Bud Talkinghorn: The health police are setting up their check-points again

Having had such success with driving tobacco into the shadows, their next target is demon drink. According to Terence Corcoran's editorial in the financial section of The National Post (Thurs. March 3) the Commons Health Committee is looking into forcing warning labels on alcohol. Presumably it will be akin to those on cigarette packages now. I'm sure that many of these warnings can be used for alcohol as well. The wilting willy and cancerous organs can be recycled. Of course, there will be some wags that will deface them with stickers showing an open-legged lassie, or a robust heart, just to show that alcohol has some redeeming qualities.

Bill C-206, a private member's bill introduced by Paul Szabo, a Liberal MP from Toronto, is being considered seriously by this health committee. The doctor and nursing shortages, the deplorable hospital emergency system and hospitals that are turning into plague houses do not seem to be quite the crises that alcohol presents. Mr. Szabo has furnished the committee with patently bogus statistics, such as "50% of the prison population suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome", and the same percentage of hospital emergency cases are alcohol related. It turns out that Paul Szabo has an axe to grind, as his father died of alcoholism. As for The Health Committee, it has a track record of big brotherism. Nothing the Liberal/NDP like better than to create new regulations and prohibitions. And once they "solve" this alcohol problem with legislation that will be costly to the liquor business, they will pack up their tents and move on to food. Nothing cures obesity like a nasty picture that takes up half the package surface. Perhaps picturing some tubby kid forced to use a walker to alleviate his early on-set arthritis will stop Cheetos binges.

As Terence Corcoran sums it up: "With tobacco as the precedent, loaded with massive taxes and police-state controls on personal lefestyle, alcohol is the next frontier...Eventually, every food product and consumable liquid will have some garish warning that consumption might maim and destroy."

© Bud Talkinghorn