Personal Freedoms and Second Hand SmokeFollow

Why do you hate small children's lungs?

Edited, Sep 12th 2006 at 12:25pm EDT by fhrugby

Starving and beating your child again don't have anything to do with this. It's illegal for me to starve or assault anyone. If second hand smoke counts as assault, then make cigarettes illegal. Period. Make smoking near someone a felony. Someone's status as a minor shouldn't have anything at all to do with it.Why would worrying about the two be mutually exclusive? I have room for plenty of worries in my head.

If by anything you mean everything, then you are correct. There are all sorts of things that are illegal when applied to minors that don't affect mature folk.

We should also either make sex illegal or make sex with children legal.

P'ussy

Edited, Sep 12th 2006 at 12:38pm EDT by NephthysWanderer

Not to you, it wouldn't, unless they were out in public.

I can get onboard with making smoking illegal in your home.

No? You don't think a second-grader with a racking cough and debilitating asthma is just as sickly as a child who is being underfed? In both cases, it's neglect, if not endangerment.



You can't starve another adult because they can go out and get their own food (unless they're an invalid, and then they are afforded special protections.) In many cases, you can only be charged with assaulting another adult if THEY choose to press charges.

Dependents have an additional level of protection because they can't protect themselves.




Great idea. Now if only the tobacco industry didn't spend millions of dollars lobbying, we might have a shot at this. In the meantime, we have to take the little victories.



Of course it does. Minors are afforded extra protection under the law because they can't protect themselves. This is why we have safety-seat requirements for very young children, and why you as an ADULT are found responsible if the child is not properly restrained. Because as the adult, it's your responsibility to see to the safety of the child, and if you neglect to do so, you can be held liable.

In the case of smoking, an adult can choose not to get into the car with you. A child can't. Therefore, a law advocating for a child who has no choice in the matter is perfectly appropriate and completely in keeping with our established method of affording additional protections to children and dependents.



I prefer to spend my energies where they're actually needed. But hey, to each her own.



Edited, Sep 12th 2006 at 12:48pm EDT by Ambrya

The lesson I took from this is "argue with Ambrya and she'll call you a girl."

If the welfare of the child is in danger, we already have laws and agencies to step in with that.This, yet again, is not comparable to defining when I may take a legal action.If you're content with the encroachment upon your property rights because you feel the ends justify the means, that's your choice. In this particular case, I see the ends as being negligible and the means as setting an uncomfortable precedent.

Depends. Were you in a car with a child?

But they haven't been doing so, have they? It's been common knowledge for what, three decades, that smoking in the presence of kids harms them, that children in the homes of smokers have more respiratory disorders and are less healthy, and yet CPS HASN'T been stepping in to take children out of homes even when there's obviously a problem.

And why? Because yahoos keep crying about their right to do what they want on their private property, regardless of the fact that they are HARMING their kids.

So which way do you want it to be? Should CPS step in and yank the kids of smokers out of the home? Or should we take whatever small steps we can to limit the exposure kids have to smoke in confined places where it will be the most concentrated?



Actually, it has zero impact on MY property rights because I've never smoked and my husband gave it up three years ago because he got tired of freezing in the garage. So I can just smirk as the rest of the poor fools wail and gnash their teeth and rant about the coming apocalypse.