Behind the push to make smoking and vaping illegal for a generation of Canadians
(vancouver.citynews.ca)
You and I may be standing outside Plato’s Cave, but most people are stuck inside. Imagine if we got control of the Star Trek franchise and made it canon that smoking has zero health effects.
Riker goes to sick bay and Dr. Crusher scans him. She has a Marlboro red dangling from the side of her mouth. She says, “You have stage four lung cancer.”
She injects him with the hypospray. “There. It’ll be gone by tomorrow. Get back to work.”
Riker goes to the bridge. Geordi is smoking a Marlboro Light 100. There’s an ashtray on the console. Data is smoking his pipe, of course. Troi sits. She elegantly and languidly sucks on a long, glamorous Eve 120 cigarette. Picard comes on to the bridge with a huge Churchill cigar clenched between his teeth. Worf turns around and he’s got an even bigger cigar, some Klingon brand, blood red and fluted or some other kind of weird alien design.
You and I see no problem. But everybody else would be saying, “Dear Lord! This is a family show! Do you want this to be part of their image?!”