Man continues cross-Canada trek for smoke-free world

Tobacco companies have a grim reaper named Errol Povah and he wants to eradicate the trillion-dollar industry.

The 57-year-old-Vancouver resident took his first and only puff of a smoke when he was a teenager and hasn’t touched a cigarette since. However, tobacco kept flowing back into his life one way or another. He said it wasn’t until he saw the exploitation from tobacco companies that he wanted to eradicate the industry from the face of the planet.

Povah has even worn a grim reaper costume to illustrate his dedication to get rid of the tobacco companies.

"To those who say we will never get rid of the tobacco industry I say we will," he said. "We have heard it will never happen every step of the way prior to the ban on airlines, restaurants, bars, multiunit dwellings, parks and on playgrounds. Well, it has happened."

Povah, the president of Airspace Action on Smoking and Health, started a campaign aimed at generating more awareness to the issue of tobacco smoke. Povah's walk/ran started from Victoria, BC but then he paid a visit toThunder Bay on Saturday. He said he planned to continue on to Montreal and from there to New York City.

When Povah sailed with an anti-whaling vessel, he said he remembered when two of his shipmates were in the cafeteria when one lit up a cigarette. Both men were smokers but the one who was eating told the smoker to put out the cigarette. However, it was the tone used by the other smoker that caught Povah by surprise, he said.

"That just set off alarms for me," he said. "If a smoker feels that way about someone smoking when they are eating how the hell do they think non-smokers feel about it."

Dakota Warkentin, 18, a peer leader coordinator with Youth Engaged in Tobacco-Free Initiatives, said she remembered when she attended Hillcrest High School how the students would use chewing tobacco instead of smoking.

Warkentin first became interested in YETI four years ago when her friends told her about it. She volunteered and eventually accepted a job. She said she liked how YETI tried to advocate for a smoke free world that continued to keep interested in the group.

"Smoking has diminished quite a bit in the last couple of years but one of the big things now is the idea of the chew tobacco," Warkentin said. "Students around school would have it their mouth and would walk around the school with chew tobacco. I think because it was a new product people didn’t really understand the product. At the time they thought it was a good replacement because you aren’t inhaling it but it is just as bad."

Recently, tobacco companies started to flavour certain products to taste like chocolate or candy. That marketing gimmick was a blatant attempt at manipulating a younger demographic to start smoking, she said.

"They need the youth," she said. "When someone dies from a tobacco related cause tobacco industries need the youth to basically pick up where that person left off just so they can keep profit going."