Arkansas currently has a law that prohibits smoking in the car with very young children. The law has been extended to include children under 14 years of age, claiming that it will spare children from secondhand smoke. The law includes all children, even one’s own. There is a $25 fine. IN California, the fine is $100.
Is this law too intrusive? What happens if a smoker takes his/her own children into the home? Is that child exposed to second hand smoke? What other bad habits will the state tell us we can’t do in front of our own children? How does this differ from a child seat law or a helmet law? Bottom line, is it any of the state’s business?
Welcome to the nanny state.
What’s to stop government from banning smoking in your own home, then, if you have children?
It is different from a helmet law–motorcyclists should wear helmets so that I don’t have to witness their spattered brains all over the place after they’ve cut me off on 95 and I have no time to respond properly. At least helmets keep the biohazard contained.
Good point. How about kids wearing helmets when riding bikes? Do some states have laws requiring that? I thought they did but I could be wrong.
@Emma
Well, you already have to keep your kids in car seats until they go to college, so why not.
here’s a list:
http://www.helmets.org/mandator.htm
@Emma
Wow…even more than I thought.
Here’s a funny one. I didn’t actually read the law but was told by a local Hawaiin.
Seat belts are required in a car, but you can ride in the back of a pickup.
Helmets are required when on a bicycle but not a motorcycle.
Politicians….always needing to do something.
That smoking rule goes way beyond what a state should regulate. I’ve never smoked. For me, riding in a car that has been smoked in, is terrible. The stench! However, if people can’t smoke in their cars with children along, how long will it be, until parents will considered unfit to rear children, if they smoke at home?
My grandkids were here for several weeks and rode bikes w/o helmets; no complaints.
I think it goes too far also, Punchak. I grow weary of doing what I think other people think is good for me and mine.
I don’t like smoking. But this is absolutely, positively the biggest over reach of ANY politician and any pol that voted for this crap should be impeached.
Seatbelts are for the greater good. I was in an accident a couple of months ago where the vehicle I was a passenger in was hit and rolled over. All of us were wearing seatbelts. If we were unbelted, someone would have been almost certainly ejected, as all of the windows broke. Why should some innocent driver have to live with hitting a body slamming into their windshield or landing in the road?
I’m all for seatbelts. No if, ands or buts about it.
@Emma, my daughter was awarded a Virginia ‘Saved by the Belt’ Award. I can attest to the fact that seat belts save lives. The other person in the accident was killed.
I’m a seatbelt wearer. I thank a belt and a good car for being able to “walk away” (before being taken away by ambulance) from a wreck. But my cousins credit not wearing belts and being ejected from their truck for saving their lives. Their truck rolled several times and was crushed. The same thing happened to my niece. She was ejected from a car that crashed on an interstate ramp. Her side of the car was smashed. I don’t know how she would have survived had she remained in the car. The driver was pretty much unscathed.
I agree with Punchak. What’s to stop CPS from investigating a parent who smokes at home while the kiddos are in the house? At least a person can open the car windows for some ventilation. It’s not that easy to air out a house.