I suppose it's about the same as everywhere else. (I don't have hard
numbers in front of me so I'll just blab from my own observations.)
Apparently in Canada, like in the US the group most likely to start
smoking is teenage girls and young people in general are a "high risk"
group.
Canada went through a three year campaign to END smoking in this
country. This is how it worked (or more accurately, didn't work)
Every six months there was an increase in the tax on a pack of cigs. I
think it was like $.50 or something... VERY high. When cigarettes got to
be $7.25 a pack there was a huge increase in contraband smuggling from
the states. And Native bands also made huge profits selling cigarettes
from the Tax-free zones on the land reservations. Once all this started
to happen... the taxes were suddenly dropped. The government was
creating new criminals and new marketplaces.
Today all indoor public places and work places in Vancouver are
non-smoking. Smoking in a non smoking area carries a fine of up to
$2000. Last year they extended this to include restaurants... but the
law is not enforced properly so you have people who fudge on it
everywhere. There are plans to extend non-smoking laws to bars.
The restaurants who fudge most often on the law are those that cater to
a young crowd, or an after-hours bar crowd, and those that are on the
"boundary" between Vancouver proper and another municipality like, say,
Burnaby. Thay feel that given a choice a smoker will eat on the Burnaby
side of his neighborhood because the law does not extend beyond the
Vancouver city limits.
Here's something. Among artists in Canada, DuMaurier was a preferred
brand of smokes because they donated HUGE amounts to the Canada
Council-- the Arts funding branch of our federal government. (This was
in the late 80s, when there *was* a Canada Council)
So yes, Tony, they always have another plan up their sleeve.
-- Regards +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Ken Pantheists http://www.lurchinvault.com/ken Lurch In Vault Web Services http://www.lurchinvault.com +------------------------------------------------------------------+