UK Passes New Law Making Smoking in Car With Kids Illegal [POLL]
All of England and Wales passed a new law making it illegal to smoke in any vehicle if there are kids 18 and under in the vehicle. Should we do the same thing?
According to an article I saw today on a uk.gov website, all of England and Wales has made it illegal, starting October 1, to smoke a cigarette in any vehicle if kids 18 and younger are in the vehicle.
That struck a chord for some reason and got me to thinking about if the United States should be doing the same thing. After doing some research, according to no-smoke.org, several states have already issued laws regarding smoking in vehicles with children including, Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Oregon, Utah and Vermont.
Personally, I had no idea that we had states with laws in effect banning smoking inside a vehicle with kids inside but honestly, I think it should be a law in all states. Ontario, Canada has also had a similar law in place for several years now and is it really a bad thing?
If you are a smoker, I think we should all have enough consideration for our children to make sure they don't have to breath in second-hand smoke. I guess as a parent, you have the right to do what you want with your children to a certain extent, but does that mean putting them in harms way? There are many different forms of child abuse and many would argue that smoking in a car with your children would be considered very harmful and/or abuse?
Let's face it, your kids don't have a choice...you, as the smoker, do. As a former smoker, I never smoked inside my home but I did smoke inside the car when my kids were present. Although I always rolled a window down, smoke still would be in the car and my kids hated it.
So, who has the choice here? The adults or the children? At the end of the day, would a law making it illegal to smoke in the car with your kids present really be that bad?