No peace for the addicted
Dear Johnny,
About all this smoking while walking and driving while smoking business:
As happy as I am to see that finally some people have come to realize how draconian these new rules/fines would be, I must at least rant and vent my frustration at how incompetent some people in this administration are.
My main beef (pun intended) is with the John Tung Foundation and Environmental Protection Administration Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏), who keep trying to make life for us smokers more complicated.
The reason there are more smokers outdoors, and therefore more cigarette butts on the streets, is that we aren’t allowed to smoke indoors anymore.
Which bright star in this administration had the idea that fining people who smoke while walking or driving would deter them from smoking?
Instead of fining people, why not just install garbage cans with ashtrays on them nationwide?
I was about to get off a bus, and I thought: “Hey, I’ll get off one stop early and have a fag so that I can air out on the way to my wife’s workplace.” (She usually whines that after I smoke I reek, so I try and stay away for at least five minutes.)
This would not be possible if the rules change. I’d be forced to smoke and wait around for the smell to leave my body!
I am a hardened smoker, Johnny ... and I love to smoke while riding my scooter. There is no way I’d change that behavior, fines or otherwise!
Be smart. Pay people to empty ashtrays rather than fine people for smoking outdoors.
The best thing this administration could do for itself is get all these bureaucrats into the Presidential Office, light up a few joints and hope that some creativity or originality can come out of them.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) got it wrong on US beef, the gondola, the typhoon response — even the Haiti response (US$5 million to Haiti? ... they sent US$60 million to China after the Sichuan earthquake) — and the list goes on. Can’t a guy just have a cigarette in peace?
HARRY A.
Taipei
Johnny replies: Given the sinister and growing network of relationships between activist organizations and the Control Yuan, we can expect a probe into the environmental impact of smoking within months.
And given the Control Yuan’s impressive track record thus far this term, we can also expect impeachments will be handed out to street sweepers and the various indigenous tribes that invented smoking all those millenia ago.
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