Soapbox

I don't normally talk about work on my blog, but I am really quite annoyed with Health Canada.

Personally, if you didn't already know that smoking was bad for you, I think you are an idiot, or so oblivious as to walk around in traffic and will die another way, on another day.

If you think that changing a warning label from 50% to 75% is going to make a difference in educating that very narrow class of people who don't already know that smoking is bad for them, I think your thought processes need re-evaluation.

If you think those same people, who would be affected by the moderately larger warnings, are actually going to quit smoking, as a result of the change (remembering that addiction is different than information) I think that the re-evaluated thought process needs another tinker. AND

I think that this is very similar to HC's policies on a litany of other issues which turn on the ability of a regulator to come up with inane rationales for their own self-existence. If they can't solve it, it can't be a problem. If they have a budget, they had better do SOMETHING to justify it.