MARKET VENDOR: Is the outhouse also to be a public place?

TWO WEEKS ago we learnt that Bubbadus will from October outlaw smoking in public places and that stiff fines will come for both smokers and businesses who allow smokers to puff in public. A smoker will be fined $500 or 12 months in jail and business people who allow smoking in their premises will pay $5 000 and or spend 12 months in prison. Well done, Minister Donville Inniss. I know people will say it come too late but you could say at least I did it when others before failed to do it. But I love the definition of a public place as given by Dr Kenneth George, senior medical officer – “a public place is a place that has a permanent or temporary roof, that is either fully or substantially enclosed to which the public has access,” he went on to say that if the place has walls, doors or windows it will be considered to be an enclosed space. Fair enough. So an outhouse or a mobile toilet as used at big fetes will be a PUBLIC PLACE? Clearly then a fella cannot have a smoke in the small room. It also means that a tent at say a wedding or funeral is a public place. This ban pun smoking is one of the best things I have ever heard and I don’t know any non-smokers who will protest. I never understand why anybody would want to start that nasty habit in the first place, and when I see intelligent young people and some good-looking and otherwise proper-looking ladies with the chimney coming out de nostrils, I does wonder what kind of madness cause them to start that and why them think they does look cool! Imagine you in a restaurant and you and yuh family having a meal, children in the group including one wid asthma and people come and sit next to you and start smoking and the don’t want to stop unless you threaten to shove the cigarettes where the monkey stuff the nuts. You remember when people use to smoke on air planes and you in the last row of no-smoking seats and them in the first row of smoking, right behind you? You coughing and choking but them smoking and where the hell the smoke was going, you don’t have windows in the plane so everybody breathing in the bad air.  But I have a li’l bone to pick with what is called public places. What about Farley Hill during the big shows there like Reggae Pun De Hill and Soca Pun De Hill, are they not public places where thousands of people gather and sometimes the herbalists does be killing yuh. What about Kensington Oval, you might argue that West Indies cricket would drive yuh to smoke and drink! And what about places like Accra Beach, and The Gap? Fellas, if we going to do this thing let we do it right and do it one time, that way we gwine got one set of upset people for a while, the call-in programmes will be hot with hot air and in the end it will all pass as everyone will comply cause nobody want to go to jail or pay out money in hard times. Smokers generally are among the most inconsiderate of people. I glad I live to see the day when we had the guts to finally say enough is enough. Soon gone will be the yellow teeth, the bad and I do mean bad, bad breath that almost every smoker has [problem is they don’t know they have it and we too busy holding we breath to speak and tell them] and the yellow fingers like if them got jaundice from years of holding cigarette butts, so starting October 1 leh we brek up ash trays in a symbolic victory to end of smoking in public places.I market Vendor gone fuh now, you have a blessed and a wonderful day, yuh hear?