Editor:
I am not a smoker and I feel sorry for someone that smokes as it is a bad, filthy, dirty habit.
Recently, during our worst fire season ever, at the cost of millions of dollars together with the loss of many homes, some of these forest fires were caused by carelessness of smokers.
I see on packages of cigarettes warnings about a person’s health risk, but nowhere do I see any warnings about the smoker causing fires. Many fires are caused by smokers either lying in bed or on the couch while smoking, or the other bad habit of tossing a cigarette out the window of a vehicle.
All these bad habits by smokers cause considerable harm to others and a substantial cost to our fire departments that battle the blazes. Yet smokers just can’t get the message across to have responsible consideration for others.
I call on the governments to place not only health ads on the cigarette packages but also a ‘carelessness’ message, and to boot, have a special tax at the bottom of their receipt, a tax of say 75 cents per package as another reminder about the cost of carelessness.
Let the smokers pay for their carelessness and not just the health consequences.
I know what I propose is a ‘regressive,’ tax but some form of messaging is needed to emphasize the damage caused by carelessness of smokers.
Brent Hemingway, Surrey