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Laurie in Debate

Bill 45: Smoke-free Places (Tobacco Reduction) Amendment Act, 2007

Bill 45: Smoke-free Places (Tobacco Reduction) Amendment Act, 2007 debate in the 26th Legislature of Alberta, 3rd Session by Ms. Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am just delighted to be continuing on with the debate of this bill. I’m just going to do a quick refresher because it has been many months since we last spoke about this, and I do have two amendments that I had actually prepared last spring that I am going to be bringing forward at this time although, in fact, the minister has addressed both of them.

The concept of creating public nonsmoking spaces and also banning point-of-sale power walls and prohibiting sales of tobacco products in pharmacies and in educational institutions has met a number of barriers and hurdles over the years. In fact, the first couple of tries didn’t succeed at all, even though in 2002 the Mazankowski report, which was the Premier’s Advisory Council on Health, did include recommendations to reduce tobacco use through reducing advertising and promotion. It was specifically targeted at youth.

In 2005 we did have one of the government backbenchers introduce legislation to ban smoking. That bill was supported by my colleagues in the Official Opposition, but the bill was amended to allow for smoking to continue in certain places, which I really objected to because part of the impetus behind that 2005 bill was to protect workers. We created a situation where we protected some workers depending on the location of their workplace. I felt that it was most unfortunate that we would protect some people and not protect others because of where they worked. That, in fact, was the situation until the current Minister of Health and Wellness introduced Bill 45 in the spring of 2007. As I mentioned, that bill did include three things: the province-wide smoking ban in all work-places, including the bars, the casinos, and the bingo halls, which were excluded specifically the previous time; the ban on the power wall advertising; and prohibiting the sales in pharmacies and educational institutions.

Because I have the BLAST students here, I want to talk specifically about why banning power walls was so important. The most fertile recruiting ground for new smokers is youth, and particularly pretty young people. I first became a smoker when I was 12, and I was a really good example of what happens when you hook a young person on smoking at that age. I smoked with great dedication for 32 years. The tobacco industry made an awful lot of money out of me. And it did really impair my health. But you’re addicted to that, and nicotine is a stronger addiction than heroin. It’s very, very difficult to unhook yourself from that. My entire body had grown up with nicotine and tobacco in it. Everything about my body changing as I grew older was hooked into the drugs and the additives that are in tobacco, so it was a huge change for me when I quit smoking. The ability to be able to make it less attractive to young people to smoke and to make it harder for them to do it and to empower them with the tools to protect themselves is really important. It’s why the work of the Nellie McClung BLAST team was so important. It indicated the willingness of young people to recognize that and to work toward changing public policy, and they have been very successful at doing that.

Power walls are meant to be successful, and I’m sure they tested them until they got something that was very successful. Once again, what we had was power walls, or that sort of bank of advertising of the tobacco packages that appear at eye level behind the clerk at the point of sale. When you go to the cash register at a small convenience store or gas station, usually they have the gum and the candy down below the counter. On the counter are the lottery tickets. Then at eye level behind the clerk is the power wall with all the packs of cigarettes.

What they found was that young people who had never smoked – never smoked – could tell you the logo, the colour, the design: everything about various names of cigarette brands. Obviously, that was imbuing itself, and the advertising was really working and sinking into everybody’s psyche. It was meant to stimulate impulse buying. You’re standing there. You’ll pick up a Mars bar and, “Oh, I’ll have a couple of packs of cigarettes while I’m here.” That’s exactly what it was meant to do, and it was very successful. I was very pleased to see the leadership from this particular minister of health. It did take us, I think it was, three ministers of health and two Premiers to get this far, so I was pleased to see the leadership that was brought forward by this minister of health in taking the extra steps in adding in the banning of power walls to this legislation. He didn’t have to do it. We’re not the first by any means. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, P. E. I., and Nunavut have all preceded us in this, but I’m glad that Alberta wasn’t dead last. I’m pleased to see that.

A couple of other things I want to say about those power walls. Teen smoking is rising in Alberta. We did have a drop in it for a while, and it has been rising recently. This is an area that we need to target aggressively, and I look to the leadership of groups like this BLAST team and others across Alberta to provide the leadership to their peers in not starting smoking, especially at a young age.

Now, I know that there was a hue and cry from retailers that they were going to really suffer as a result of the loss of advertising revenue if they had to dismantle the power walls. I’ve done a little bit of research, and I’m appreciative of the Action on Smoking and Health, who also provided me with some information. In fact, small-business people in Alberta can really work very close to the line sometimes to be making a profit for themselves. It often involves a lot of family members pitching in to make the family business a success.

Still, when you look at it, what’s been shown in other provinces where the power walls have been banned is that at the most retailers suffered a 5 per cent reduction in their advertising revenue coming from the tobacco companies. If, for example, you had a corner store retailer or convenience store retailer who was making, let’s say, $ 3,000 from their tobacco product advertising revenue, this would mean a difference of $ 150. You know what, Mr. Chairman? I think that 150 bucks is worth it. I understand the challenge that it can be for small-business people in this day and age, but I’m also confident that the retailers that I know and, I’m sure, the rest of the retailers in Alberta will recognize that that $ 150 or that small amount is well worth it in order to protect the next generation and hopefully convince some of the existing generation of smokers to quit. One other issue that I wanted to bring to the minister’s attention is that as far as I can discover, a regular Blue Cross drug plan does not cover the smoking cessation drugs and patches and gum and things, so unless you’re on a specialized or an enhanced plan through your workplace – and some people are, but a lot of people aren’t – you are paying full freight on the cost of smoking cessation. I would think, given the cost to our health care of people that are coming in with COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, for example, and other effects of long-time smoking, that it would be in our best interest to try and assist people to quit smoking. Maybe I could ask the minister to have a discussion with Blue Cross the next time he’s out there about whether they couldn’t be covering smoking cessation products like – I can’t remember the brand name now.

Dr. Swann: Nicorette?

Ms Blakeman: No. Goodness knows, I was on that drug for long enough. The gums and the pharmaceuticals and the patches: as far as I could tell, unless you’re on an enhanced program that specifically covered it, the regular Blue Cross coverage of drugs does not cover it, and frankly a lot of people – I think it’s about half the people in Alberta – don’t have Blue Cross coverage at all, so then they don’t have access to that at all. That’s something that we could look to, and I think it would be a good investment from the government. Now, I do have a couple of amendments I’d like to bring forward, Mr. Chairman, and they have in fact been referenced already by the minister. The first one that I would like to bring for people is an amendment to section 9, striking out “on Proclamation,” and substituting “on January 1, 2008.” I have already supplied the table with the amendments.

The Chair: Could you just give us a moment for the pages to distribute them. We’ll refer to this as amendment A1.

Ms Blakeman: Yes. Thank you.

The Chair: We’re ready to go. You may proceed.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The amendment that is now before us, amendment A1 – in fact, the date on the bottom is June 13, 2007, so I was anticipating this some time ago. I really felt that we didn’t need to be giving such a long lead time to the retailers to be taking down those power walls. I think you would really have had to not be exposed to any media in Alberta not to be aware that this bill was first introduced last spring, had quite a bit of debate at that time, then was on the website, and an additional consultation was solicited throughout the summer on this.

I felt that people had really had this top of mind since last summer, and waiting for another full year for them to be able to take down a display is really not necessary. To my mind I thought: why are we allowing something to stay in place that could entice how many more young people to smoke in that intervening period of time? I have a lot of small-business people in downtown Edmonton, Mr. Chairman, and I have consulted with a number of them on an informal and formal basis around this. They didn’t seem to feel that there would need to be a huge amount of time involved in doing this, certainly not a year, which is what we were talking about, from summer of ’ 07 to summer of ’ 08, which is what the government was contemplating.

So I really felt that all things could be done together with a January 1, 2008, proclamation date; that is, to ban smoking in public places and all workplaces as of January 1, 2008, to remove the power walls from the retail businesses, and to remove the sales of tobacco products in the pharmacies and in educational institutions. We’re seven weeks out from that date at this point. I still think that’s a possible achievement, and I would really like to see us do it. I don’t see the point of waiting the extra six months. I don’t see what we gain from that, and I can see what we can lose from it. I ask the members to support me in this amendment to have the proclamation date set for all parts of this bill for January 1, 2008. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Are there others on the amendment?
Are you ready for the question on the amendment?

Hon. Members: Question.

[ Motion on amendment A1 lost]

The Chair: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have a second amendment that I’d like to put forward at this time, also at the table, which I suppose we would now call amendment A2, around locations where smoking products could not be sold. Could I get those distributed?

The Chair: Yes. We’ll distribute them now, and we’ll just give the pages a moment to do that.

Okay. You may proceed, hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is amending section 6, the proposed section 7.3, which is the section: “Sale of tobacco in certain places prohibited.” Specifically, the way the legislation reads now is that “no person shall sell tobacco products or offer tobacco products for sale in any of the following places.” What we already have is:

My concern about this was that there are still places where you end up with a lot of younger people congregating – frankly, we want them to congregate there – where we still see tobacco products sold, and I would like to address that. What is being anticipated here – and I’ll skip the first one and come back to it – is a school or a school building. One of the things we’re contemplating or that my caucus would like to see us move towards is more community schools. We could see a situation in the future, for example, where you have a tuck shop or a small shop in a community school in which things are being sold. We actually have those kinds of venues in some of our schools now where, you know, candy and pop and things like that are sold. I wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t be allowing or that it couldn’t be anticipated in the future that tobacco products would be sold anywhere in a school or a school building. I also wanted to make sure that we were including facilities that are used for sports, recreation, arts, and culture; in other words, arenas, theatre spaces, other places where we really want everybody to be and to feel comfortable. They also often have vendors who are selling a variety of confectionery, chocolate bars and things like that, but also often tobacco products. I wanted to be very clear that they would not be allowed to sell tobacco products.

The third one is pretty obvious, but I just wanted to make darn sure it wasn’t going to happen, and that was to say: in any daycare facility under the Social Care Facilities Licensing Act. That one sounds like something that’s pretty obvious. You wouldn’t sell tobacco in a daycare space, but we’re looking at daycare spaces being in all kinds of buildings and associated with all kinds of other enterprises at this point, and I thought: better safe than sorry. Really, I was trying to cover any additional space where we might have younger people congregating or where we’d like younger people to be congregating. That was the intent behind this amendment.

I know that I have spoken either on or off the record to the minister of health, and there was a feeling that this could be dealt with under regulations, but as always, Mr. Chairman, I really don’t like things being added under regulation. Because it is done behind closed doors, it can be both given and taken away by members of cabinet without consultation with the public. It’s harder for the public and even members of the opposition to get access to those regulations and to find them easily online or through the Queen’s Printer. I really prefer that it’s in the legislation, which is the other reason why I did the amendment and didn’t just leave it to the good intentions of the minister.

Those are my reasonings behind bringing forward this amendment. I think it’s worthwhile to be absolutely clear about what we anticipate here and that we really don’t want those tobacco products sold widely at all. I can envision a point in time where – it’s still a legal substance to consume, and adults are welcome to do that – they’d have to be going to very particular places to purchase those products and that it wouldn’t just be easily accessible. You wouldn’t be able to just run in anywhere and pick up tobacco products. The harder it is to get those products, the more likely it is that people will either stop smoking or never start. Again, I’m speaking from personal experience on this. The major reason why I quit smoking was that it got so inconvenient, it drove me crazy. I’d been elected for a number of years at that point. You know, we were in this thing where the smoking rules that were coming in really made it inconvenient to smoke, and that turned out to be a very good thing. I was spending way too much time thinking about where I would be able to go to smoke and how long it would take me to get there and how long it would take me to get back and did I need to have a coat and was I going outside. I thought: “Why am I spending so much of my life thinking about having a cigarette? My whole life is being consumed by this. It’s a colossal waste of time and energy.” That was a real impetus in getting me to stop smoking.

When I look at how easy it is – you know, I can remember a story of a friend who went in to see her doctor. She’d gained a couple of pounds, and she just marched right out. There was a convenience store across the street, and over she marched and bought another pack of cigarettes and started smoking again. I thought: if only that convenience store hadn’t been across the street. If it had been a little bit harder for her to find that pack of cigarettes, the likelihood that she would have started again I think would have been severely diminished. That’s what I was shooting for here.

I ask for my colleagues’ support in the Assembly for amendment A2. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Are there others?

Are you ready for the question on amendment A2?

Hon. Members: Question.

[Motion on amendment A2 lost]