Yes! Ha Ha Ha! Take that Big Tobacco!

In a major blow to big tobacco, the Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously upheld British Columbia's legal right to sue cigarette companies for an estimated $10 billion in smoking-related health-care costs.

Well, it's about freakin' time, Canada. Smoking is an unnecessary evil. It is bad for your health. It makes you stink. It makes the outside stink. Smokers litter the streets with cigarette-related debris. They blow smoke into my face as I walk down the street. They smoke in line for the bus so that I too must stink to high heaven. They ruin clubs and bars my filling them with a putrid stench and a thick, carcinogenic air. All the while the tobacco companies were raking it in. Filling their pockets off of people's ignorance, discomfort and sickness.

Now, you pay.

If the Canadian government wants to build some goodwill from its people, all of the proceeds will go towards improving the health care system. I will say again that we have a great health care system, but we must never stop innovating and improving it.

Health care is a provincial jurisdiction, so each province will have to file their own suits against the tobacco companies, but please let Quebec follow closely on the heels of BC. The health care system, the clean air and the outside streets are collective goods. I said COLLECTIVE GOODS, which means that we all get to use them. Smoking is a habit that makes only the smoker feel good. When you share something, you do not treat it as your own. This means that no, you do not throw your trash all over the place. Clean up after yourselves. No, you do not place a larger burden on a COLLECTIVE health care system with a completely unnecessary habit that causes serious disease - heart disease, emphysema, cancer and more. The health care system is for unfortunate, unavoidable issues. We KNOW that smoking comes with terrible consequences. I love it when smokers argue that smoking should be allowed in clubs and bars because smoking and dancing/drinking/socializing automatically go together. Yeah, like all non-smokers are puritans who stay home and knit booties. Remember when smokers had the "right" to smoke on airplanes, in hospitals and in the office? Yeah...totally reasonable situation.

Kudos to those of you who smartened up and quit. Smokers, you may feel angry at the loss of what you perceive to be your rights but flip the situation for just a second. Look at it this way - I never had the "right" not to breathe smoke in most public places. Even when I was in the throes of the worst chronic sinusitis known to man and breathing outdoors was like running an obstacle course. All so other people could "feel good" artificially. Quitting may be hard, but it is necessary, right and infinitely unselfish.