Well if all the whiners out there want to keep pushing this crap I guess we can all start growing our own tobacco, and by the way the plant leaves are toxic when wet so you will need to keep your kids & pets out of mine and any others growers yards and away from the plants we will be forced to grow at home, instead of buying them off the shelf where your children and pets are protected
I also want to say that some of the pictures on the cigarette packs are pathetic. If they really want to try to scare us off smoking you would think they could come up with something a little better than a heart that is covered in fat from poor eating habits/lack of exercise rather than diseased from smoking. or how about the blind person? I am 40 years old and the only blind person I have ever know was not blind due to anything tobacco related.

Oh boo hoo, its an addiction, poor me the smoker, what a joke!, you smoke, your problem, deal with it, no one else should have to inhale that wretched poison, it stinks and its air pollution. What gives you the right to pollute other peoples air.
It should be banned from any public place, illegal to smoke in vehicles with children, and raise the tax a million fold as it costs us taxpayers billions in health cost. You have a right to smoke, okay, hurry up and die, smokers suck.

A massive tax on tobacco is in our near future here I'm sure. The government is always constantly bemoaning the fact that tobacco-use is such a burden to the health-care system and will undoubtedly soon go this route to try and recoup some of this cost. However, tobacco isn't the only thing that will be soon be heavily taxed by our government if only for the fact they are ever-increasingly desperate for more revenue. Get ready for alcohol, junk food, and lottery-winnings to 1 day soon be heavily taxed, along with the eventual legalization and heavy taxation of prostitution and marijuana-use (and perhaps other recreational drugs). All of these also bear a heavy burden on our social and health-care systems, yet when the government is making enough profit off of each of them that it more than offsets said burden, I'm very sure none of the professional criminals that run our country, err, sorry......................politicians will care.

both my husband and i quit smoking march 2010. him with the aid of allen carrs cassette tapes, i quit cold turkey. we both smoked for 55 years and only quit because we developed COPD. we would never have quit otherwise. we miss
it so much, it was the one enjoyment we had. Seem's to me the smokers of cigs are the evil incarnate, please leave them alone, the Gov't will thank you for the
taxes they rake in

The "first nations" illegal cigarette trade will have even more millionaires , as this is NOT policed at all - Cant upset them !!!

RIDICULOUS!!! fuck the government, half of them are smokers, what are they gnna do, waive the taxes for gov't employees with a special discount card or something and only tax 'normal' citizens? wow

Smoking and drinking are different. If you want to harm/kill yourself..fine, that''s your right. But.. smoking harms those around too. We can't ALWAYS escape from smokers. For those that think we they should also go after "the boozers"...they do!

In reality, you can only drink in a licensed establishment, or in your home.. or a friends/ relatives. Try drinking while walking down the street, at the beach, in a store, drinking and driving. You can get ticketed( at the very least) for all of these, and not just drinking.. public intoxication.

I don't think it would go over well totally making smoking illegal, but make it only allowable in your own home/someone's you know.... just as with drinking.

Funny, any smokers i know or have ever known, and especially in these days of environmental consciousness, ALL feel it's ok to flick their butts on the ground(which IS polluting). Add up all those cigarette butts.. globally... brutal!

As for the lost taxes.. a fair chunk of it would be recouped by lower health-care costs(less COPD, Cancer, premature aging, and so on).

All right.. flame away! :p

live and let live smokers are restricted enough as it is i choose not to smoke and some people do enough of this nazi like society

live and let live smokers are restricted enough as it is i choose not to smoke and some people do enough of this nazi like society

Cigarette companies manufacturer cigarette's so that people become addicted to them. I've heard so many times growing up from smokers that I should NEVER start smoking. They would stop if they could, but they are addicted.

Smoking is a choice, but really a very bad choice. You have 50% chance of dying from smoking related illnesses, cancer, emphysema, etc...Most people start smoking when they're young, and I know I think a lot differently now about life and consequences then I did back then. We should give people a chance at life, and not a death sentence.

i think Canada should go smoke free as soon as possible .This will be a fair and practical approach against cancer and other diseases cause by cigarettes.

i think Canada should go smoke free as soon as possible .This will be a fair and practical approach against cancer and other diseases cause by cigarettes.

i think Canada should go smoke free as soon as possible .This will be a fair and practical approach against cancer and other diseases cause by cigarettes.

Die prematurely from your freedom of choice for all smokers.

Anyone who pays taxes, whether you be a smoker or non-smoker, beware of what you ask for !

At first glance it may seem like a good idea to become 100% smoke free.

In effect what this will do is shut down an entire industry - from the production & harvest of tobacco, to the manufacture, wholesale & retail of cigarettes and put out of work all the people employed in these industries. These industries all of which pay enormous sums of commerical taxes, and the thousands of their employees all of who pay income tax.

This loss of so much tax revenue to our federal and provincial governments will have to be made up somewhere else. That's where you come in, dear taxpayer ! Can you afford increased taxes to off-set the loss of an entire industry - the taxes they pay both commercial & personal, and thousands of people unemployed collecting E I or welfare ?

There are those who would suggest that the savings in medical costs would off-set this lost tax revenue but that would be over the long term. In the short term the taxpayer would be on the hook.

I am a non-smoker and nothing would please me more than to rid the world of this disgusting and dangerous habit but wiping out an entire industry that is so ingrained in our economy after so many decades of acceptability is not the answer.

I have not had a cigarette in 20 years. I quit because I coughed all day and all night. My husband still smokes, but he opted to go into the garage to smoke to help me and I am grateful to him for this. I do not think Canada should go smoke free......the only one that smokes in my family is my sister and she is 75. I must
admit that second hand smoke makes me cough and I cannot even be outside with anyone smoking if the smoke is drifting my way, but the smell even irritates me. The worst part is seeing people smoke on the street and all of the cigarette butts out there, perhaps owners should provide outdoor 'large like planters so they can butt out'. My husband has a small planter in the garage filled with kittie litter and that is where he butts out. It's not the old that we want to 'butt out' but the young, so I am sorry to say that your 'Smoke free Canada' idea is going a bit far......our purpose is to get to the young ones so let's not be hard on the long time smokers...................

how much money does it cost to treat a person with a drinking problem?? There are still ads on T.V. for all kinds of booze, you can still drink on a patio, at sporting events, golf courses, beaches and other public places!! I have yet to hear a person say....I smoked too many cigarettes and drove home, beat up my wife, abused someone because i didn't know what I was doing etc!! what is the cost of a person drinking and driving and possibly killing someone or drinking and harming themselves or others and ending up in hospital or rehab for months or even years?? I think the government needs to spend more time on alcohol related problems than smoking!! why are there still alcohol ads on T.V. but not smoking ads??

When did the goverment decided to run your life and telling you what you should and shouldn't do. I think the goverment has a better things to do then telling people who have the right to make their own decions what not to do.

Perhaps Vancouver has those bans in place but this is one city employee that refuses to enforce any such rules; you'd likely be hard pressed to find one with enough time in their day. Ottawa has the gall to ban smokers from patios? Weren't patios added to restaurants for a place for smokers to retreat to and now non-smokers want that space all to themselves too? Time for Canada to leave smokers alone with what little rights they have left and move away from this rubbish anti-smoking trend where smokers are the only people legally allowed to be treated like second class citizens. The whole population shouldn't be forced to change their ways for the few just looking to make an issue out of anything. People have no problem walking past deadly fumes in Downtown Vancouver yet will make fake coughs when a smoker walks by. How about you close yourself in a garage for the weekend with a chain smoker? You'd come out Monday maybe with a sore throat. Try doing that the next weekend with your car running and see if you'll last half hour. Perhaps some real science could be done for once on the subject instead of biased studies paid for by the anti-smoking lobby showing selective results. Smoking tobacco simply isn't as bad as made out to be.

Smokers are pigs. I went to work north of fort nelson these smokers just smoked and farted there farts were carcinogenic . They were PIGS ,

I have NEVER met a smoker who I liked . I have NO Friends who are smokers.
Smokers and smoking should be BANNED

Smoking is a choice just like drinking and drugs. The government gets BIG revenue from smokers in tax money which should go towards health care. As it is know all these rules for smokers is infringing on their charter of rights because of lobbying whiners. Tolerance in this day and age has gone out the window. There are worse things polluting your air that give cancer than second hand smoke. Leave the smokers alone till you deal with the druggies and the boozers and the spewing motors of large vehicles and the exhausts from factories!!!!!!!

2nd & 3rd-hand smoke is not an issue now that enclosed public spaces and many non-enclosed public spaces are non-smoking, unless you think you can get lung cancer by walking through someone's exhaled puff for two seconds twice a month. It's interesting that as the number of smokers declines, governments react with large hikes in taxes on cigarettes... almost as if they're countering for lost tax revenue. Perish the thought! But if the idea truly is to eventually ban the use of a dangerous drug, then logic dictates a similar ban of alcohol. The problem there is that 80+% of Canadians drink alcohol and that's a lot of votes, too many to risk a ban. It's much easier to go after the 17% who smoke, having conditioned the remaining 83% to think of smokers as sub-human. We're not of course. We're addicted. And if you think Canadians aren't addicted to alcohol, remember the run on LCBO stores and the insane line-ups and even the fights that broke out over booze the last time LCBO workers threatened to strike. There are many glass houses out there, but it's only okay to throw rocks at the ones with smokers inside. But rest assured that one day they'll come for you and your drug of choice. Don't count on smokers to have sympathy, then.

Did you ever think it was the pollution from cars and industrialization that cause lung cancer. Where I live the air is worse to breath than smoking. Now we lead New Zealand in over taxing tobacco. You've put pictures of Holocaust survivors on the packs, and charge me ridiculous rates as is. FUCK OFF AND LET ME SMOKE! Go complain about corporate pollution laws not being enforced. I've been smoking since I was 6 years old. I like it and I'm in better shape than damn near all high school students and I'm 30.FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING TAX!

we already have to hide to smoke our cigerettes cant smoke in work truck that I own and am the only person in it. leave us alone we are now a third class citizen

What happened to individual freedom? Stop this nanny-state nonsense. Sin taxes are high enough. Canada is being dismantled piece by piece under Harper and this is what we moan and groan about? Fewer and fewer people are smoking as is - allow the habit to run its course. Why don't we instead focus upon the incessant pollution of our planet? Everyone blames smoking for our respiratory illnesses, but these days I place my bets on car exhaust and environmental degradation...

Canada should once and for all abolish the sales of all cigarettes and related tobacco products altogether. They have left it up to the provinces too long to handle this. It is already too ridiculous that things like mace and other products are not allowed to be sold due to the potential of hurting or endangering the health of other people; so it is only fitting that they get the blazes on with adding cigarettes to the list. This is just one of the reasons why politicians and anyone else on the planet have paid lip service to those that want to make cold hard cash hand over fist.

No, I would not support a legislation to make Canada smoke-free! This is incredibly unfair that smokers get their rights taken away as a result of the tobacco companies decision to add chemicals that make cigarettes harmful! What's next? Are they going to ban the sun? Because that can also cause cancer, rashes, and be harmful as well. There is also a variety of foods that can be harmful.. a lot of foods, and they are not banned, people still eat those foods.. Doesn't anyone realize that if all the smokers quit in Canada the government will hike taxes for everyone to make up for their loss in the tobacco industry. A physician once said that if you smoke less than 10 cigarettes a day it will not affect your health.. Just a fact I learned there. I wish non-smokers would stop fighting to take our rights away from us and start realizing what they will actually be doing to themselves in the end result.

Surely I'm not the only one who remembers what happened when America banned booze? It gave rise to "speakeasies" places where drinkers could go and get a drink. It also put enormous power into the hands of criminals like Al Capone. A ban on ALL smoking would result in the same thing happening.
By the way, I am a Non Smoker,...but a realist.

and where will the govt. get most of their taxes from? We are already being taxed to death and banning smoking almost everywhere will add more taxes to each and everyone of us if more people quit, I don't smoke.