In the most recent Statistics Canada data, about 12 per cent of Canadians smoked or vaped.
In 1960, that number was 49.5 per cent. Imagine if we were navigating our current doctor shortage with a country in which half of everyone smoked, where smoking was allowed in bars, restaurants, offices, shopping centres, airplanes, even hospitals.
Reducing the rate of smoking by almost four fifths is one of the greatest public health efforts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Governments used educational campaigns, strict age limits on buying cigarettes, punitive taxes, indoor smoking bans, and even shocking pictures of the health impacts of smoking, slapped right onto the packs.
Slashing the rate of smoking has added healthy years to the lives of millions of Canadians.
It also lifted a huge burden off our health care system.
No one back in the 1960s or 70s said "Wow, we've really got to do something about smoking! It will help us conserve resources in case we have a pandemic or a doctors shortage!" But it did 鈥� we were in better shape for our recent crises because we hammered away at one of the biggest health issues facing our society, in a campaign that lasted decades.
Right now, tariff's and madmen in the White House aside, Canada's biggest long-term problems include unaffordable housing and homelessness, a multi-faceted health care crisis and doctor shortage, sluggish economic growth, and climate change and its impacts via unpredictable and violent weather.
In many cases, the answers to those problems are being boiled down to single, simple solutions. Not enough doctors? Get more doctors. Not enough housing? Build, build, build!
It's true we need more doctors, but as the anti-smoking campaign shows, we could target health care use from many angles.
What if every family got a cheque for $100 as each child finished their course of standard vaccinations? Yes, it would cost money. Probably cheaper than handling a measles outbreak, though.
How about paying people $50 every year if they had a checkup with a doctor, whether their GP or at a drop-in clinic? How many health problems would be caught earlier, how many ER visits would be avoided?
On housing, there are a hundred angles of attack. For one, reducing the size of underground parking lots for apartment buildings. Underground parking costs $25,000 to $50,000 per spot to construct. Slashing the cost of a new condo by up to $100,000 isn't bad.
Then, of course, we'll need more transit for all those people living without cars. We'll need more clever strategies to fund clean, reliable, safe transit systems, too.
Most of these ideas would have an up front cost. Even the ones that don't cost anything would be fought tooth and nail 鈥� which is exactly how every single anti-smoking measure was greeted.
But each little fix pays off in the long run, exactly in the way that slashing the rate of smoking did. It worked so well, we don't even count the lives, health, and billions of dollars we've saved anymore. But they're very real, accruing every year like dividends on a good investment.
