Vending machines with drugs a reincarnation of cigarettes

Re: Vending machine drugs worth look, Guest editorial, Dec. 30

The first thing that came to mind when I read the headline, “Vending machine drugs worth look,” was the great, great grand-daddy of all drug vending machines: Cigarette — or, more accurately, nicotine (the most addictive drug known) — vending machines.

Once a very common sight in bars, pubs, restaurants, hotels and many other public places and workplaces, cigarette vending machines are now on the critically endangered list. Personally, I can’t wait until they’re extinct. But before you shed too many tears for Big Tobacco, rest assured that their obscene profits continue to skyrocket, primarily as a result of their ongoing exploitation of kids (with regular cigarettes, e-cigs and other “next generation” products) … most tragically, in developing nations.

And at the risk of sounding cold, callous and uncaring toward the approximately 1,300 fatal illicit drug overdose victims in B.C. in 2017 — tobacco killed four to five times that number of people. Does anyone think of tobacco as a “public health crisis”? Hell, no!

B.C. has the lowest smoking rate in the country in spite our tobacco-friendly provincial governments, not because of them. Case in point: Neither Adrian Dix nor Judy Darcy can even be bothered to deal with some extremely low-hanging fruit — getting tobacco out of pharmacies and stores that contain pharmacies in B.C. … for the past five years, the one and only province/territory in the country that still allows such blatant hypocrisy.

Errol E. Povah, president,

Airspace Action on Smoking and Health, Delta