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Chris Selley: OK, we’ve won on stigmatizing tobacco. 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

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This 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.)

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It’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.”

Chris Selley: OK, we’ve won on stigmatizing tobacco. Why not try it for hard drugs? Back to video

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........

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