burns Bog, see the Burns Bog Conservation Society page: http://www.burnsbog.org/

The 100th anniversary festivities for Imperial Tobacco turned sour yesterday. The company cancelled its public event, the government disassociated itself from the event, and it was ultimately a demonstration by anti-tobacco groups that marked the centenary.

On Thursday, the St. Henri-based enterprise announced in a press release that Marguerite Blais, Minister for Seniors and Member of the National Assembly for Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne would attend the next day to take part in the unveiling of an ice sculpture to mark the 100 years of the company. None of that took place.

First, Mme. Blais cancelled her participation, then the weather conditions forced cancellation of the unveiling of the sculpture. (It was 2 degrees Celsius and raining yesterday afternoon in Montreal.)

According to Imperial Tobacco, a scheduling conflict forced Mme. Blais to cancel. However, at the minister's office, Le Devoir was told it was a question of principle and good judgment that dictated the decision.

Even if she could have attended, Mme. Blais would not have taken part in the ceremony, her press attaché, Christiane Chaillé, explained. "Mme. Blais supports all the government's positions with respect to tobacco control," said Mme. Chaillé.

It appears it was the riding office of Mme. Blais that accepted the invitation without informing the cabinet office. The latter gave assurances that it would never have agreed to having the Minister for Seniors take part in a celebration organized by a leading tobacco products company.

The Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control (CQCT) figures that the minister would have been playing with fire in showing up for the event. "It would have been a completely contradictory message," argued Louis Gauvin, spokesman for the group.

The coalition organized a demonstration yesterday in front of the head office of Imperial Tobacco, accompanied by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. "We find it revolting that a tobacco company celebrates its anniversary with balloons and cheers," said M. Gauvin.

"For us, the only real contribution by Imperial Tobacco is the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Canada in the last 100 years, the illness, the suffering, the deceit, the hiding of information. They've done everything in their power to maintain the privilege of marketing an essentially deadly product. There's nothing to celebrate here."

Imperial Tobacco has been located in the South-West of Montreal since its beginnings. The headquarters have been located next to the factory site for the past five years. In a press release sent out yesterday, the company justified its decision to celebrate its centenary in public due its respect for "the most rigorous norms of social responsibility" and the role it has played over the years in "the evolution of the artistic, cultural and sporting heritage, fashion and community services."

Since 2000, the company has belonged to British American Tobacco (BAT).

Original article en francais: Enterrement de premiére classe pour le 100e anniversaire d'Imperial Tobacco

Editor, National Post;

With the publication of If you won't shoot, don't Taser by George Jonas (Nov. 24), the public discussion of the relationship of tobacco with death and disease has gone full circle.

People in Denial about this relationship have put considerable energy in identifying alternative causes for the many illnesses caused by tobacco; chlorine in swimming pools, x-rays, increased radiation in the environment, even n "bad karma'. To relate just one of many cases I am familiar with, Californian Mary Herrin chose to identify her doctor as the cause of her two heart attacks, instead of her cigarette habit; Ms. Herrin died at the age of 58.

What Mr. Jonas has now given us, based on what he calls his own "mini-inquiry", is that the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport was caused by Dziekanski's cigarette habit, not by over-eager use of tasers by the police. Jonas, however, was not willing to blame Dziekanski for his own addiction to cigarettes. Nor was he willing to blame the manufacturers of the cigarettes Dziekanski consumed, even though those manufacturers lied to the public for many years about the adverse effects of their products, including the addictive nature of them.

Instead, Jonas chose to blame "Big Nanny".

This is silly nonsense. No 'nanny", big or small, deprived Dziekanski of the ability to communicate in either of Canada's official languages. No nanny separated him from the relatives he was supposed to meet at the airport. No nanny caused him to "create a disturbance", attracting the attention of the police. No nanny caused the police to over-react.

George Jonas may well be looking for a big nanny to change his diapers for him. Good luck with finding a volunteer.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on Nov. 1 that former RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster has been appointed Chair of the Advisory Council on National Security. Inkster has been a member of this Council since it was established in 2005.

The remaining tobacco industry executives living in Canada will probably be sleeping better at night knowing that Inkster is looking out for them. The same is true for the members of the tobacco-industry-funded Canadian Convenience Stores Association. After all, how would Canadian convenience stores survive if they didn't have cigarettes to sell?

Those of us who are not tobacco industry executives or convenience store owners should start figuring out how to bring our own bomb-sniffing dogs to the airport with us. Inkster has a history of providing cover for the People in Charge that goes back to the Mulroney government, when he decided not to execute search warrants against Tory backbench MP Richard Grise during the 1988 election campaign.

Excerpt: "The looting of natural resources, the destruction of ecosystems, and the poisoning and enslavement of people are all reasons to end our dependence on a product that is completely unnecessary to humans."

You're about 30 km from the nearest fire, just patrolling on the outskirts of your quiet and relatively small town (which is not in any immediate danger from the fires), trying to live life and do your job as normally as possible when, all of a sudden, you notice the driver of the car in front of you toss a still-smoldering cigarette butt out of his car window.

After somehow ensuring that the hazard has been eliminated (tinder-dry bushes and trees line both sides of the street...and there are high winds), what do you do? After all, you've heard that cigarettes are the suspected/known cause of some of the fires but...

Do you ignore it (wouldn't want to be accused of over-reacting, making a mountain out of a mole hill, etc.)... pretend you didn't see it and just carry on, like nothing happened? Who would ever know?

The media tends to under-report stories about fires started by cigarette smoking, but somebody forgot to tell the Edmonton Sun. They ran a story on October 4, 2007 with the title Smoke leads to fire.

The case of Philippa Byfield is the most recent of the six fires documented here. She was a 51-year-old terminal cancer patient, and hastened her death by attempting to light a cigarette while connected to an oxygen machine. In the process, she burned down a $1.5 million home belonging to her father, Ted Byfield.

Ted Byfield and Link Byfield (Philippa's brother) were the publishers of Alberta Report and a sister publication, BC Report. Their publishing operation went defunct in 2003. During the period when Vancouver and Burnaby adopted no-smoking bylaws, and the WCB attempted to restrict smoking in workplaces throughout BC, the Byfields, along with writer Derek DeCloet, consistently followed the tobacco industry party line on smoking. Among other things, they ran headlines claiming that restrictions on second-hand smoke were based on "faulty science" (Nov. 10, 1997). Some more random examples:

• Full-page ad from "Canada's Major Tobacco Manufacturers" (Dec. 14, 1998)

• "If the WHO has its way (by reducing exposure to second-hand smoke), however, Mexico and other developing countries will soon become less civilized." (Feb. 22, 1999)

• Bylaw enforcement employees in Victoria characterized as "ashtray cops". (March 22, 1999)

The Edmonton Sun article says that Link Byfield declined comment on the cause of the fire. That's unfortunate; I would like to hear his and Ted's opinion on whether Philippa's smoking habit was worth it.

"China the leading source of recalled products" (July 9) raises the question, "When will China itself, as well as Canada, the U.S. and all other supposedly 'civilized nations' of the world begin to recall the most defective, disease-causing, debilitating and deadly product of all?

It maims and kills more people than alcohol (including drunk driving), crack, cocaine, heroin, AIDS, homicide, suicide, car accidents and fires, plus all of the 431 Chinese-made products that have been recalled in Canada since 2005...COMBINED!!!

It's a product which, when used exactly as intended by the manufacturer, currently kills about 5 million people a year. And that figure is expected to double over the next 12 years.

Amazingly, about 65 per cent of all men in China use the product, including 60% of male doctors there.

The product: Tobacco.

Please, join Airspace Action on Smoking and Health -- Canada's leading all-volunteer anti-tobacco organization -- in its efforts to, ultimately, totally eradicate the tobacco industry from the face of the planet.

Feel free to laugh at us and say, "It'll never happen!"

We've heard that virtually every step of the way...most notably, just prior to smoking bans in grocery stores, on airlines, in restaurants and bars and, most recently, in multi-unit dwellings (apartments, condos, duplexes, etc.), as well as in parks, on beaches, etc....and, quite frankly, hearing that just inspires us all the more.

Errol E. Povah
Delta, BC

The May 3 and May 10 issues of the Georgia Straight contained ads for “Skoal Long Cut Citrus smokeless tobacco”.

This is a flavoured snuff product. Why flavoured? Because snuff is tobacco that is consumed by putting it in your mouth. Tobacco is a toxic substance, and the natural reaction of anyone who attempts to consume snuff for the first time is to spit it out. Quickly. Giving a cherry or citrus flavour to snuff greatly increases the odds that a snuff user, especially a child, will try it more than once.

Snuff is at least as toxic as cigarettes. Usage of it is not as socially unacceptable as cigarettes, mainly because people who use it don’t make the entire room smell like dead animals. They still get those yellow teeth, though. The tobacco industry would very much like to sell the idea of an alternative nicotine delivery system, and they have a willing accomplice in the Georgia Straight.

The Georgia Straight has a long history of taking the tobacco industry’s money. During the 1990's, when the tobacco industry used sponsorships of motor racing, fashion shows, golf, tennis, jazz concerts, and fireworks displays to evade restrictions on cigarette advertising, the pages of the Georgia Straight were littered with ads for these “products”.During 1996 and 1997, when earlier restrictions on cigarette advertising imposed by Parliament were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, advertisements for “Canadian Classics” cigarettes appeared weekly in the Georgia Straight.

Airspace Action on Smoking and Health has a long history of opposition to flavoured snuff products. We managed to get a private member’s bill introduced in the Legislative Assembly that would have outlawed the sale of such products in British Columbia. It’s time to re-visit this idea.