The Maryland senate passed a bill this morning, a bill designed to make smoking in a car illegal whilst in the presence of a child, 8 years old or younger. A $50 fine could be assessed if a person were to be pulled over by a police officer and seen with an ashtray full of butts and a child in the backseat.
To most Hysterical Mothers, this bill is a no-brainer – a triumph for child safety in the vehicle, a bellweather victory against bad parenting and Big Tobacco in one swipe. But it’s the dumbest law since the “no lions in the movie theater” thing.
I could, and perhaps someday will, write a 4,000 word essay about the politics of anti-smoking and the bizarre dance of “Well we need the tax revenue from cigarettes, but we’re going to make it impossible to smoke them” that the Maryland Legislature has been waltzing for the past decade plus. About how as a society we’re trading an assumed level of safety in exchange for more laws on the books and increasingly little personal responsibility – in the face of, in this particular case, untold volumes of money and time and education drilling the fact that “smoking is bad, don’t smoke around babies” into every citizen’s head. About how that isn’t enough, obviously if we’ve told people over and over that smoking is bad for you, and being around smoke or people who smoke is bad for you, and yet people continue to smoke in public, well then we’ve got to protect the children, because they can’t protect themselves, yes? Especially in a car, which is such a small space, and a minutes-long-daily exposure to second hand cigarette smoke will most surely cause the child irreparable harm. But I won’t, I’ll just bullet point a few things about this bill that I instantly thought of upon reading about it:
- So, where are the 32 year old lung cancer victims or kids with emphysema, from before this idea came about? After all that time being strapped into a child seat and having mommy or daddy or uncle blowing smoke in their faces?
- Smoking while pregnant is still perfectly legal, you could conceivably smoke while driving yourself to the hospital and give birth, then get a $50 ticket on the way home for smoking with your newborn in the car. Makes perfect sense! Obviously smoking while pregnant should be illegal! Why isn’t it already?!?!
- “Sir I pulled you over because you’re smoking in this car with your child.” “Oh, he’s ten, not eight.” “Ok, go ahead – WAITAMINUTE! Can you prove that?” “Nope, see ya!”
- “Happy 9th birthday Timmy! Time to take a ride to Flavor Country!”
- I mean if we’ve already got speed cameras in school zones, work zones, zone zones and speed camera zones, which distribute $50 tickets, why not affix them with HD lenses that can assess whether the driver is a) smoking and b) has a child on board? $50 is the same whether it be smoking or speeding, which according to this law are equally dangerous!!
- Or better yet, a sensor that detects the scent of cigarettes (smoke, ash) and children (pee, apple juice) in the car, and shuts down if both are present simultaneously?
Or, we could do the unthinkable: Continue to recognize that yes, smoking around your kids is ignorant, and no one should do it, but fining someone $50 for such a thing in the at-most 30 minutes that a child would be exposed to second hand smoke in a car, in the face of the remaining 23 hours and 30 minutes a day that they could very easily and very legally be exposed to it everywhere else in this world, is ridiculous.
Just go ahead and make bad parenting illegal, add “smoking” to the criteria for calling CPS, and/or ban smoking entirely. It’s the only way to save the children!
You don’t really make a case here. Even if the law doesn’t do much, you don’t really put an argument for why a little isn’t better than nothing. It doesn’t really cost the state anything, it adds one more incentive not to smoke around your kids, and it might even generate some revenue.
The implication of the law in and of itself is “We can’t ticket you for smoking in your possibly tiny house which is probably a lot worse, but we haven’t figured out a way to make it illegal yet.”
As far as revenue is concerned, remains to be seen how much money will be pulled but seriously, how much could it possibly be. At the end of the day “the case” is that we’ve burned a lot of hours and a lot of calories and a lot of money one way or the other to create a useless, unenforceable law, so it’s stupid.
Yeah they seem to be using a 3rd rail issue like “smoking around kids” as an excuse to push a stupid hard to enforce law through. Is this just a feather in someone’s hat? Lets say a parent is smoke free on the car ride home from school, but hot boxes the apartment all evening long. WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?
Also, the Cell Phone/Texting law has just done wonders for road safety i’m sure, judging by the fact that i see never see anyone using their handset while driving. /sarcasm
“Also, the Cell Phone/Texting law has just done wonders for road safety
i’m sure, judging by the fact that i see never see anyone using their
handset while driving”
I don’t get why the police aren’t using the law to collect revenue either; but I definitely don’t get the argument that since they aren’t enforcing it well enough it should be legal. Since the police aren’t enforcing stop sign stopping well enough should it be legal to blow through stop signs too?
It’s pretty easy to enforce a stop sign, a cop can see it plain as day – not quite so much with texting / smoking. Texting is a whole nother can of worms IMO in which technology will render it obsolete in one form or another in the next three years anyway, making the law seem positively archaic, much like the anti-fax laws in MD. I didn’t even use the term “revenue grab” in this because it really seems like so very, very little money would be generated by it that it’s just as mike said – a feather in someone’s cap
Mike didn’t say “text,” he said “Cell Phone/Texting law.” I didn’t say anything about the smoking law.
Oh for the love
I want to enact legislation to make punting babies for field goals illegal. BOOM RE-ELECTION TIME
When I was growing up I was diagnosed with Asthma. I couldn’t run in gym class, I couldn’t ride a bicycle without suffering the affects of my asthma. The doctor made a simple recommendation to my parents. He recommended that they stop smoking around me, in the house, in the car. Within 24 months my asthma had disappeared, I no longer needed an inhaler. I joined the cross country running team in 7th grade, I even took up the trumpet in band class.
This may seem silly to you, but, I can relate to the health issues that these children face. It’s one small step.
Kudos to your parents for taking a doctor’s advice and fixing the problem but a $50 ticket from a cop ain’t gonna fix anything and most parents probably know by know that smoking aroudn the lil ones is pretty bad for them, it sounds like yours didn’t at the time and got some good advice!
I disagree. However, I do believe that no one would ever get a ticket just like no one gets a ticket for driving and talking on the phone.
I’m tempted to put a car seat with a baby doll in my car, drive around with a cigarette dangling from my mouth, while pretending to talk on a toy cell phone. . . . . Why do people think we need to waste resources legislating common sense???
Because what is common sense to you don’t make sense to anyone else. Remember, it’s the Governments job to protect us!
LONG OVERDUE, but law should be enforced for older kids too. Guess they figure kids are trapped while in car seats & need more protection under the law. Once they’re are out of the cars seats I guess they feel they can jump out of the car to avoid cigarette smoke!
at the rate they’re going they may as well just send a ticket to everyone in maryland on a rotating schedule with a citation that says “we’re pretty sure you did something wrong this month, give us 50 bucks” we are already pretty much the worst drivers in the country
How much money and time do you think they are wasting on this? The bill wasn’t exactly gay marriage– it’s going to happen, because the actual objections to it are silly. No one really believes you should be allowed to smoke around children, do they? It’s going to pass with little actual debate unless people actually bother to rally against it.
And then it’ll never be enforced, like spitting on the sidewalk (neither of which I condone)