I read it. It doesn’t have to kill to be illegal, it just needs a politician and a pen.
It is based on scientific research and medical facts.
OK, my concern is that many children suffer worse things than second hand smoke, especially the kids whose parents don’t care. These kids (IME) exist on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Fine their parents a few hundred bucks (and you will fine them, they won’t go without) and the kids will feel the effect of the fine. Or am I wrong ?
Yes, I realize that the thread is about smoking around children.
As part of the argument for banning smoking around children, people have pointed out that it is that it’s harmful to children. I am pointing out that that is not sufficient reason to ban smoking around children because there are many other activities that are harmful to children, and we’re probably not willing to ban them all.
I’m not bringing this up to be confusing, or to muddy the waters. I’m bringing it up because it’s a valid point against banning smoking based on the harm to children argument! Sure, smoking is harmful to children. So are lots of things. Why should one be banned and not the others?
The fact that laws are made one at a time is not relevant to my argument that we should have rational basis for making laws, and apply it consistently. Perhaps you disagree that we should consistently apply reason to our laws? If there were two activities, both of which occasionally killed innocent people, it would be an appropriate step to outlaw one and not the other?
It seems to me that most recent smoking bans have had a lot less to do with the actual severity of harm caused by smoking to innocent bystanders (which is significantly lower than many other activities that we don’t ban), and a lot more to do with the fact that people just don’t like that some people smoke. Although I don’t smoke, it bothers me to go down the path of “I don’t like this; let’s make it illegal”.
It’s been illegal in California for years now to smoke in the car if you have children in the car with you. You are subject to a fine. Not a big fine, and I don’t know how many citations have been issued, but it is illegal.
And do you know if there has been any measurable decrease in children with secondhand smoke related illnesses (e.g. asthma, lung cancer, etc)?
It’s only been five years and of course kids would get much more exposure at home.
No it happens, and more othen than you think. One of the worst auto accidents I was ever in (six car pileup, 3 people hospitalized, major traffic backed up for over 4 hours, every car totaled) was caused by someone dropping his cigerette on his crotch and groping around for it while driving 80 miles an hour on a freeway.
Ask EMT’s and cops, an astounding amount of accidents happen exactly this way, and who knows how many more but the idiot is to embarrassed to admit it?
There are also the fires in summer (think of California) because people flip their butts out the window, and I have a cousin with a horrible scar right by her eye because a cigerette butt flipped out the window blew back in the car and hit her face as a baby. I’ve also seen a car catch on fire because a cigerette butt blown into the back seat landed on something very combustible (It had been flipped from another car) and nearly blew up the driver.
and while these aren’t related to driving, they are still good points.
It sounds very tree huggy, but birds often gather up butts to pull them apart to line nests with and it results in both the chicks and the parents dying.
I’ve also seen toddlers in ER’s because they got into ash trays and ate cigerette butts (after all, mommy and daddy put them in **their **mouths!!)
Onto my own thoughts seperate from response to the person who posted above.
cigerettes should be outlawed PERIOD. They have absolutely ZERO benefit in any way whatsoever and are one of the most dangerous, addictive, and toxic substances on earth. Do you know why the native americans held tobacco as a sacred plant? Because it was one of the few things buffalo would not eat. The buffalo had better damn sense.
The only reason they are legal is because of greed and lobbying. I personally think all CEO’s of tobacco companies should be tried as mass murderers and serial killers.
In my family no one has ever had cancer unless they smoked, and in ever case the cancer was one only gotten by smoking. People who didn’t smoke often lived into their 90’s and 100’s. ( I knew my great grandfather until I was 14, but lost my grandfather to throat cancer at 7) I’ve lost everyone I loved to cigerettes, and as a child was nearly held back in school 3 different years (despite high grades) because I missed to many days of school being out with bronchitis and pneumonia. I had pnemonia at least ONCE a year every year until I moved away from home, and had collapsed lung twice before 16. At one point I had spots on my longs in xrays, they thought I had had cancer at 10. It turned out to be another problem, but it could have been cancer. I have enough lung damage, despite never having smoked myself, that I could probably qualify for a transplant. Granted it’s much worse for me because I have severe allergy issues, but still.
I nearly got arrested in high school because my clothing and hair smelled so much like smoke a teacher demanded to search my purse and locker and I literally flipped out. We are talking desks out third story windows and locker doors ripped of hinges.
Do you know how horrible it was to listen to my father gurgle and cough his life away from emphysema and watch my mother do the same thing six years later? Do you have ANY idea how ENRAGED the term COPD makes me? It’s a term lobbyed into existance to cover all deaths of lung and heart issues to cover up how many are caused specifically by emphysema and cancer.
Do you have any idea how painful it is to see the people you love slowly kill themselves and those around the with this addiction, to feel that they don 't love you enough to just stop a stupid habit that benefits them in no way and makes everyone around them sick?yet I’m considered such a bad person because I’ve contemplated suicide? How is it different to do it slowly and stretch out making the people who love you watch you do it slowly versus just damn well putting a rope over the garage high beam, sticking your neck though a noose and stepping off a ladder?
I’d rather see heroin and crack legal than cigerettes. At least the people die faster and don’t make those around them also sick.
people have to eat to survive, we dont have to smoke to live. Fining parents for obese kids could and would just lead to more anorexia and child neglect because oh hey, I can buy more booze, cigerettes, lottery tickets, hookers, crack because I dont have to give cindy lou and jimmy lunch money or buy them food anymore!!!
and while yes much obesity is caused by eating bad things and inactivity, it’s also caused by things like medication side effects and glandular/hormonal problems. I went to a school with a girl who had life threatening seizures, the only drug that controlled them also caused terrible weight gain, no matter how little she ate or how much she exercised/ (she wound up very ill at one point because of malnutrition from how little she ate) she wound up committing suicide because she stopped taking the seizure meds so she would lose weight, and died of a seizure right there in school. I wanted to beat the shit out every kid who’d ever made fun of her who dared show up at her funeral. Scum, every one of them.
I think cigarettes should be banned. I have asthma because of selfish a-holes who raised me. Cigarettes are evil for everyone, but especially children who are still developing. If you want to go shoot heroin, go ahead, but don’t destroy other people’s lives. Sorry to be such a nazi, but if you really knew how much an asthma attack sucks, you would agree.
Well, you state that two wrongs dont make a right, so, since you seem to agree that over feeding french fries and burgers to young children is harmful, do you have any thoughts on how these parents should be cited?
Shooting heroin? 
Yes, and…
With the rate of obesity in young kids and the link of saturated fats to heart disease, if someone is serious about the “risks to children” it appears insincere to brush off the concern of fast food and obesity, while crying about cigarette smoke
These facts you speak of are not quite as solid as you seem to think they are.
The CDC cites the California EPA, and the CAL-EPA cites a 2005 study that reads like a thorough treatment of the question, but not so much.
A careful read of the study reveals to me that they have no clue as to the long term deleterious effect of tobacco smoke upon any class.
I was curious enough to read some of the CDC and AHA stuff. They claim 50,000 deaths a year from secondhand smoke. I came away wondering how they determine that that was the cause of death. Does anyone know?
Don’t get me wrong, I do not doubt for a second that smoke, including secondhand, is bad for the health and can cause all kinds of lung ailments. I just don’t get where bold statements like “X people died because of Y” come from. Would it be so hard to show a correlation between smoke and lung related ailments in the living.
I grew up in a smoking household. In college I worked in bars full of smoke. When I stated work, everyone smoked in the office. Today I have respiratory problems that may or may not be related to all that. If I died today because of a heart or lung problem, would I be counted as one of the secondhand smoke statistics?
In Nova Scotia you have to be 19 to buy cigarettes, and you have to show a picture ID if asked.