I’m not saying I support this particular plan. And the risk is that your house is next, since your child is obviously stuck in the closed house with the smoke as well.
But I disagree that this is purely a liberty issue. The argument for liberty only applies if you first dismiss the opinion that the smoke is harmful to the child.
I will argue that point from a slightly different analogy. Suppose a parent decided to punish their child by putting them in a closet with a set of burning cigarettes, so as to cause the child distress and coughing from a lack of fresh air. I think many would agree that forcing a child to breathe smoky air as a punishment would be something we might be interested in correcting.
A person’s liberty does not extend to causing harm to others, especially not trapped children who have no way to avoid the harm.
Which raises another question — does a 7-year-old have the right to object to having to breathe smoky air in a closed car? I have a neighbor who smokes all the time, and her daughter used to ask my son if we could drive her to school all the time, because she couldn’t stand the cigarette smoke from her mother smoking in the car. A law like this would have protected her without her having to somehow stand up to her mother and object to the smoke.
I know I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a car with a smoker. My mother smoked, but since I haven’t been around smoke for a long time, my tolerance for it has decreased quite a bit. I don’t ask people not to smoke, I just avoid being around them. But a 7-year-old doesn’t get that choice.
I think we miss the boat when we argue that any harm against a child can be dismissed with an appeal to the liberty of the parent.
Suppose a parent decided to punish their child by putting them in a government school, or buying them a Big Mac, or teaching them how to use firearms, or setting off fireworks in the back yard, or forcing them to eat red meat, or forcing them to ride around in an eco-friendly Obamamobile golf cart, or...........the list goes on.
Charles,
In the words of that great poet and Philosopher William J. Clinton, I feel your pain. My uncles used to smoke in the house while drinking and playing cards. As an 11 year old I couldn’t stand it. My eyes would water. Couldn’t breathe.
I was born 30 years too late. They were having a great time. When I complained to them about the smoke they told me to shut up and go to my mom. I reminded them of that while we were outside while they were smoking a cigarette and I was puffing on an apple cinnamon flavors ecig last month. We laughed. I love my uncles.
Moral of the story if there is one...
If you put a gun to my head and forced me to sign one of two stupid nanny state laws:
Either ban smoking in cars with children or
Ban smoking in bars with fat drunk adults...I would choose the former.
The kids have no choice. The adults do. But this is about coercing smokers to quit and buy pharmaceutical gums. They don’t care about the chilruns.
Except of course that there is no actual proven science that shows a long term negative effect due to exposure to SHS. They used the same “computer models” that the globull warming folks have used.
Look at it this way, it used to be that there was always exposure to SHS and we had very few people with asthma and allergies. Now the vast majority of children are never exposed to SHS and now we have very high rates of asthma and allergies!
There is no such thing as a closed car. In fact it can be argued there is more harm from the fumes of the vehicle itself than from the few minutes of smoke from a cigarette, which are easily dispelled by a cracked window.
Personally I can not, and have never been able to, ride in a vehicle with all the windows closed whether anyone is smoking or not.
I’m 51 and growing up knew only 2 kids with asthma. That was at a time most kids had at least one parent who smoked. My daughter is 13 and it seems like about half the kids she knows have asthma or other respiratory issues. With one exception, all the kids without such problems all have at least one parent who smokes.
Anecdotal, yes. Proof of anything, no. Worthy of wondering about, of course.......but anyone who does is ridiculed and accused of being in the pocket of big Tobacco.