This ban would cross the line, wouldn't it?
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The Monroe County Board of Health is considering a proposal to prohibit smoking in vehicles carrying children.
[. . .]
Caudill says children are a "vulnerable population" who may not be able to avoid secondhand smoke.
I mean the line between public space and private space. The prohibitionists have generally kept their bans confined to public spaces, using the justification that even people who don't want to smoke are exposed to secondhand smoke. They've stayed away from private space for reasons both practical (not enraging the general public) and moral (not taking government where it doesn't belong).
But the inside of my car is my space no less that the inside of my house. Whatever is true for children inside a car -- they're vulnerable to smoke they can't avoid -- is true for children inside a house as well. Going from a ban on smoking inside a car with kids to a ban on smoking inside a house with kids would be a matter of degree, not a change in philosophical principle.
Comments
Whether this is reasonable kind of depends on whether you believe that second hand smoke is a significant hazard to health.
I agree that, kids in the house is a logical extension of kids in the car. Kids can't protect themselves, and adults caring for them have a duty not to expose them to hazards that might be acceptable for the adult to choose for him or herself.
I generally agree. We can have a different argument about how reasonable this is, but the fact is that it DOES represent a ratchening up of the anti-smoking bans, which have usually been described as prohibitions against "public" smoking.
Years ago there was a diner on Wells Street- near the Edy's plant. It was unique in that you ate in an old Rail Car.
In speaking with an employee of that diner one day I found out that if ANY employee smoked when they entered the property- that means EVEN if they were in their own car in the parking lot, they would be immediatly terminated.
Not sure why I bring it up now- but at that time it certainly felt like a major lined was being crossed.
We used to frequent that dining car and was not aware of that policy. We enjoyed eating there and hated to see it go to the Edy expansion.
Are there not employers who terminated people for being smokers, regardless of where they smoked?
Although I enjoy the smoke-free atmosphere, there's a lot of lines being crossed everywhere we look these days.
There are indeed local employers who terminate empoyees who smoke anywhere on the company campus, even if the infraction occurs inside an employee-owned vehicle during other than mealtimes when hourly employees are "off the clock." But I'm not aware of any local companies that terminate employees for smoking anywhere else.
I can concur with Doug about child endangerment. But it is sheer folly to invite law enforcement intervention into the matter of smoking in one's own car; there is then, by extension, no legal barrier to deny that same kind of intervention admission into the home. Law enforcement was granted a broad legal avenue (and an additional revenue stream) into personal vehicle detention by the enactment of compulsory seat belt laws, a component of which is child restraint, but which, as anyone who has paid the $25 fine knows, starts in the driver's seat and which presumably is a measure intended to protect the driver from himself.
If child endangerment is the only issue, there is none. For the intellectually curious, the evidence is already here that says that secondhand smoke is not a danger. For the close-minded folks who dislike the smell and for socialists. . . you will continue to interfere in the lives of other people.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23399/Scientific_Evidence_Shows_Secondhand_Smoke_Is_No_Danger.html
Uh-oh. Sounds like smelly secondhand socialists are about to yank our chain again . . .