Posted on 01/31/2003 7:38:52 AM PST by chance33_98
Bill Would Ban Smoking In Car With Kids
Georgia Democrat Proposes Bill To State House
POSTED: 9:47 a.m. EST January 31, 2003
ATLANTA -- Smoking in a car carrying a child would be illegal under a bill proposed Thursday in the Georgia House of Representatives.
Democrat Paul Smith proposed the bill to make it a misdemeanor to smoke in a vehicle where a child is restrained in a car seat. The misdemeanor would carry a fine and include cigars, cigarettes and pipes.
"This is just protecting the kids from secondhand smoke," Smith said. "It's damaging to adults and it's even more dangerous to children."
Smith said he knew of no other state with such a law but is optimistic the Legislature will consider the smoking bill.
"We've got to start somewhere," he said.
Seriously, you seem to believe the anti-smoker rhetoric...would you be open to the truth?
ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) does NOT cause asthma; although it MAY exacerbate an existing condition. Children who grow up in homes with smoking parents are 22% LESS LIKELY to get lung cancer later in life. Those two statements are absolute facts and if you're interested, I'll point you to the proof.
Aha! The Tipparello loophole!
This is the most important comment made on this thread. Amazing that people don't see just how far we are down that slippery slope--and picking up speed.
Its your problem to solve because....? You might note that the legislator said we have to "start somewhere"? My response is "Why?". Anyone's kids are their own and not the state's. We are screwing up big time each time we allow the state to step in for the "cheeldrun".
Exactly!! Politicians and bureaucrats are responsible for ruining children's minds via their public education curriculum and social engineering. Main goal is to manipulate children into group-think establishment mold and uphold the status quo. Politicians and bureaucrats are several magnitudes more harmful to children than adults that smoke around children.
Turn it back onto the politicians and bureaucrats -- the real criminals. Just because they hide behind the color of law, the establishment and status quo does not in anyway diminish the fact that they are among the most harmful criminals on Earth.
Politicians and bureaucrats are not the solution, they are the problem.
Like every single anti-smoker authoritarian zealot, you consistently mix up direct smoking with environmental tobacco smoke. They are not the same, and the "proof" I mention is not from the "tobacco companies." Neither is it from "Big Anti-Tobacco" or "Big Government," but from honest, reputable researchers without a dog in this fight. Guess you're just not interested in the truth, huh? Your mind is made up and you don't want to be confused by the facts?
Maybe you can find proof that the world is flat too but pretty much every real scientist agrees that smoking is bad for you.
Mighty sweeping statement you made there..."every real scientist"...but again you've made the fallacious leap from direct smoking (YES, SMOKING IS A RISK and CAN BE BAD FOR YOU!!Okay?) and environmental tobacco smoke, which is what this thread addresses. Actually, it's where ALL the debate is, and where MANY "real scientists" disagree.
If ignorance is bliss, far be it from me to intrude on your happiness.
freeper12, before ANY laws are passed that encroach on ANYONE'S freedom, there should be a "clear and present danger" to someone else. Not "statistically insignificant" risks that cannot be proven, even with the millions of dollars poured into hundreds of "studies," or manufactured risks touted by unelected groups whose very existence depends on the money they get for their crusade. This country was founded on the concepts of private property and individual liberties--even the liberty to do something other folks don't like. But those concepts have been turned on their heads by the hype and hysteria surrounding the smoking issue. Junk science is being used to destroy our freedom and until people like you wake up and learn to QUESTION what you're told, we run the very real risk of losing our free republic.
There's still a libertarian argument that parents have no right to objectively harm their children; we forcibly prevent them from fracturing their bones, torturing them, and denying them needed medical care.
The truth of this principle is separate and distinct from all the spurious uses of it we can both recite from the present and imagine in the future.
Suppose a parent exacerbates existing asthma in a child by smoking in the child's presence. Does the State have no right to say you cannot do THAT? Suppose a child has a known food allergy, and eating that food will kill or cripple them, and the parent knowingly feeds the child that food, and the child is positively harmed by that act. Do we have a supportable basis to charge that parent with child abuse?
The bottom line is this: THERE WILL BE laws against exposing children to secondhand smoke, because our society HAS ALREADY accepted them in principle, and that principle, as much as you would like to argue is a statist one ("we will tell you what is good for you") is actually a libertarian one ("you may not harm children with your addiction"). That the liberals are using it, and will undoubtedly write laws that are too broad and therefore bad, does not mean the underlying principle is wrong. It is not; any parent who rolls up the windows and forces their child to breathe cigarette smoke is, at that moment, a bad and selfish parent, and if that act cause demonstrable, objective harm to the child they should be prosecuted for child abuse by a good libertarian court.
Understood - the liberals can, and will, take something as small as a grain of mustard seed and make a mountain out of it. Trade offs of having a civilized society where we agree to some base rules is part of life here - what libertarians want is to minimize the trade offs, what the liberals want is to maximize them. They don't know when to stop - next it will be what we feed our kids (already started), etc and so on.
They want to 'colonize' our daily life and make it the way they deem best, and they will use the 'kids are an innocent captive audience' to the max (which is why they want religion out of the school, and fisting/condoms/homosexuality in the schools). We cannot possibly make intelligent decisions without them. Their 'ministers of science and philosophy' will preach the message, their prophets will spread it in the media, and their 'islamic' regime of fundie jackbooted thugs will enforce it. This is why they love the middle east, china, etc so much. Forcing others to do what they think is best is good for them and you. At least according to them....
"Society" may accept any number of things, but laws based on junk science and then propgandized into "truth" are still laws based on junk science. These agenda-drive laws are an affront to a free society and a rejection of constitutional principles. I would think that libertarians would be on the front lines fighting such an abomination.
and that principle, as much as you would like to argue is a statist one ("we will tell you what is good for you") is actually a libertarian one ("you may not harm children with your addiction").
It's a libertarian principle to accept junk science as fact?
It already started with NYC's Mayor Mike Baffoonberg
Quote
"It's not hard to see some day, some child suing their parents if the child comes down with cancer. That's probably going to happen."
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