Canada admits “it’s not working.”

Sure, people don’t listen when we say it (and we have), but in Canada they actually swallow their pride and print it in the papers!

We have said on numerous occasions that smoking restrictions and taxes have done a good job of filtering off the casual smokers or the ones who do it from time to time because they think it makes them “cool.” But do you know what we’re left with now? Smokers who don’t want to quit. Smokers who enjoy smoking (*gasp* heresy I’m sure!!). Smokers who will continue to smoke even though they know there is a possible health risk and despite ludicrous taxes.

Yet, as Vicki McKenna pointed out on her show yesterday, despite this blunt reality check, Smoke Free WI, the ACS et al. are still flaunting that their tactics are working and driving down smoking levels. While they are reducing smoking levels, they are not really making a big enough difference to justify the cost that they are imposing on society and the taxpayer. How many hundreds of millions of dollars do they spend a year? We are quickly approaching the same level of absurdity as the war on drugs; and we all know how well that is going.

Well, finally somebody else is saying the same thing:

We’ve spent a lot of money trying to eradicate smoking with limited success, so it’s about time we put our dollars elsewhere

Smoking was supposed to go the way of eight-track tapes and rotary phones.

Like asbestos and lead paint, cigarettes were destined to join the list of health hazards tutted at by future generations, wise in ways we reckless fools were not.

It’s why federal and provincial governments have spent millions of tax dollars on a campaign to gradually grind cigarettes into the history books, with a pink-lunged generation of tobacco teetotallers just over the horizon.

So healthy, so promising — except the future generation isn’t quitting.

Indeed, as Health Canada’s most recent survey on tobacco use shows, cigarette use isn’t declining at all and has remained stagnant for three years. One-in-five Canadians smoked in 2005 and one-in- five Canadians smoke now…

All indications suggest there will be one-in-five Canadians smoking three years from now, too — the survey shows the number of teens who smoke regularly isn’t dropping, either.

Needless to say, this how Canadian anti-smoking organizations reeling – however, at least they take a step that their American counterparts don’t and actually admit that there’s something going wrong in their plans:

The news has anti-smoking advocates gasping and it’s worse than they admit.

Despite countless laws, bylaws, campaigns and bans, the number of people smoking in Canada hasn’t really changed since 2001, when 22% of Canadians aged 15 and older qualified as smokers.

“We are very concerned,” said Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society.

“We should be seeing a decline and we’re not.”

And yet, they continue to disillusion themselves into thinking that if they just keep doing the same thing, eventually they’ll win:

“The Alberta government should move swiftly to increase tobacco taxes,” said Cunningham.

The anti-smoking lobby is also calling for increased campaigns warning of the dangers of smoking, because higher prices, tougher laws and more education are the key to reducing the number of tobacco users, or so they say.

If it didn’t work the first time round, maybe it’ll work if we just keep on keeping on? Does this make any sense to anybody? Even the author of this article is quick top point out:

But wait — aren’t smokes already $10 a pack in Alberta, plastered in dire warnings and revolting photos of dissected and diseased organs?

Don’t Albertans already pay $2.75 per capita to fund more than $8 million in tobacco reduction strategies?

And aren’t smokers already social pariahs, pushed to the gutter by anti-smoking laws?

It isn’t working, clearly.

And finally, some sense that we can all agree on. Of course, the truth is hard to swallow when you’re a dedicated activist, but eventually even the most thick-skulled zealot needs to take a step back and realize that they are not going to change the world – no matter how much they believe that they are doing the “lord’s” work.

It’s obvious some people will smoke, no matter how inconvenient or how disgusting the photographs.

And that’s it. The long and the short of it. There is no winning for the anti-smoker movement, but they can’t get themselves to admit it. Even outlawing tobacco won’t work because all evidence points to the fact that smoking and tobacco will continue to thrive despite the odds – the only thing outlawing tobacco will do is create more outlaws. It will not eradicate smoking.

Yes, it really is that simple.