Welcome to the web site of FORCES CANADA, the Canadian
chapter of the FORCES international smokers' rights movement. We exist
in order to help prevent the hysteria and extremism of the U.S.-led
anti-smoking movement from infecting and corrupting Canadian society,
due process, and the rights of our citizens.
These are times of great danger for our liberties. We are
going through a powerful backlash of puritanism and repression, in
stark contrast to the 60's evolution towards progress and
liberalization.
The 90's has spawned a trend that some have dubbed "health
totalitarianism," marked by the use -- and frequently the abuse and
falsification of -- science and statistics to make arguments for
controlling individual freedoms in the name of "a healthier society".
The anti-smoking movement has been in the vanguard of this
trend, and a monster industry has been created on the issue of the
dangers of smoking, and how to eliminate smoking from society. Decades
of health education have reduced smoking rates, but that is not
sufficient for those who insist on -- total abstinence, for
all of us. To this end, it has been decided that smokers must be
depicted as undesirable individuals that are dangerous to others and a
burden to society. In short, second-class citizens who MUST modify
their lifestyles if they are to be regarded as "acceptable" and
"respectable."
There is no doubt that the anti-smokers are pushing very hard to
prohibit the choice to smoke, many times in unscrupulous ways -- and
that they are using carefully "spun" techniques of instigating
intolerance in order to do this.
Our job will be to push back with equal force.
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