Teens, social media and doctors’ advice

It seems fair to state that we are on the path to someday viewing social media exposure as the source of mass social harm in the same way we now view leaded gasoline fumes and lead-painted toys.

It seems cigarettes are having a moment — again

Even just a few years ago, it was jarring to see someone smoking a cigarette — like a real honest-to-goodness cigarette, from a package, that you have to manually light — in the wild.

It seemed as if all those graphic packages and health warnings and anti-smoking PSAs had worked, coupled with the added friction of not being able to smoke inside.

But lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of memes about “smokes that don’t count” and think-pieces about craving cigarettes in these chaotic times — from New York Magazine’s The Cut: “I Mean, Why Shouldn’t We All Smoke Cigarettes Again?” Cigarettes are also making a pop culture comeback, glamourized in TV and film and by celebrities themselves.

Are cigarettes seriously back?

Pierre Poilievre has a choice to make

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s separation referendum is federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s opportunity. If he takes it.

Alberta is ground zero for the conservative movement in Canada. It has long asserted a more populist, free market, small government hold on the Conservative Party of Canada, past and present. It has outsized political influence on the direction of the party, given the reliable 30-plus CPC seats it delivers each election.

That has grown more intense under Poilievre’s leadership. He has championed Alberta’s economic and energy interests for years now. “Alberta deserves a fair deal in this country, which means that we unblock the resources, we allow the oil and gas sector to grow, we get the federal government off their backs and out of the way,” Poilievre said recently.

Now, as the newly minted MP for Battle River-Crowfoot, deep in the old Reform and current United Conservative Party landscape, he can keep doing it. But with a visible and vocal twist — Alberta’s interests are best served by remaining in Canada.

Awaiting next stage in biofuels balancing act

There was a lot of mixed messaging over the role agriculture plays in climate change mitigation during the Justin Trudeau era, when the federal government was heavily focused on making the Canadian economy less dependent on carbon-based fuels.

“On the one hand, the federal government, for the last 10 years anyway, has certainly seen our crops as traditional food commodities and has treated their emissions as climate threats,” Grain Growers of Canada executive director Bruce Burrows told a recent webinar discussing Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulation (CFR).

“Yet on the other hand, under CFR, we’re celebrating these exact same crops when they’re turned into fuel, and so … it’s not food or fuel, it’s both.”

The identity crisis was further complicated by Canada’s increasingly testy relationship with its next-door neighbour and largest trading partner.

Think you can beat the game? Don’t bet on it

Trying to watch sports on television these days means accepting a basic and deeply annoying reality: the game itself is no longer the main event.

No, the main event is the endless parade of ads for gambling apps marching across every commercial break, crammed into every spare inch of space not occupied by actual hockey players.

And man, are these ads terrible. Not morally — well, yes, morally too — but we’ll come back to that. I mean esthetically. These things are obnoxious.

If you’ve watched any amount of hockey lately, you know the drill: betting on games can turn you into a legend, a hero, the life of the party.