The call to force smokers to stop smoking in their own cars is based on nothing more than a prejudicial view that smokers actually do smoke in their cars when children are present.
Odd that, because I've been taking notice lately of how many do smoke in their car and there are quite a few lone motorists and passengers that I see smoking - even people in work vehicles - but I haven't seen anyone smoking when kids are in the car. That could be because they are non-smokers but then I'd expect to see some smoking due to the fact that one in three people smoke and some are parents of young children.
I don't smoke when my grandchildren are in the car but I do know that what the chappie from the self interest "charity" says is pure and utter manipulated for panic effect crap. I can say from first hand experience that when my grandchildren are not in the car and both me and my other half smoke, then it does indeed get sucked out and does not blow back in when the window is open. It really doesn't somehow twist it's way into the back seat so it can "force" itself into the lungs of a child.
During a recent relatively long car ride with three smoker adults and two children, at no point did any of the adults light up, ask to light up, or even think about lighting up. We did have a conversation about smoking though.
I was telling our passengers that Daughter No 3 has recently had a baby and goes outside to smoke (again not by force of law). This is not because she thinks she is harming her children but because it is just good manners when you have a newborn baby in the house who cannot say what he thinks. My grand daughter has told me herself that she doesn't mind smoking as she doesn't notice it but we are all happy to trot off into the outside shed my daughter has made into a nice smoking room when we visit.
We often discuss how the graphic images on packets of cigs are there not to put smokers off because we don't take any notice. We know they are fake and we know exactly what smoking does to us because we consume the product and have done for more years than they give us credit for living. The adverse health effects are certainly not what the anti-smoker industry illustrates in parody fashion.
The one that upsets me and my daughter the most is the heroin needle. She lives on an estate where too many young people of her age - some with children dependent on them - have fallen into heroin use and she knows the difference between a smoker and a smack head. Her five year old daughter, unfortunately does not and neither will her baby son when he is older.
"I hate her seeing that image in case she gets the wrong idea," my daughter said both about smoking and heroin use. Imagine how dangerous it would be for my grandaughter to take up heroin when she's older because "it's only like smoking." These idiots in the DoH have no idea of the potential damage they are doing. When they've created a generation of heroin addicts, no doubt they will leave them to rot as they fund yet more lies about their pet obsession - smoking.
They are simply cranks.
The smoker mum in the car where we didn't smoke agreed with what my daughter had said. The mum's 10 year old said it was the heroin needle that worried him because he didn't want to see his mum become like a heroin addict. He was also scared of the alleged 4000 chemicals in cigarettes but he was comforted when I put those into proper perspective and explained that the Govt is just trying to scare him so he doesn't smoke in future - which I said he shouldn't because taking up smoking will make people hate him and when he is my age, they will be throwing rocks at smokers in the street.
By the end of our journey, the boy was no longer afraid of smoking. He didn't all of sudden declare he wanted to be a smoker when he grew up because he still doesn't like it, and never will, but he is not expecting his mum to go out shoplifting - or sell her body to get her next cigarette - in the way that wretched heroin addicts and others physically addicted and in physical need of extremely harmful and illegal drugs do.
As we smokers know, when we don't have a cigarette to smoke so what. We miss it but not enough to sell our souls to get a smoke which can always wait until whenever we can smoke again.
It may be true that children's lungs are somehow "weaker" than adults but forgive me for being sceptical here too. Kids have not been exposed to many of the other chemicals in the air which adults have been exposed to for much longer - you know - the ones that the anti-smoker industry is in denial about including the cars they drive and poison pregnant women and children with - and because as a child smoker,I must have proved them wrong in a biological rather than a manipulated data sense.
Unless they are now creating the lie that SHS is even MORE harmful than active smoking (give 'em time) then any modern child is going to be exposed to far less smoke in their lungs than I was as an active. first hand, child smoker aged 8. SHS has also been proved to be harmless and way below EU pollution level standards so how "dangerous particles" can be "14 times higher" than what is well below danger levels anyway beats me.
And then of course these particles we cannot see or find in the lungs of the dead. The anti-smoker industry helpfully handed smokerphobics the idea of the Smoker's Black Lung - without telling them it is that of a pig. Odd though isn't it that these particles of smoke or soot are not found or determined to be the cause of death in even one of the billions alleged to have died from passive smoking?
When someone dies of asbestosis traces of those particles are found in the lungs of the deceased and so is therefore declared to be the cause of death. It's the same with dust from the twin towers. We know people died from that because it was found in the lungs and declared on the death certificate.
The mythical SHS "particles" are not. NOT ONE DEATH has been recorded because not one person can ever be proved to have died as a result of SHS except in the imaginary minds of the smokerphobics hyped up to panic level by the bigots in ASH - a DoH, Big P funded front group that is trying to put the Tobacco Industry out of business by creating hate, fear and loathing of its consumers.
And of course the only reason these fraudsters are pushing for Govt "To Do Something" about a non-problem is because they know they need a ban in smokers' cars before they begin to pile on the pressure for a smoking ban in the home - and then the "next logical step" of criminalsation of the tobacco industry and its currently legal consumers will be the next on their agenda.
These fanatics will never stop and never be satisfied. Govt should stop pandering to their whims because as Tom Miers says in the Scotsman, it is none of their damn business!
Any Govt that is fair and impartial and not easily drawn into corruption is one that does not take sides when there are two sides to an issue of equal weight. Our Govt should butt out of it and wriggle itself free from the smokerphobic's pocket.