New Frontiers in Fighting Substance Abuse

I thought that I was getting inured to regulatory idiocy, but this report from Edmonton leaves me speechless:

A "sober bar" that caters to recovering alcoholics was told Thursday to get a liquor licence and start serving alcohol if it wants to let customers smoke.

[Via Colby Cosh.]

Comments

[Jean Bart]

Ha ha ha ha......

Good one Jesse.

[Steve in CO]

That is just simply the most outrageous nonsense I have read in, oh, at least a week.

🙂

PS Can you imagine the fits the nannies are going to have when (not if) Amsterdam-like coffee shops open?

[Plutarck]

This reminds me of bilingual education studies in the past I recently read about - for instance, a young girl who recently arrived with her parents in America and speaks almost nothing but Cantonese has a teacher who realizes she can't even seem to follow simple directions. So she sends her to the school psychologist, whom, according to the law of requiring that under-performing children be tested for learning disabilities, tests her...using a test entirely in English. Obviously failing miserably, seing as how she didn't speak much of any English...she was thus put in a class for the mentally retarded.

You see, they didn't have tests in Cantonese. Legally, they had to test her, so they just had to use the English one.

Law, without Reason, is Oppression - seems an apt saying to me.

[Mark A.]

"The law, sir, is an ass!"

Mr. Bumble

[freeman]

I wonder if the authorities in totaliatarian regimes were any worse than these guys (except, ofcourse, they could make you disappear) when it comes to policies, regulations, etc.

If a members-only club wants to let members smoke (a legal product) what is the problem?!

The tobacco companies should have called on these do-gooders' bluff a couple of years ago by not agreeing to a cash cow settlement, and declaring bankruptcy. No state government can do without the tobacco tax & settlement money, yet they are posing in public against smoking ...

[Franklin Harris]

Plutarck, have you seen the final-season "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episodes with the potential slayer from Hong Kong?

[Russ D]

Well, it is Canada, they've got better booze than tobacco.

[xray]

And our bureaucrats as are as... bureaucratic as they come.

[Kevin Carson]

freeman,

I read, I believe in Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich , that Hitler was wrangling over his World War I veteran's pension almost to the last hour. The bureaucrats kept demanding more documentation to prove he really was who he claimed to be.

So that goes to show that the State's irrationality has its good side. Thank God the police state will be staffed with federal employees.

[Kevin Carson]

Screwed up the italics. Shee-it, that'll teach me to try using html.

[Warren]

Looks like I picked the wrong day to give up Canada bashing

[Anonymous]

A good way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it.

[Xrlq]

It's a pretty stupid law, but who are we to judge? Here in California, a bar like that would be prohibited altogether.

[J Canuck]

Does anyone know what Raimundo thinks about this?

[digamma]

I emailed the woman who uttered the infamous "They wanted a smoking license" line, and she emailed me back.

[RonG]

And Americans wonder why so many comedians are Canadians.