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Why not try it for hard drugs?The same people who keep calling for ever more terrifying cigarette package warnings support precisely the opposite when it comes to opioids You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Unlike several other wars one could name, the war on smoking has accomplished what it set out to do quite spectacularly, and without resorting to outright bans, Chris Selley suggests. Photo by Tim Miller/Belleville Intelligencer/PostmediaThis week, I overheard an unusual conversation: A fellow at my local branch of a certain Quebec-based convenience store colossus asked for two packs of a brand of cigarettes I had actually heard of. (It comes in a red pack. It is made by Imperial Tobacco. It is named after Daphne du Maurier’s father. Under Canadian law, I don’t think I’m allowed to say any more.)Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorIt’s unusual enough to hear people ask for smokes at the corner store nowadays, more unusual still to hear them ask for what Big Tobacco now calls “premium brands” — which as far as I can remember is what people used to just call “cigarettes.”When I do see people buy cigarettes in traditional retail outlets like convenience stores, it mostly seems to be the “discount” brands that predominate (they are generally made by the same Big Tobacco companies as make the legacy brands). I’m not surprised. I have never been a smoker, but with a snack and a drink thrown in with his 50 cigarettes that guy spent roughly what people my age remember spending on a tank of gas in the 1990s. The mind boggles. Even the cheap brands aren’t remotely cheap by historical standards.The National Post newsletter that doesn’t hold back, giving readers the unvarnished truth on media, politics and culture.By signing up, you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Right? will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againEvery such transaction is fitting testament, I suppose, to the magnificently addictive power of nicotine. But it’s also testament to governments’ weirdly unrelenting efforts to double down on tobacco restrictions, despite their demonstrably roaring success and what must surely be diminishing returns on investment.This week, the federal government unveiled supposedly even more disgusting and portentous cigarette labelling. “You may need a hole cut in your throat to breathe,” one pack advises. (Readers, do not try this at home. Call 911.)Say what you will about the war on smoking. Unlike several other wars one could name, not least against other forms of addiction, it has accomplished what it set out to do quite spectacularly, and without resorting to outright bans.According to World Health Organization statistics, in the year 2025, 10.8 per cent of Canadians regularly consumed tobacco products. Among OECD nations, only Colombia can claim a lower figure, and plenty of our friends in peer nations still smoke at astonishing rates: 30 per cent of Portuguese, 29 per cent of Greeks, 27 per cent of Spaniards.Dive behind the former Iron Curtain and Canadian eyes start properly stinging. According to the WHO, slightly fewer than 40 per cent of Serbians smoke. I challenge anyone to fly to Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport, observe the behaviour of the alighting passengers, and tell me that’s not a wild underestimate.Canada’s smoking rates, like those of our peer countries’, have in general been plummeting. Sixty years ago, the figure in Canada was roughly 50 per cent. And I wouldn’t suggest we accept success and down tools. But more price and public-health signals on the cigarettes people buy at the corner store do seem rather beside the point, when contraband cigarettes now command a huge share of the market precisely because of those signals — especially, I suspect, cost.The contraband market share is 38 per cent, according to a KPMG study commissioned by Philip Morris International and released earlier this year. Based on my anecdotal observations, that number isn’t at all counterintuitive. Lucky Strike came up with “it’s toasted” more than 100 years ago, when your smoke of choice was an affordable class marker. (Mad Men wasn’t a documentary.) Nowadays, many irredentist smokers in Canada get their cigarettes at the very least in packs without the proper excise stickers, and often in gigantic Ziploc bags from producers that don’t answer in any meaningful way to government.We can certainly nibble away at the contraband problem. So far this year, the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP have claimed seizures of 1.63-million “unstamped” cigarettes from a 69-year-old Nova Scotia woman; 2.26 million at the sleepy border crossing from Maine into Woburn, Que.; and a staggering 7.2 million from two Brampton, Ont. men driving a tractor trailer through Saskatchewan. But clearly the risk is still worth it to many.“Native smokes” is the term used (broadly speaking) for those produced and sold on First Nations, which should in theory be taxed when sold to off-reserve residents, and which every now and again might find their way behind the counter at your local more downscale convenience store (you can even order them online). We’re very unlikely to ever get serious about those, since it’s just not worth it for any government to pick a fight with, say, the Ontario Mohawks.And, as ever, a central contradiction in the anti-addiction ethos is in play here. We have watched social stigmatization and arguably draconian restrictions help beat down smoking rates for decades. But many of the same people who support that approach support precisely the opposite when it comes to opioids. Public health leaders advocate for “safer” places to consume drugs, and a “safer” supply of drugs, and won’t tolerate any stigmatization of drug use. I appreciate those arguments… but then, the anti-tobacco brigade seems oddly unwilling to support harm reduction for tobacco when it comes to less smokey nicotine-delivery mechanisms.Tobacco obviously isn’t heroin, and alcohol obviously isn’t fentanyl, and cannabis obviously isn’t cocaine, but in a fair number of ways, addiction is addiction. With Canadian governments of various political stripes turning rapidly away from the “harm reduction” model on opioids, this wouldn’t be a bad time for anti-addictions experts to pursue some form of coherence. 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