…the deadly
impact of cigarettes
Your Eyewitness is witnessing a surreal situation in this day and age: not only does the Government have to actually defend banning of cigarette smoking in public places, but it also has to seek to prevent youths from being seduced into cigarette smoking via ads directed at them!! You’d think older folks, who’re already addicted to inhaling the carcinogenic effusion from cigarettes and destroying their lungs and various other organs, would at least want their offsprings spared, wouldn’t you? You never know!
As he’s said before, your Eyewitness isn’t even going to get into the clear and present dangers of cigarette smoking. The verdict has looooong been out – smoking kills! And this isn’t one of those sins like drinking alcohol, which can be excused as “self harm”. With cigarette smoking, those in the vicinity of the smoker are forced to inhale, whether they like to or not (…unfortunately, humans need oxygen!) the statistics show they’re at even greater risk than the smoker.
If your Eyewitness had his way, he wouldn’t just ban smoking in public, but have the police charge the law breakers with an attempted crime! Think about it. These folks KNOW cigarettes can cause death…they mightn’t know EXACTLY who around them will die…but they know that if they puff long enough, SOMEBODY’S GONNA die! What’s the difference between playing Russian Roulette — placing ONE bullet in a revolver, spinning the chamber, then shooting at somebody’s head — and ‘second hand smoke?? And with Russian Roulette, the least you’ll be charged with is exposing people to an unacceptable risk of death!
What also gets your Eyewitness is how folks will justify anything for money. Imagine the tobacco importer having the chutzpah to raise as a justification for not banning cigarettes in public spaces and from youths is the Government would collect less taxes!!! Forget the pain and suffering of unwary citizens; forget the loss of breadwinners and families being plunged into despair; forget the strain on the public health system. So maybe the Government should start collecting taxes on cocaine use? That’ll certainly swell its coffers!
Returning to the inducement for youths to smoke, the local importer’s just replicating what its principals — who produce the cancer sticks up North — did to the Third World, starting in the 1960s. When they couldn’t any longer duck the evidence of the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer, and usage in the North started to plummet, the cigarette manufacturers used advertisements to make cigarette smoking “cool” in the Third World. And boy, did they succeed! Today most cigarette profits come from us, piss-poor countries.
The ads to our youths is to ensure market share doesn’t drop if SOME older folks wise up!
…inducement warnings
Just when it’s dawning on the Guyanese people that business, being a cut-throat affair, even “respectable” big whales will do WHATEVER it takes to land an “oil catch”, we hear about FIVE Ministers jetted away to visit the Lone Star state of Texas. Now why would they want to do that??
The reason offered is they want to “learn about the oil business”. Really?? It’s not like they went to inspect an FPSO to look first-hand at how oil sucked from under our seabed will be measured – so we can slap that MASSIVE 2% royalty on it. And not get screwed coming (the miserable royalty “renegotiated” by Trotman) and going (revenues on oil produced).
…Police protocols
Pressie’s once again gone out on a limb with his “perception” of the Constitution. He’s told the Police Service Commission not to proceed with any promotions.
Art 226 (1) of the Constitution clearly prohibits this. Williams’s advice again?