Comparing Quebec, Bengali tragedies

Re Judge awards $15B to Quebec smokers, June 2 This page 1 story stands in stark contrast to the page 2 one about Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza owners being charged with murder.

Tobacco use has killed millions in Canada. We’ve known that it is a deadly product for more than 50 years but continue to allow it to be sold with fewer restrictions than the less-deadly alcohol.

In Bangladesh, dozens of people have been charged with murder for their roles in an industrial accident when they should have known that the multi-factory building was unsafe. Apparently 1,137 lives in an impoverished nation of 150 million mean more than 46,000 deaths annually in a wealthy nation of 35 million.

Even when we look at it as percentages, the statistics are alarming. Tobacco will kill half of its users while the Rana Plaza collapse only killed a third of the people working there.

The prosecutors in Bangladesh rightly concluded that those charged should have known that there was a strong likelihood of the building collapsing. They may not have known the exact num- bers or which workers would be killed but they should have known that deaths would be the likely result of sending workers into the building.

The same is even more true of the owners and managers of tobacco companies. It’s not just a chance that people will die but a scientific certainty. Yet in Canada their companies merely face fines, which they will write off as a cost of doing business should the higher courts uphold the lower court decision.

What is the same is that, in both nations, owners and managers required compliant government regulators to continue to operate their deadly businesses. Profits matter more than people. Gary Dale, West Hill