FSIN Fuming Over Proposed Exemption Change | News Talk 650 CKOM

FSIN Fuming Over Proposed Exemption Change | News Talk 650 CKOM

Perhaps this is a can of worms that Mr. Wall shouldn't have opened at this time.

But then again, perhaps he is right.

This country is founded on the fundamental principle of one law for all (later revised to one law for all unless you're a special voting block that the Liberal Party can exploit, but I digress). It doesn't make sense that First Nations can have different rules in their establishments than general society has, but that's how it is now.

Now I don't know if Mr. Wall scores more points for being concerned about the health of First Nations individuals, or if he loses points for attempting to limit a "right" that the First Nations have. I think he should come out even in the end.

Let's do the math for the sake of showing how absurd the reaction is. One carton of cigarettes contains 200 cigarettes. Each aboriginal person, be it man, woman or child, can purchase three cartons each week without paying provincial sin taxes on them. That's 600 cigarettes. One week contains 168 hours. This translates into 10080 minutes.

Assuming a person were to stay up all week, he or she would have to smoke 1 cigarette every 16.8 minutes in order to smoke all of them in a week. Assuming 8 hours of sleep each night, a person would have to smoke 1 cigarette every 11.2 minutes in order to reach their max of 600 cigarettes per week.

Now, if someone is smoking that many cigarettes per week, I would submit that they are going to have worse problems than worrying about how many cigarettes they can buy tax free, but that's a different problem for a different day.

What it really seems like Mr. Wall is doing is stepping in and doing what the leadership of the First Nations aren't doing - putting rules in place to ensure that their people are healthy and productive members of their society. Maybe they should listen to what the rationale is before they jump to conclusions.