Bleak outlook
The Economist Intelligence Unit, a respected think tank, says economic conditions in the Caribbean may deteriorate further before they improve.
It’s outlined a bleak but not unfamiliar list of economic indicators in the region. Tourism performance is weak, remittances are not picking up, consumers are borrowing and spending less, unemployment is rising and government budget deficits are widening.
Given these dynamics, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) estimates recessions in 2009 in all countries in the English-speaking Caribbean with the exception of Dominica.
That’s because Dominica has a relatively low reliance on tourism and is enjoying a construction boom thanks to fiscal stimulus measures funded mainly by donor aid.
In 2010, the EIU says growth will remain negative in some countries and even in those that begin to recover expansion will be very weak.
Smoking ban put back
Smokers in the Cayman Islands have two more months to light up in bars and restaurants. Health Minister Mark Scotland says a law that bans smoking in enclosed public spaces won’t take effect until 31 December. It had been set for Friday. Scotland said the government needs more time to wrap up administrative details and to finish writing regulations. The law will ban smoking within three metres or 10 feet from the main entrance of public buildings.
The Cayman Islands enacted a smoking ban in government offices in the early 1990s.
Voodoo’s day of the dead festival
Haitians flocked to cemeteries carrying rum, candles and hopes for a better future on Sunday, kicking off Voodoo’s two-day festival of the dead.
In Port au Prince, Haiti revellers clamoured for a spot atop the oldest grave at the National Cemetery, which tradition holds is home to the spirit Baron Samedi, the guardian of the dead.
Smoking bans are the real health hazard
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of “second-hand” smoke.
Indeed, the bans are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved – the cancer of unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or is in fact just a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: If it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the “right” decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than trying to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops and offices – places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don’t like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid “second-hand” smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Smokers are a numerical minority, practising a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the unlimited intrusion of government into our lives. We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.