Anti-Smoking Banshees
Okay… at the risk of giving Dave Meinert aneurism I’m going to link to this story.
Anti-smoking activists who are driving cigarettes from public places across the country are now targeting private homes…
I read that and thought, my goodness, that’s just wrong. Even I, the ultimate anti-smoking nag, thinks people should be able to do what they like in their own homes. Public places? Smoking should be banned—public places are shared spaces, and smokers shouldn’t be allowed to force everyone else to either smoke or leave. But if people want to kill themselves in their own homes—fine, whatever. Light up. Destroy your skin, your circulation, your ability to get it up, your looks, your internal organs, your teeth, your gums, and your lungs. And if you fall asleep and a lit cigarette falls on the couch or floor, burn down your house. Hope you get out in time.
But then I read on…
— especially those with children. Their efforts so far have contributed to regulations in three states — Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont — forbidding foster parents from smoking around children. Parental smoking also has become a critical point in some child-custody cases, including ones in Virginia and Maryland. In a highly publicized Virginia case, a judge barred Caroline County resident Tamara Silvius from smoking around her children as a condition for child visitation…. “If a child suffers from asthma or some sort of problem, the courts shouldn’t even have to be told to [step in],” Mrs. Silvius said. “That should be the parent’s better judgment. But my kids aren’t sick. If there’s no health issue, it isn’t the court’s place to say someone can’t do something that’s perfectly legal, just because the other spouse doesn’t want them to.”
Now I’m torn.
As a child I would have liked nothing better than for the courts to step in and order my parents—both smokers—to stop smoking around their four young children. My mother was pretty good about smoking on the porch on those few occasions when she smoked around us. But my father—oh, my father—would smoke at meals, in cars, in the apartment. I can’t say for sure that his smoking gave me asthma but it sure as hell made it worse. And unlike the hypothetical parent with better judgment that Mrs. Silvius mentions, my father did not stop smoking around me or my brother Eddie, also an asthmatic—and this was way, way back in the dark ages, pre-inhalers, when an asthma attacks could mean four or five hours of misery and panic and, frequently, an expensive trip to the ER.
I used to fight with my father about his smoking—I would refuse to eat if he lit up at breakfast or dinner, and he would blow up. I sometimes think our conflict over cigarettes did more damage to our relationship than my homosexuality. If I could have taken him to court to stop him from smoking in our apartment, I would have.
So, for the record… knowing the health consequences that children of smokers suffer (“…World Health Organization figures [indicate] babies are at five times greater risk of [crib] death if their mothers smoke. Children also have a 20 to 40% increased risk of asthma if they are exposed to tobacco smoke, and a 70% increased risk of respiratory problems if their mother smokes.ā€¯), it seems entirely reasonable to me to ban smokers from being foster parents, at the very least. You shouldn’t take children out of a dangerous environment and put them in another. And in a custody dispute it seems reasonable that a smoking parent to lose a few points to a non-smoking parent. If the smoking parent is the better parent, custody should go to the smoking parent. But if all things are equal between a smoking and a non-smoking parent in a custody dispute, then smoking should be counted against the smoking parent and custody should go the non-smoker.
No doubt thinking people don’t have a right to harm their children placed in their care makes me a fascist. But if I’m a fascist, Dave, what is someone who values cigarettes more than she does the health of her own children? Abusive.
Hm, then I wonder what you think about this story from Edmunton in Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051216.wxsmokingbus16/BNStory/National/
People are on a bus and smoking and affecting no one but themselves. I don't smoke, for the record, but I disagree with the bans in public places.