NEWS WANTED: Vancouver City Hall Allows Cultural Smoking in Restaurants

NEWS WANTED 

Opinion

Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor 

Apparently this week Vancouver City Council listened to impassioned pleas from Cultural Groups, namely Restaurant Owners of Ethnic Restaurants who insist on Cultural Grounds their Clients be allowed  to smoke from Hookahs in their restaurants and Tea Houses. Well, it seems, City Council in faster than you can say "Light me up".  Vancouver City Council has approved smoking tobacco in  their  Restaurants.  For the life of me I  have  been trying to  get the link from both the Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun who published this story September 25th, 2007, but for some reason it is unattainable on the web, which in itself is a impossibility, as every other story for that day and other stories in the archives for the past year are attainable.  With the Rash of Unreasonable accomodations for minorities and cultural groups being in the Forefront, recently with CKNW's Bruce Allen, what are we getting ourselves into?  Will Pubs, Bars and Restaurants who were forced to ban smoking be in a uproar in all this?

My Final Thoughts 

If this story is true and judging by short media blurbs, Are we to assume this will just add more fuel to the fire with reports on Reasonable Accomodation in Quebec, National Polls on Reasonable Accomodation, Bruce Allen is correct in his assumption that perhaps what I am hearing in Radio reports, the media, the Polls, the public opinion and in blogs that it is time for Canadians to state "NO" and New Canadians to assimilate, or re-immigrate.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs where one Cultural group of Canadians has priority over another in the never ending quest for Ethnic Votes in the name of Diversity. What will become of all this if towns across Canada get wind of this, or even North America where restaurant dollars are being slowly eaten away by doing away with smoking all together. No matter what end you light on, it is still smoking period, a health Hazard, "No if "ands" or "Hookahs about it".

Hookah lounges exempt from bylawFrances Bula,
Vancouver SunPublished: Friday, September 21, 2007

Vancouver's
hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption
Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most
sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis
passing through Vancouver.

In giving the bylaw unanimous
approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to
arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for
the city's Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption.

The
bylaw, which provides for fines of $100 to $2,000, won't come into
effect until the legal department has drafted Thursday's amendments. No
firm date for its implementation has been set.

Hamid Mohammadian, operator of the Persian Teahouse on Davie Street, thanked council for the exemption.

"We
are very happy because this is our culture. I have one customer, 75
years old, who said 'I will have no other place to go if you close,'"
he said.

Mohammadian brought two hookah pipes to show council.
They included a 600-year-old model with a ceramic mosaic on the
outside, fruit-flavoured tobacco, and charcoal to the meeting to show
councillors what was at stake.

Emad Yacoub, who runs five restaurants in Vancouver, also attended Thursday's meeting to ask council to protect hookah lounges.

"I
support no smoking on the patios," he said, saying it will make it
easier for him since he won't have to settle fights between his smoking
and non-smoking customers.

But he said hookah lounges are
essential for immigrants from hookah-smoking cultures, because it helps
them deal with the depression common for newcomers and gives them
places like they have at home.

Unlike other immigrants, they can't go to bars because their religion prohibits them from drinking alcohol.

"I
took my cousin there and I only saw a smile on his face when I took him
to a hookah lounge because that is what we do back home."

City
council also agreed that the city's two cigar shops, which have special
smoking rooms, can operate until everyone finds out what the province's
new anti-smoking regulations will be.

But Vancouver's planned new
bylaw will prohibit smoking in any taxi travelling through Vancouver,
even if the driver and all the passengers don't have a problem with it
and even if the taxi is licensed in another municipality.

It will
also prohibit smoking within six metres of any entryway, window or air
intake for a public building, which will effectively ban smoking on
most sidewalks in commercial areas, since sidewalks are only three
metres wide and doors are often less than six metres apart.

And it will prohibit smoking on restaurant patios and at bus shelters.

The one foggy point in the new bylaw was whether it will apply to crack cocaine and crystal-meth smoking.

One
disgruntled speaker, Angela Giannoulis, suggested sarcastically that
she hoped the new bylaw would mean she wouldn't have to put up with
crack and crystal-meth smokers outside her family's cigar-distribution
business in Strathcona, while it forces her employees to go to
dangerous alleys to smoke cigarettes and threatens to shut the cigar
rooms for her customers.

But health-protection director Domenic Losito said he didn't think so, since the bylaw is aimed at cigarette smoke.

Coun. Suzanne Anton noted the bylaw refers to the smoking of "tobacco or other weed or substance."

Losito said he would have to check with the city's legal department about whether the bylaw will cover non-tobacco products.

Anton
and Coun. Tim Stevenson, who are from the city's two main opposing
parties, came up jointly with a motion to exempt the hookah lounges and
cigar rooms temporarily.

The province is coming up with its own
new non-smoking regulations, but they aren't finalized yet and it is
unclear whether or not they will cover cigar-store smoking rooms or
hookah lounges.