IT’S TIME TO BAN SMOKING AROUND KIDS (4-2003)

The popularity of a proposed law is often directly 
proportional to the degree to which adults feel they may be 
encumbered in some way if the law passes. This perceived 
encumbrance is sometimes balanced out if the public feels 
the law will provide a greater degree of safety or 
protection.

Laws designed to protect children, even if it makes it 
somewhat more inconvenient for the parents, are quite often 
still popular. After all, who is opposed to the protection 
of children?

That is the way it was with seat belt laws versus 
children’s car seat laws. The law making it mandatory for 
young children to be buckled into a car safety seat was 
passed several years ago, and with little opposition. But 
the seatbelt law, making it mandatory for adults riding in 
the front seat of cars to wear safety belts had more 
resistance. Adults generally do not like it when lawmakers 
try to restrict their freedoms in ways they believe are 
unnecessary. 

All adults can make a personal choice about whether or not 
they want to buckle up, and the decision affects only 
themselves. So when the government makes it mandatory that 
they buckle up, some of them feel their freedom has been 
violated.

The same theory can be applied to laws that ban smoking in 
buildings where the public congregates. Many adults, both 
smokers and non-smokers, believe that the government has no 
right telling them where they may smoke. 

But unlike the use of safety belts, smoking not only 
affects the smoker, but may intrude upon the air space of 
nearby non-smokers as well. And since environmental tobacco 
smoke has been shown to be deleterious to one’s health, 
laws banning smoking in public buildings are becoming more 
and more commonplace. 

But perhaps we need to look at smoking bans from a 
different perspective – from the perspective of child 
safety. Maybe then a compromise can be worked out that 
would satisfy the greatest number of people and still make 
the indoor environment less polluted.

The crux of the problem with smoking bans is that many of 
them include establishments frequented only by adults, such 
as bars and lounges. It would seem to be the prudent choice 
to allow the market to decide whether or not an individual 
bar allows smoking. Bars have traditionally been places 
where adults gather to have a drink or two, and to relax. 
Smoking has often been a part of that environment, and 
everyone who enters a bar expects that it will be smoky.

Restaurants, however, are a different story. Most 
restaurants also allow children. Many restaurants already 
divide their dining areas into smoking and non-smoking 
sections. Due to public demand, the non-smoking sections 
are most often the largest.

But if the goal is to protect children from the hazards of 
environmental tobacco smoke, it makes no sense to allow 
them into the smoking section of restaurants. Any law that 
is to be effective at protecting children from second-hand 
smoke should address this problem.

Rather than passing laws and ordinances that ban smoking in 
all public buildings, even the ones where only adults hang 
out, a better approach would be to ban smoking in any 
building, or section thereof, which permits children under 
the age of 18 to enter. 

Under such a system, bars and adult-oriented night clubs 
would not be covered by a smoking ban. It would be up to 
the owners of such establishments to decide whether or not 
to ban smoking.

However, it would be illegal to allow children to enter a 
section of a restaurant where smoking is permitted. No 
longer would young children be needlessly exposed to the 
toxic fumes escaping from the noses of their parents while 
they sit around a table at a nice restaurant. If the 
parents want to smoke, they can leave the kids at home. 

Such a law could also be extended to ban smoking by anyone 
in an enclosed vehicle where children are present. Parents 
have no business smoking in a car where their children are 
passengers.

The curiosity is that such laws are needed. It would seem 
to be only common sense that parents who smoke would take 
every precaution not to allow their second-hand smoke to 
enter the lungs of their offspring. But taking a look 
around in the smoking section of almost any restaurant, it 
would seem that such common sense is not in existence. 
Where common sense doesn’t work, laws are often needed.