Should Smoking Around Kids Be Illegal?
I stumbled upon this article today and couldn't help but think about all of my wonderfully nicotine addicted family and friends. So yeah, I'm going to take a shot at you guys, possibly below the belt. Oops.
It might suprise you to know that my answer to the question the article poses is "no". But it's not because I respect a smoker's right to parent their children or smoke in their home or car. I don't respect that, at least not in a case when you are knowingly poisoning your children. Such a law wouldn't be resonable on a legal level though - even if it did squeak through the Supreme Court (which it wouldn't, and if it did we're in trouble...then again the Patriot Act is still kickin...) it's not enforcable and I don't see the point in making a law we can't back up. It opens the door to too many other things, like calling child abuse when a kid eats a cheeseburger. They are totally different situations, but not everyone in this country has the brains to figure that out.
The solution? Just ban smoking. If people are too stupid to not smoke around kids, then they shouldn't be allowed to smoke. There are a whole slue of substances in the world that are illegal because of the way they damage the human body. And yet, one of the few legal ones damages not only the body of the user, but the body of everyone around as well. So why should cigarettes be legal? We won't let people smoke pot, which is not addictvie *chemically* and has less harmful (but still harmful) smoke...so why should we let people smoke tobacco? Here's the real bitch of it all - when people smoke pot, they're 10000 time more respectful of those around them, probably because it's illegal. So if we make cigarettes illegal, logic says the same will happen for tobacco, right? I'm an adult, I have the ability and means to choose whether or not I want to put my lungs through a smoky environment (which you may have noticed I don't do very often). But how is a 5 year old supposed to tell you they won't get in the car because you're going to try to kill them on the way to school? They can't, and if they do they're probably going to get punished.
Every single smoker I know smokes around kids, whether it's their own or someone else's. Sure, some of the smokers in this world have make their homes smoke-free, which I applaud, but what about your cars? Why would you make your 800+ sq. ft. home smoke free but then lock your kids up in a 4x4 space and bombard them with toxins? Yeah, go a head and open that window. It fixes everything. You wouldn't lock your child in their bedroom and pump carbon monoxide into the room...but you have no problem pumping their lungs full of it in the car. Brilliant.
Many of my family members have smoke free homes, which again, I applaud. But not one of them has a smoke free car and not one of them is afraid to light up in someone else's house when children are around. I get it, you people are going to smoke until you can stop making excuses and quit, which might never happen. I'm sure you're going to be just as happy with those excuses when (God forbid) one of the children in your lives gets lung cancer. Because there's nothing like looking into a child's eyes and saying "I'm sorry you have cancer Jimmy, but I liked smoking too much to care abour your lungs."
Get a grip.
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