[ This is simply an attempt to rewrite history-AND make some money for the state. ]
"Tobacco trooper smokes out illegal F1 memorabilia"
Anne Sutherland, The Gazette
Published: Friday, June 08, 2007
"Grand Prix weekend is very good business for the three owners of the Formula 1 Emporium on Crescent St.
"We do 40 per cent of our yearly business in this week. We should have more weeks like this," said part owner Michael Gardner.
The store sells numbered prints of famous cars and drivers, die-cast replicas of Formula One cars, signed helmets and the ever-present Ferrari, McLaren and BMW caps and team jerseys.
But this year the store had an unexpected and unwelcome client, an inspector from the provincial Health and Social Services Department, the so-called tobacco police.
According to Article 27 of the anti-tobacco law, enacted in May 2006, it is against the law to sell any object that is not tobacco if that product has a name or logo associated directly with a tobacco product.
On Thursday, the inspector bought a nine-year-old shirt with a Rothmans logo.
The age of the shirt precedes the federal tobacco sponsorship ban enacted in 2003 that made it illegal for sporting and cultural events, like the Grand Prix, to be sponsored by tobacco companies.
The inspector left the store after making his purchase and then came back with another inspector and told the owners they were breaking the law.
"This inspector came to the store and told us we're not allowed to sell these things," part-owner Joanne Gaudreau said today, pointing to a LeMans poster showing a car with the Rothman logo, circa 1982.
"This is bulls---. This is art," she said indicating another no-no, a hand-painted figurine of Jacques Villeneuve in the uniform he wore when he won the Grand Prix du Canada in 1997. The likeness features another Rothman's logo on Villeneuve's track suit.
Genevive Villemure-Denis, communications spokesperson for the anti-tobacco measures division of health and social services, said that inspectors routinely visit the Grand Prix site to make sure there is no tobacco sponsorship or items for sale.
"If the inspector went into this store and told them they were in contravention, I can't verify at this time," she said today.
"I can tell you that inspectors don't intervene for nothing."
The fine for a violating the anti-tobacco law is $1,000 to $2,000 for a first offence, Villemure-Denis said.
Gaudreau argues that these offending articles are artwork that reproduce an era and were she to remove the logos it would be tantamount to counterfeiting.
"This is the way things were then and I cannot modify these items, it would be against the trademark," she said.
"The law does not make exceptions for collectable objects," Villemure-Denis said.
"I'm really pissed," Gaudreau said. "The inspector said I was breaking the law, in a store full of clients. Am I selling drugs?"
"I don't know where this is all going but this whole thing is ridiculous. If I get a fine, I won't pay, my lawyer will get involved."
The Gazette
Sometimes zealous agents will do the dumbest things, claiming they're just upholding the laws. Here's a guy who had an antique shop with one-hundred-year-old gambling devices (from the 1880s) that were seized as unlawful. They were antiques!
www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2007/02/09/news/news01.txt
I suppose if somebody excavated a two-thousand-year-old opium pipe from China, a cop would confiscate it as drug paraphernalia. Stupid!
Wow, I tend to look for 1880's items like old gambling things to resell. Amazing. I have an old chuck-a-luck here, should I be afraid?
This kind of stuff just reinforces my belief that government exists only to confiscate... our money (taxes), our freedoms (prohibition), our possessions (seizures), and our lives (war).
...be very afraid...