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Smoking Illegal With Children In Car[W:501]

Do you agree with ban on smoking inside cars with children?


  • Total voters
    84
It's like any form of child abuse: it's not like child protection services can't monitor every child all the time, but when abuse becomes apparent you do what you can.

I don't think you can ban stupidity. I don't see it being enforceable and I don't see it being effective.
 
I don't think you can ban stupidity. I don't see it being enforceable and I don't see it being effective.

There's "stupidity," and then there's child abuse. It should absolutely be policed where possible.
 
But I wasn't trying to fool you. I agree with your position in this thread, and! I also think that parents who feed their children a crapy diet and allow them to become obese as youths are rather abusing children also. You think I'm being disingenuous here?

I don't consider that "child abuse." I consider it irresponsible behavior, and I would never even think of ripping a child away from his or her home and parents and placing them in the care of strangers because of such a reason. THAT is probably more stressful and traumatic to the child.

The point is you are not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things no matter how may laws you make. People are still going to do stupid things, and we don't need a bunch of stupid useless laws clogging up our courts, etc.
 
There's "stupidity," and then there's child abuse. It should absolutely be policed where possible.

That is not child abuse, and you take meaning away from actual REAL child abuse when you categorize something like this as child abuse. There are children who are beaten, raped, tortured and murdered.
 
Child abuse is the physical mistreatment or neglect of a child. How is forcing a child to breath second hand smoke NOT abuse?
Smoking in a car with children present is not only inconsiderate, but it's stupid. However, it's not child abuse.
 
That is not child abuse, and you take meaning away from actual REAL child abuse when you categorize something like this as child abuse. There are children who are beaten, raped, tortured and murdered.

Cigarette smoke is a carcinogen. This isn't the 1950's where we sort of suspected but didn't know for sure that it was bad. We know cigarette smoke causes a host of serious, deadly health problems. Knowingly exposing your child, especially over the long term and in enclosed spaces, to the increased risk of those health problems is child abuse, pure and simple.
 
Cigarette smoke is a carcinogen. This isn't the 1950's where we sort of suspected but didn't know for sure that it was bad. We know cigarette smoke causes a host of serious, deadly health problems. Knowingly exposing your child, especially over the long term and in enclosed spaces, to the increased risk of those health problems is child abuse, pure and simple.

It is irresponsible parenting but not child abuse. Like others have said, are you going to rip children away from their families for this? Same thing with overeating or eating the wrong foods. Are you going to remove children from their homes and families and call this child abuse? That is silly when the resources are scarce as it is and should be going towards REAL child abuse.
 
I don't consider that "child abuse." I consider it irresponsible behavior, and I would never even think of ripping a child away from his or her home and parents and placing them in the care of strangers because of such a reason. THAT is probably more stressful and traumatic to the child.

The point is you are not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things no matter how may laws you make. People are still going to do stupid things, and we don't need a bunch of stupid useless laws clogging up our courts, etc.

We agree on that too. Children shouldn't be taken away from parents for either one of those reasons. But they are both abuse. Are you really unaware of the health risks of childhood obesity? How among other things it causes children to have weight problems as adults which leads to adult diseases like diabetes and others. It is abusive because its bad for their health, which is the argument we're making about smoking in the car with them.
 
Smoking in a car with children present is not only inconsiderate, but it's stupid. However, it's not child abuse.

Knowing the long term health problems we have scientifically found to be closely associated with cigarette smoking, this line you're drawing in the sand between child abuse and not child abuse seems arbitrary at best.
 
I, for one, do not want Social Services spending time investigating this sort of thing when they drop the ball ALL the time on real child abuse cases because they claim they are underfunded and understaffed. That is dumb.
 
It is irresponsible parenting but not child abuse. Like others have said, are you going to rip children away from their families for this? Same thing with overeating or eating the wrong foods. Are you going to remove children from their homes and families and call this child abuse? That is silly when the resources are scarce as it is and should be going towards REAL child abuse.

Children are in fact taken away due to negligence, which includes underfeeding.
 
It is irresponsible parenting but not child abuse. Like others have said, are you going to rip children away from their families for this? Same thing with overeating or eating the wrong foods. Are you going to remove children from their homes and families and call this child abuse? That is silly when the resources are scarce as it is and should be going towards REAL child abuse.

Is there something less severe than "ripping children away from homes" that could be done. A ticket, maybe a scolding. Anyway, inside of the next decade smoking is illegal in America, and this becomes a mute point.
 
We agree on that too. Children shouldn't be taken away from parents for either one of those reasons. But they are both abuse. Are you really unaware of the health risks of childhood obesity? How among other things it causes children to have weight problems as adults which leads to adult diseases like diabetes and others. It is abusive because its bad for their health, which is the argument we're making about smoking in the car with them.

That is still NOT abuse. Abuse is striking or otherwise hurting your child. At best, that would be child neglect, and we already have limited resources to investigate the horrible physical abuse that happens NOW. That would be a minimal form of neglect, considering some parents neglect to feed their children, neglect to be there to supervise their children and other much more horrible and blatant forms happen every day. Do you think we should waste time, money and man power investigating parents who smoke or eat wrong in front of their kids? That is ignorant. There are children who NEED help NOW out there.

According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), in 2005, an estimated 3.3 million reports of alleged abuse and/or neglect involving approximately 6 million children were made to local child protective services (CPS) agencies across the country. An estimated 899,000 of these children were determined to be victims of abuse and/or neglect (USDHHS, 2007). Of these, 16.6 percent were determined to be victims of physical abuse. Further, an estimated 1,460 children died in 2005 as a result of child abuse and neglect (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007). NCANDS data collection saw a large increase in child maltreatment numbers during its data collection in 2005 largely due to the inclusion of Alaska and Puerto Rico.



But let's worry about parents smoking? :confused:
 
Who here will defend the right of the adult to subject their child to smoke inside a confined space like a car?

I do not support any state regulation banning or supporting the use of tobacco.
 
There are other things besides lung cancer. Both of my parents died of emphysema. Dad quit smoking at 50, lived to be 79. Mom never quit, lived to be 81. Something will get you eventually... but I think both could have lived another 5-10 yrs and enjoyed a better quality of life if they'd never smoked.

And yeah, I'm 48 now and I still struggle with it. I'm trying the e-cig thing in my latest efforts to quit the real deal. I wish I'd never lit the first one too.

Best of luck in your effort. It is really tough to quit. May I suggest trying different things until you find the right thing that gets you to your goal. Also, I think quitting actually takes practice, so keep trying. E-cigs are most likely way better for you than tobacco.
 
That is still NOT abuse. Abuse is striking or otherwise hurting your child. At best, that would be child neglect, and we already have limited resources to investigate the horrible physical abuse that happens NOW. That would be a minimal form of neglect, considering some parents neglect to feed their children, neglect to be there to supervise their children and other much more horrible and blatant forms happen every day. Do you think we should waste time, money and man power investigating parents who smoke or eat wrong in front of their kids? That is ignorant. There are children who NEED help NOW out there.





But let's worry about parents smoking? :confused:

Child abuse is a legal definition. The Federal definition is

"Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation"; or

"An act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm."

https://www.childwelfare.gov/can/defining/federal.cfm

This is broad enough to include repeated and extreme exposure of a known cancer-causing carcinogen to children.
 
Child abuse is a legal definition. The Federal definition is



https://www.childwelfare.gov/can/defining/federal.cfm

This is broad enough to include repeated and extreme exposure of a known cancer-causing carcinogen to children.

You have not answered the question. Do you think that we should waste time, money and manpower investigating cases of parents smoking cigarettes in front of their children, when there are cases where children are actually murdered by their own parents, beaten to death or whatever?
 
Would I like parents to not smoke if their kids are in the car, yes. But it is their car, a person should be allowed to smoke'm if they had them. This is a very difficult issue, the only thing I could largely stand behind is a ban on smoking in the car or in the room of a house were a baby is in the room or in the car because of child endangerment issues. But even that is a bit iffy because again because if a car if blue from the smoke and 2 toddlers are coughing their lungs out, what do you do with that situation?

Very difficult but as long as there is a resemblance of private property, I do not think the government has the legal right to ban smoking in cars if children are present.
 
Here it is under the age of 16 in most provinces but Nova Scotia where it is 19 (the age required to buy cigarettes).

19? That's insane
 
You have not answered the question. Do you think that we should waste time, money and manpower investigating cases of parents smoking cigarettes in front of their children, when there are cases where children are actually murdered by their own parents, beaten to death or whatever?

I didn't actually see that question. A good $300 ticket for smoking in the car with a child in it is fine. Where it is demonstrated that a much larger, chronic problem exists then yes, it should be investigated. This is no different than any other form of child abuse, hitting being a good example: of course it's nonsense to get a child protection officer involved if a kid gets a slap up the head for being an obnoxious scream-monster in public, but where it can be shown that something much more chronic than the isolated slap-up-the-head is going on is where an investigation is legitimate.

In any case, if a parent is chronically exposing the child to deadly carcinogens then a prosecutor could make the case under the definition I pasted that child abuse is going on.
 
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Seriously???? Honestly????

Are you that blind to what happens in a car???

Do you have kids?

Do you restrain then in car seats, then proceed to smoke inside the same car?

Do you actually do that and think you're not having any effect on them at all?????

I figure I make my kids by ultra-lights, so it all works out in the end
 
I'll defend it. It's my kid, my car, my business, stay your do gooding ass out of my affairs...
 
So a police officer needs to step in and do what exactly? i mean society fines people who litter?

Burn your face with that same cig. That might get your attention. 8)
 
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