I can only assume this was quite some time ago, and the doctor was ill-informed:
Fact: Quitting smoking doesn’t put extra stress on your baby. It’s one of the best things that you can do for your health and your baby’s health during pregnancy—and after the baby is born. By quitting smoking now, you will be protecting your infant from the dangers of secondhand smoke and reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
The benefits to the fetus far outweigh any stress the mother/fetus might experience.
And, smoking causes stress, it doesnt relieve it. Being a nicotine addict evelates your stress level quite a bit.
Now yes, as with any drug addiction, there is a short reduction in the stress as the addiction realizes it is gonna get fed, but oever all, smokers are more stressed not less.
You don’t reduce stress by smoking. You increase it.
Smoking has physiologic effects which increase stress, and psychological ones that can be perceived to decrease stress. So it can be stressful to stop smoking. It still should be minimized during pregnancy and most other times too.
But I do think this goes too far - despite not wanting to breathe in carcinogens nor smell tobacco, wacky or otherwise. California is dictating restrictive Covid measures now - so the timing is either bad since this will cause more angst, or good since more will be stuck in apartments. Not decided.
Whenever I hear about send-hand smoke concerns, I recall with dread the years of my 1970’s childhood spent in a house that had nicotine-brown walls. If a whiff of second-hand smoke from the neighbors is bad for you, then the children of the 70s are done for.
Not sure why you limit it to kids of the 70’s. It goes back a lot further than that.
I grew up with both asthma and a father who smoked – at the dinner table, in the living room, in the bathroom, everywhere. Now I am on daily medication for my asthma, which otherwise might have mostly retreated on the arrival of puberty, as most of my other allergic conditions did. I don’t know if he ever had regrets about that, but if he did he kept them to himself.
Anyway, I think the point about second-hand smoke is that it wasn’t particularly known as a danger then, and we know better now. We know it can make existing breathing issues worse for innocent bystanders. It’s important that smokers should understand that they are not only poisoning themselves, but potentially other people too.
Well, I figured it was understood that kids from the 60s and earlier were handed a pack of Luckies as soon as they were old enough to eat solid food!
ETA: I totally get that we know better now. Even though I don’t like seeing young folks smoking, if a young mom always takes her smoke breaks on the back porch, then progress has been made.