Ontario Provincial Police pulled over a truck on Highway 401 near Windsor on Wednesday when the driver was seen smoking.
Police handed out a $305 ticket because smoking is prohibited at all workplaces in the province under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act.
"In the act it actually specifies what a workplace is," said Const. Shawna Coulter of the provincial police's Essex detachment.
"It says the inside of any place, building, structure or vehicle that is part of the employee's workplace, which if you're driving a truck for long periods of time - that becomes your workplace."
...That's the way the law is supposed to work, said Health Promotion Minister Margarett Best.
Perhaps this is just one more current example of what our conservative friends like to call the emerging Nanny State, but it also raises this fascinating question for Ontarians who work from home offices - even part-time:
Is smoking now illegal in their own homes?
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
UPDATE: October 10, 2009
Toronto Star writer Rosie DiManno picks up briefly on the home-as-workplace theme. See: Watch me Blow Smoke Out of My Ears.
- GJW
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I am an ex-smoker.
ReplyDeleteI hate the smell on other people... I can't believe I used to smell like that too!
But - the nanny state has come too far. Smoking in the workplace - I can understand the charge MAYBE if it were a communally used vehicle... but what if it were an owner-operated one? Or yes... your own home office?
What makes me crazy... is good ideas taken to extreme. Abolishing smoking in the general workplace was GOOD... and the good guys won it. Yay!
But the ones who receive funding to abolish such threats aren't willing to pat themselves on the back and say "Well done!" They need another evil, another foe... if only to continue their own well paid existance as so called "protector-warrior" of the masses.
It is true when it comes to cigarettes, but also lawn pesticides, bicycle helmets, boating safety and more. The founder of greenpeace.... GREENPEACE fer'da'luvamud!!! says they've pretty much achieve their goals around 1985 and the rest is just political... well then. Agree or disagree, it's a powerful message from a powerful voice.
*I digress*
But smoking... SMOKING! When will you have infringed on MY property rights by havin' a fag and blowin' yer smoke over the fence? Or up into the air and it drifts?
GOVERNMENT - either ban it or stop spending time yapping about it. I don't care which, and will soothe my addicted friends with pots of fatty chicken soup and boxes of home-made chocolately chip cookies... provided none are on the nanny-state X-list yet.