Pe­ter Bal­roop

Some 200,000 smok­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go may have to go cold turkey in a hur­ry. That is if they don't want to be hunt­ed like wild an­i­mals and hauled be­fore the court and fined as well as thrown in­to jail in the new year. If they're not man enough to stom­ach the abrupt with­draw­al of nico­tine from their sys­tem symp­toms they should keep their vice un­der cov­er. Much like the late "Deep Throat," the se­nior FBI in­for­mant who rat­ted on US Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon about his bug­ging of the De­mo­c­rat's Wa­ter­gate head­quar­ters and led his ig­no­min­ious down­fall.

Mark Felt, who on­ly ad­mit­ted to be­ing "Deep Throat" 31 years af­ter he metic­u­lous­ly pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on Wa­ter­gate to Wash­ing­ton Post in­ves­tiga­tive re­porters, died last week aged 95. With the im­pend­ing tough leg­is­la­tion be­ing pro­posed in the Bill, which will come be­fore the Sen­ate again ear­ly next year, smok­ers may have to ex­er­cise their puff­ing in the bush, just like a wild an­i­mal, to be sure they are not con­sid­ered to be prac­tis­ing the habit in a pub­lic place. The ver­ba­tim notes of the three meet­ings the five-mem­ber Sen­ate spe­cial se­lect com­mit­tee head­ed by Hazel Man­ning held to come up with their re­port on the To­bac­co Con­trol Bill 2008 makes fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing.

Man­ning, cur­rent­ly in Cu­ba with her re­cu­per­at­ing hus­band, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, had on her com­mit­tee Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace; Plan­ning Min­is­ter Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde; In­de­pen­dent, se­nior coun­sel, Dana See­ta­hal; and UNC-A's Cindy Shar­ma. They were giv­en 21 days to pro­vide a re­port and it is ev­i­dent they were un­der pres­sure to com­ply, from the time per­spec­tive, as well as the fact that the Gov­ern­ment had ne­glect­ed to put out ei­ther a White or Green Pa­per on the Bill so stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the tar­get­ed smok­ers, would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give their views.

In the third and fi­nal meet­ing on De­cem­ber 4, when a bare quo­rum was made up of Man­ning, Shar­ma and Dick-Forde, the gloves in many re­spects came off.

In the pre­vi­ous two ses­sions, See­ta­hal had "man­nersed" her col­leagues show­ing them from the van­tage point of her le­gal back­ground where the leg­is­la­tion was weak, or lacked clar­i­ty. On De­cem­ber 4, Man­ning and Shar­ma clashed over the like­li­hood that peo­ple in rur­al ar­eas eke­ing out a liv­ing could run afoul of the tough leg­is­la­tion, which now is es­pous­ing max­i­mum fines down from a dra­con­ian $1 mil­lion to a still-stiff $500,000.

They could be ar­rest­ed, charged, fined and jailed for sell­ing a cus­tomer less than a ten-cig­a­rette pack unit, or in­dulging the whims of some­one un­der 18 wish­ing for a nico­tine kick. Shar­ma, a sec­ondary school teacher in Man­zanil­la, said she would not want to be re­spon­si­ble for jail­ing her neigh­bour for five years. But Man­ning, ac­cord­ing to the ver­ba­tim notes, re­spond­ed that the av­er­age per­son starts smok­ing by go­ing to the neigh­bour's par­lour next door to buy cig­a­rettes.

The moth­er in her emerged and Man­ning–who has her two adult sons Bri­an and David for moral sup­port with her in Cu­ba–added that she saw cig­a­rettes as a gate­way drug that could lead to ad­dic­tion to mar­i­jua­na, co­caine and hero­in. Feel­ing sor­ry for the guy next door could lead to just that if she did not put her foot down as chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Man­ning stressed.

Dick-Forde chimed in in­sist­ing the Min­istry of Health had to do a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paign for cig­a­rette re­tail­ers in par­tic­u­lar, as well as the gen­er­al pub­lic.

The cul­ture here in T&T was such that sale of cig­a­rettes to mi­nors was not con­sid­ered much of a breach of the law. But she had lived abroad in coun­tries where mo­torists hes­i­tat­ed to sound the horns in their ve­hi­cles be­cause it might be con­sid­ered rude. "Over here we hear horns blar­ing all the time," Dick-Forde com­plained. She said, too, she al­ways re­called that a non-smok­er who worked among smok­ers died from can­cer while the smok­ers all lived to ex­hale an­oth­er day. The ten-cig­a­rette min­i­mum unit of sale will on­ly last for two years be­fore re­vert­ing to the 20-cig­a­rette pack, the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion shows. The pro­posed To­bac­co Con­trol Unit will be drawn from po­lice of­fi­cers, Cus­toms of­fi­cers and pub­lic health in­spec­tors.