The other thing that turns me off is the repeated justification that smoking goes against Buddhism. Firstly, let's not mix religion with politics, even if Buddhism is the state religion. That is one of the important principles of a democracy. Secondly, let's not pick and choose. Tobacco but not doma? (Don't you just find it rich when you hear these admonishments to smokers coming out of the doma-stained/thick-tongued mouths of our Gups?) Tobacco but not meat eating? Tobacco but not alcohol? How about doing a thorough audit on what exactly Lord Buddha said and going the whole hog? I'm saying let's not fiddle with the words of Lord Buddha and apply it across the board as it should be on doma, drugs, alcohol, snuff, hooch, singchang, bangchang, ara, tongba, bhang and the rest of that big happy family. Isn't that what they should do if they really believed in what the Buddha said? If they're just being hypocritical, well then that's another matter as I'm sure some of our meat-devouring, doma-grinding MPs (and at least one alcoholic among them) will be relieved to agree. (That they're hypocrites, that is.)The fact is that all the laws in Bhutan are rather amateurishly written and I'm sure would be riddled with loopholes visible to any savvy lawyer from a mile away. So why all this fuss over this law and not others? The answer is simple – how many of the other amateurishly written laws have landed so many people in jail so quickly? The protagonists of this clearly muddled Act got good feedback through a fierce public outcry. Let's hope some lessons in proper legislation have been learned.Nah….probably not.
A forum post,I'm having a hard time finding much news coverage about the supposed revisiting of the tobacco control law but from this post it isn't looking good. :(
