Instilling a Fervent Wish for Smoke-free Housing - Part XII
This is my, our, anniversary: 3 years (sort of).
Three years ago, a group of us stopped talking and asking for help because second-hand smoke drift made us ill, and we began writing it down and submitting complaints.
Three weeks later, when we failed to obtain a meeting with management, we submitted a group complaint. That complaint reported the scope of the problem, and was to serve as the basis for management to act: their paper trail.
Something about asking a smoker to take it outside, or hint at getting help to quit, scares the heck out of people, ordinary joe to health professional to politician. They don't know how to spit it out. Even though smokers make themselves and non-smokers diseased, and 'Corporate Tobacco' gangsters rich, health professionals and politicians don't know how to do it. So they said, we'll show housing providers how to do it.
I think the notions of interference with privacy in your own home, and that asking smokers to take it outside might constitute discrimination, represent a red-herring: a deliberate, though probably largely unconscious, attempt to divert attention. They are simply too easy to legally rebuttal, and have been.
I think on one hand, non-smokers are afraid of the rancour and venom that smokers can spew out, and on the other, are trying to help smokers save face because of nicotine addiction. As social animals, we humans have great propensity for face-saving.
So we asked our housing provider.
Instead of a meeting, we received a three page letter glossing over the problem, advising management was in compliance with Provincial Tobacco Control bylaws, and there was nothing more to be done. Dismissed.
We were advised that complaints were individual problems, inter-tenant problems to be resolved as inter-personal conflict. If necessary, management would assist by conducting mediation between the individual parties involved.
Three years ago, a group of us stopped talking and asking for help because second-hand smoke drift made us ill, and we began writing it down and submitting complaints.
Three weeks later, when we failed to obtain a meeting with management, we submitted a group complaint. That complaint reported the scope of the problem, and was to serve as the basis for management to act: their paper trail.
Something about asking a smoker to take it outside, or hint at getting help to quit, scares the heck out of people, ordinary joe to health professional to politician. They don't know how to spit it out. Even though smokers make themselves and non-smokers diseased, and 'Corporate Tobacco' gangsters rich, health professionals and politicians don't know how to do it. So they said, we'll show housing providers how to do it.
I think the notions of interference with privacy in your own home, and that asking smokers to take it outside might constitute discrimination, represent a red-herring: a deliberate, though probably largely unconscious, attempt to divert attention. They are simply too easy to legally rebuttal, and have been.
I think on one hand, non-smokers are afraid of the rancour and venom that smokers can spew out, and on the other, are trying to help smokers save face because of nicotine addiction. As social animals, we humans have great propensity for face-saving.
So we asked our housing provider.
Instead of a meeting, we received a three page letter glossing over the problem, advising management was in compliance with Provincial Tobacco Control bylaws, and there was nothing more to be done. Dismissed.
We were advised that complaints were individual problems, inter-tenant problems to be resolved as inter-personal conflict. If necessary, management would assist by conducting mediation between the individual parties involved.
The resolution in flavor was to partition smoking and non-smoking times, not on a complex wide basis, but between individual smoking and non-smoking tenants. If there was a grievance with management, then we were to file a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch.
We did. The decision directed us to work it out with management. We tried.
We did. The decision directed us to work it out with management. We tried.
We made several more valiant attempts to meet privately as a small group, or publicly as a large group, and sought out help from independent mediators.
In three weeks we filed the “petition” as a human rights complaint, which would take the Human Rights Tribunal seven months to serve. At the heart of our request, public meetings and for smokers to take the smoking outside into a designated smoking area. But that's old news, already on my blog.
While we waited, we talked with and received letters of support from everyone except “the Pope and the Queen.” That was the lawyer's comment after going through it all. Everyone refers to doctors, specialists, researchers, MLA's, Tobacco Control, Worksafe, BC Lung, Regional Chief Medical Officers, anyone who had a professional or health connection to the problem at hand. In the everyday living of it, we created a paper trail of fact and evidence hundreds of pages deep. At last glance, it looks like five reams of paper.
But it is a sterling paper trail, I'm told. A real Michael Moore project waiting to happen.
I read that this is also political will. Small p, small w, political will.
Back in the summer of 2007 when I first encountered the problem of drifting second-hand smoke as part of multi-unit residences, I knew less than nothing. I didn't even know how to think the way I do now.
Six months later, at the pleadings of a neighbour similarly struggling with second-hand smoke but with no computer, we searched the internet and found four key documents which laid a knowledge foundation by which to demand accommodation and “equal rights” as non-smokers. Initially the documents were sent to management to be part of an open, tenant, general meeting.
Instead of management deferring to the authority of the government and its tobacco reduction strategy of smoke-free housing, instead of announcing that over the next four months the board would strike a committee, seek professional opinions, inform themselves, hold public meetings, conduct surveys, and decide how to proceed, management announced they would have to ride out the wave [of smoke-free housing] and allow it to pass over.
I downloaded and sent two megabytes of documents. Three years later, I have hundreds of bookmarks, and almost 40 gigabytes of documents.
In the first Human Rights Tribunal settlement meeting March 31, 2009, we sat through while the board's lawyer read out a position statement on how the human rights process was not the appropriate process for this complaint. The mediator led a structured problem-solving process that took us the rest of the day, and we went home with a list of short term, intermediate, and long term ideas for resolving the drifting second-hand smoke problem. On day two, instead of prioritizing and choosing, management summarily dismissed all the brainstorming ideas. The mediator sent them home for not participating in good faith, and acknowledged our efforts as we left.
And so the story goes, all of it documented, all of it waiting to be read. By a judge, and a Human Rights Tribunal. Soon.
I wait.
We wait.
Everyone waits.
For someone to do something.
Definitive.
About second-hand smoke drift in multi-unit residence.
During the 90's, governments made a grand stand against tobacco and smoking through radio and television advertising, and were very successful in turning the gorgon.
Smoking rates dropped by half, and continued to drop by half again. Today health professionals and MLA's refer to the “political will back then, to take on some of the oldest, richest, most lawyered-up corporations on the planet,” with what reads like reverence.
I read that as “Political Will.” That's capital 'P', capital 'W' “Political Will.”
For today's government and the next phase of tobacco reduction, the spotlight is not on lawyered-up corporate tobacco. It's constituents. Voters. Grumpy, with opinions. Some, over interfering with their privacy rights. Others, as a result of drawn out legal processes. Its all unfair.
Three years. You can learn a lot from the Internet, and reading legislature Hansard reports.
A request for an open tenant meeting so everyone would know the importance of smoke-free housing, especially in multi-unit residence.
What if that meeting and subsequent meetings took place?
In three weeks we filed the “petition” as a human rights complaint, which would take the Human Rights Tribunal seven months to serve. At the heart of our request, public meetings and for smokers to take the smoking outside into a designated smoking area. But that's old news, already on my blog.
While we waited, we talked with and received letters of support from everyone except “the Pope and the Queen.” That was the lawyer's comment after going through it all. Everyone refers to doctors, specialists, researchers, MLA's, Tobacco Control, Worksafe, BC Lung, Regional Chief Medical Officers, anyone who had a professional or health connection to the problem at hand. In the everyday living of it, we created a paper trail of fact and evidence hundreds of pages deep. At last glance, it looks like five reams of paper.
But it is a sterling paper trail, I'm told. A real Michael Moore project waiting to happen.
I read that this is also political will. Small p, small w, political will.
Back in the summer of 2007 when I first encountered the problem of drifting second-hand smoke as part of multi-unit residences, I knew less than nothing. I didn't even know how to think the way I do now.
Six months later, at the pleadings of a neighbour similarly struggling with second-hand smoke but with no computer, we searched the internet and found four key documents which laid a knowledge foundation by which to demand accommodation and “equal rights” as non-smokers. Initially the documents were sent to management to be part of an open, tenant, general meeting.
Instead of management deferring to the authority of the government and its tobacco reduction strategy of smoke-free housing, instead of announcing that over the next four months the board would strike a committee, seek professional opinions, inform themselves, hold public meetings, conduct surveys, and decide how to proceed, management announced they would have to ride out the wave [of smoke-free housing] and allow it to pass over.
I downloaded and sent two megabytes of documents. Three years later, I have hundreds of bookmarks, and almost 40 gigabytes of documents.
In the first Human Rights Tribunal settlement meeting March 31, 2009, we sat through while the board's lawyer read out a position statement on how the human rights process was not the appropriate process for this complaint. The mediator led a structured problem-solving process that took us the rest of the day, and we went home with a list of short term, intermediate, and long term ideas for resolving the drifting second-hand smoke problem. On day two, instead of prioritizing and choosing, management summarily dismissed all the brainstorming ideas. The mediator sent them home for not participating in good faith, and acknowledged our efforts as we left.
And so the story goes, all of it documented, all of it waiting to be read. By a judge, and a Human Rights Tribunal. Soon.
I wait.
We wait.
Everyone waits.
For someone to do something.
Definitive.
About second-hand smoke drift in multi-unit residence.
During the 90's, governments made a grand stand against tobacco and smoking through radio and television advertising, and were very successful in turning the gorgon.
Smoking rates dropped by half, and continued to drop by half again. Today health professionals and MLA's refer to the “political will back then, to take on some of the oldest, richest, most lawyered-up corporations on the planet,” with what reads like reverence.
I read that as “Political Will.” That's capital 'P', capital 'W' “Political Will.”
For today's government and the next phase of tobacco reduction, the spotlight is not on lawyered-up corporate tobacco. It's constituents. Voters. Grumpy, with opinions. Some, over interfering with their privacy rights. Others, as a result of drawn out legal processes. Its all unfair.
Three years. You can learn a lot from the Internet, and reading legislature Hansard reports.
A request for an open tenant meeting so everyone would know the importance of smoke-free housing, especially in multi-unit residence.
What if that meeting and subsequent meetings took place?
Maybe the smokers would not have demonstrated and smoked more. Maybe the smoker man wouldn't have lost his upper left lung. Maybe the smoker woman wouldn't have lost her leg. Maybe the smoker woman wouldn't have had a Colonoscopy. And maybe a woman wouldn't have died from Lung cancer in six months.
All caught up in a “Bleak House,” a Shakespearean tragedy playing itself out.
It doesn't have to be this way.
All caught up in a “Bleak House,” a Shakespearean tragedy playing itself out.
It doesn't have to be this way.
What would Political Will look like today in the next phase of tobacco reduction?
Full complement of
Full complement of
- education through advertisement,
- environmental supports through nicotine replacement, Fund Nicotine Replacement Therapy. There no longer exists a need to smoke. Replace Medical Marijuana similarly, through the use of inhalers (or make butter). There no longer exists a need to smoke.
- economic levers through taxation and for funding, and
- enforcement through legislation. Smoke-free housing legislated. The laws are already in existence, and need to be used for enforcement, and not access.
It is written. In Hansard.
What would political will look like today in the next phase of tobacco reduction?
Urging governments to act...
“... the role of ordinary individuals is merely to urge government to act."
“... the role of ordinary individuals is merely to urge government to act."
It is written. On the Internet.
Send your political will for Political Will to:
Send your political will for Political Will to:
http://www.christyclark.ca/premier/
Minister of Health Michael de Jong mike.dejong.mla@leg.bc.ca
Minister of Public Safety Shirley Bond housing.policy@gov.bc.ca
Rich Coleman Minister Responsible for Housing rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca
BC's Healthy Living Alliance, Mary Collins; mcollins@bchealthyliving.ca
Smoke-free Housing BC, info@smokefreehousingbc.ca
and
Canadian PUSH for Smoke-free Housing, Rose Marie socionik@yahoo.ca
