Florida may ban smoking in cars with passengers under age 13

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A Florida State Senator has proposed a bill to ban Smoking in a car if there is a passenger in the car under the age of 13:

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/bill-forbidding-people-smoke-children-car-makes-it/nkS73/

From the article:

The senator who sponsored the bill was inspired by a group of students who won a contest.

Second-hand smoke is a terrible thing. It doesnt matter what age you are, said driver Mike McCan.

Years later, McCan is feeling the effects of second-hand smoke, along with driver Maureen Conroy.

I have been affected by it. I am on medication. I am on oxygen, said Conroy.

The law came from a group of students who won a contest.

They were looking out for themselves and now Floridas government is looking out for them.

If you want to smoke, smoke and destroy your own life, not somebody elses, said Conroy.

McCan also agrees no adult should have the freedom to cause damage to a child.

I think this is certainly within the police power of the State to legislate under the broad powers held by the State with regard to public health. What does everyone else think? Is this the State sticking its nose too far into peoples private property rights? It is, after all, legal to smoke tobacco products in the State of Florida. I'm torn but I remember being trapped in my Mothers car while she worked her way through cigarette after cigarette. It was miserable.

Discuss.

[The Mance]

I support it from a health of the child standpoint. I'd support a ban on smoking in the home with a minor present also. The public/road safety aspect is a stretch, though.

[brook]

I'm mostly just perplexed by the arbitrary age cut off. Are 14 year old children no longer harmed by second hand smoke?

AFAIK smoking with kids in the car is banned here, I have no idea how enforced that is as I neither smoke nor drive but I'm generally in favour.

[Q the Cat]

I'm generally in favor of this also.

I grew up with my dad smoking in the car - a horrible experience. Also, I recall back in the 70s many moms smoked during pregnancy, which is now abhorred due to the health impact to the baby. But is that also illegal?

[HexMachina]

I'm in favour. UK is implementing something similar as I understand. My Dad smokes in the car and has done throughout my childhood. As I got older I started explicitly objecting if he lit up in the car while I was with him

[Dr. Pepper]

I'm in favor. I was in favor even when I was still a smoker.

[kairparavel]

I hated it when my parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up. HATED IT. But I think this is silly. It would be a million times more sensible to just outlaw smoking than police it like an over-zealous granny. Seriously. Is Florida going to ban you from smoking inside your house? Or ban children from eating chocolate bars and drinking Cokes in the backseat in the name of making things more healthful? The government - local, state, federal - needs to put on their big kid pants and make smoking illegal. But they won't because lobbyists and industry.

The layers of fencing around something completely legal is insane. INSANE.

And I agree with brook. The arbitrary age thing is puzzling.

[Larry of the Lawn]

This is like the most Florida thing ever

[butterbumps!]

I hated it when my parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up. HATED IT. But I think this is silly. It would be a million times more sensible to just outlaw smoking than police it like an over-zealous granny. Seriously. Is Florida going to ban you from smoking inside your house? Or ban children from eating chocolate bars and drinking Cokes in the backseat in the name of making things more healthful? The government - local, state, federal - needs to put on their big kid pants and make smoking illegal. But they won't because lobbyists and industry.

The layers of fencing around something completely legal is insane. INSANE.

And I agree with brook. The arbitrary age thing is puzzling.

I tend to agree with this. I dislike this sort of monitoring, and think that it should just become illegal outright. While I agree on the basis of how this becomes too nanny-statish (do parents get a fine for allowing kids to drink soda?), I strongly believe that these sorts of laws and bans make it so much harder to quit smoking, and I tend to oppose it on those grounds as well.

The increasingly rigid bans on smoking (in the bars, but also enforcement of smoke-free zones in a lot of outdoor spaces), which made smoking much less convenient, honestly made me increasingly convinced that my precious smoking breaks were the most important things in the world. Like to the point where I found myself planning far too much around said smoking breaks, shotgunning multiple smokes when I did make it to a "safe" zone, and considering those parts of my day some kind of glorious victory or something. Having all these kinds of smoking bans really made me feel panicked, which made me want to smoke more, which made me more reluctant to quit smoking (I eventually did quit, kind of by accident). This might not be a universal response or anything, but I think sometimes these bans might have the opposite behavioral effect they hope to achieve. I vastly favor just making it illegal outright (a position I held as a smoker as well).

[brook]

Call me selfish but I'd rather be able to sit in a bar and breath comfortably than make it potentially easier for a hypothetical person to quit smoking by allowing them to fill the area I'm sitting in with smoke.

[butterbumps!]

Call me selfish but I'd rather be able to sit in a bar and breath comfortably than make it potentially easier for a hypothetical person to quit smoking by allowing them to fill the area I'm sitting in with smoke.

I'm not defending smoking in a car with children. It goes without saying that this is something that should not happen. And about bars, well, I tended to believe that there's both a market for smoking and non-smoking bars, and would have preferred for either it left to the owner's discretion or be outrightly illegal.

I'm saying that I wish it would just become illegal outright, as I disagree with the sort of monitoring involving with piecemeal bans like this. My second paragraph above was simply to explain how such bans tended to perpetuate my desire to smoke (though, for the record, I've never smoked around children or in a car with anyone who wasn't also a smoker).

[brook]

My point is that the affect of such bans on your desire to smoke doesn't matter to me in the slightest. If bans on smoking in shared areas reduce smoking rates well I'd consider that a bonus but the actual purpose is to stop one persons choice to smoke from affecting the rest of us and they work exactly as intended.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Smoking around people who can't/don't consent to you doing so ought to be illegal. I'll be a lifetime asthmatic because some smokers don't think of the consequences of their actions. I support what Florida may do with this legislation.

[Castel]

I hated it when my parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up. HATED IT. But I think this is silly. It would be a million times more sensible to just outlaw smoking than police it like an over-zealous granny. Seriously. Is Florida going to ban you from smoking inside your house? Or ban children from eating chocolate bars and drinking Cokes in the backseat in the name of making things more healthful? The government - local, state, federal - needs to put on their big kid pants and make smoking illegal. But they won't because lobbyists and industry.

The layers of fencing around something completely legal is insane. INSANE.

And I agree with brook. The arbitrary age thing is puzzling.

Fencing you off so you can smoke yourself while allowing others to not be bothered AND also not making things completely illegal and dealing with the massive issues with enforcing the ban seems perfectly acceptable to me.

On an intuitive level it seems more complicated but w/e.

[HexMachina]

I think there have been studies actually Butterbumps that show a correlation (yeah, I know, not necessarily cause and effect, etc. etc.) between various smoking bans in the UK and reduced rates of smoking, so it does seem to suggest that they are effective(ish) means of helping people quit. I don't recall the exact studies, I seem to think that one I looked at was done by the University of Dundee

[HexMachina]

Smoking around people who can't/don't consent to you doing so ought to be illegal. I'll be a lifetime asthmatic because some smokers don't think of the consequences of their actions. I support what Florida may do with this legislation.

Yeah, I get annoyed when people walking in front of me light up on a windy day without thinking about the fact I am getting a face full of smoke from them, and the occasional flecks of ash. Maybe that makes me unreasonable, I dont know, but it is unpleasant all the same

[butterbumps!]

My point is that the affect of such bans on your desire to smoke doesn't matter to me in the slightest. If bans on smoking in shared areas reduce smoking rates well I'd consider that a bonus but the actual purpose is to stop one persons choice to smoke from affecting the rest of us and they work exactly as intended.

Sure, such bans decrease the amount of smoke you'll inhale second-hand at places like bars (though, that's typically displaced to the sidewalks and streets).

But if said bans have the effect of making smokers further committed to smoking, then it's sort of counterproductive in the big picture if the goal is to have no one breathing in second- or third- hand smoke if the act of smoking is being inadvertently fostered thusly. I would rather see this problem addressed in a way that's less about pushing smokers into corners that continue rendering the cigarette precious and fetishized, and more about addressing the root of smoking and just making it outrightly illegal to buy, sell or smoke smokes.

I think the more important issue is probably the invasiveness of monitoring this practically, and the adjacent implications this could have on other similar nuisances/ toxicities. I am uncomfortable with this degree of behavior monitoring at a government level, though I do agree that smokers shouldn't be smoking in cars with kids. I share the goal of having no one, especially kids, be harmed by second-hand smoke, but I am not sure that bans like this are the best way of accomplishing that.

I think there have been studies actually Butterbumps that show a correlation (yeah, I know, not necessarily cause and effect, etc. etc.) between various smoking bans in the UK and reduced rates of smoking, so it does seem to suggest that they are effective(ish) means of helping people quit. I don't recall the exact studies, I seem to think that one I looked at was done by the University of Dundee

I know at least in NYC, the smoking bans and increasingly severe taxation are often tandem (and often feature additional measures aimed at cutting smoking too), so separating out which causes what is difficult. I know people who have quit because the bans and tax have made it just too inconvenient and expensive, and don't doubt that for some smokers this might be all that's needed. Conversely, I think these sorts of regulations make it more difficult for others to quit. In general, I wish governments took a very different approach to how they go about anti-smoking campaigns and policies, but that might be better left for another thread.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm not really sure that these bans are really the best way to go about it. While it does give some added degree of convenience for nonsmokers in that there are fewer places to inhale this, I think a better longterm policy would be a total ban.

[HexMachina]

Oh, I would absolutely support a total ban/making smoking illegal in an ideal world. I just don't see that ever happening, unfortunately. But I agree that would work better than the current situation does

[HK-47]

Statement: I approve of smoking, meatbags who want to smoke are very amusing and foolish.

[brook]

Yeah I disagree. I'd rather encounter smokers on the street where I can move away than in an enclosed area so I'm perfectly happy if smokers continue to smoke, or even increase the amount they smoke 100 fold in all the corners they like as long as they aren't doing it in places where I am forced to stay and deal with it.