December 26, 2008

Coalition mayor smokes in bar, breaks own party’s law

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 7:09 pm

Last Tuesday the mayor of Deurne in Noord Brabant was questioned by the city council about his smoking in a public bar. Since July of this year smoking has been banned in bars in the Netherlands. The ban has met with a lot of resistance, and many smokers openly defy the law. As far as I am aware this is the first time that a public official was caught red-handed breaking the anti-smoking law. A salient detail is that mayor Gerard Daandels of Deurne is a member of CDA, the Christian party that is in the vanguard of the Jihad against fun: it was CDA minister Klink that proposed the smoking ban.

Daandels response: “You can hold me responsible for everything in matters of enforcement, but not for this unenforceable measure. […] I went to three bars where people were smoking. If a hundred people are smoking, you no longer give an example by not smoking.”

The Department of Public Health commented: “Even mayors are bound by the law.”

Link: Brabants Dagblad. Via Jong Nieuws. Depiction of the Deurne coat of arms by Wikipedia user Tibor, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

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September 18, 2007

First-ever addiction study for Dutch doctors

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 8:44 am
RU

The Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen has started an addiction study programme for doctors, the first specialised study option of its kind in the country. Some 18 general practitioners have been accepted and six more are on a waiting list. The addiction doctor study option is a two-year post-doctorate study. Institutions in the addiction care sector have pushed for this study. Some time next year, psychologists who work with addicts can specialise in addiction, as now many of them do not have the medical background to treat people with addictions to alcohol, drugs, medication and gambling.

(Link: De Gelderlander)

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