There have been some stories in the news recently that seem to be sending mixed messages.
Vancouver Park Board is proposing a smoking ban on Vancouver beaches. Now I quit smoking a long time ago, and I don't like second hand smoke any more than anybody, but a ban on smoking on the beach -- how do you enforce that? And why are we being so determined to stamp out smoking altogether? We don't do anything at concerts to enforce marijuana laws. We routinely see protesters smoking dope on the Vancouver Art Gallery lawn with no enforcement.
This is also a city where an addict can get a free needle to inject heroin or cocaine. You can get a nurse to oversee your habit, but you can't get a nurse to see your aging mother. We call it harm reduction. When did shooting up under supervision become harm reduction?
Then we have Vancouver city council considering a ban on bottled water at City Hall and other public spaces. Bottled water! Not pop, not sugar filled energy drinks, but bottled water.
And then there's TransLink trying to resist attempts by the province to curtail fare evasion, at a time when we need more and more money for public transportation, but we don't put an emphasis on collecting the money from people who ride SkyTrain and buses, or the Seabus.
Maybe I question all this because of a tidbit of information that came from the TransLink study. Even when we catch people cheating and fine them, only eight per cent of those fined actually pay.
Could it be that all this banning, and prevention, and legislation is really just making politicians feel like they're doing something when in fact not much is really being accomplished?
