You can’t smoke in most restaurants anymore. You can’t smoke in offices, or 5m from office building entrances. You are not allowed to smoke on public transport, on airplanes or in most hotel rooms. And that is a good thing, because cigarette smoke contributes to airways disease and lung cancer.
But there is still one safe haven for smokers. Their own cars. I always feel terrible when I put my son into his car seat in his mother’s car, and on opening the car door the stale cigarette smoke wafts out to greet me. Particularly when the kid has a cold, it is horrible to be put into a confined space full of cigarette smoke. I don’t get how parents can do this to their children.
Attempts have been made in the UK to ban smoking in cars with children present, but those attempts have been refuted in the past. Now another member’s bill has passed through the House of Lords, but would have to be approved by MPs and the PM David Cameron there to become law, but apparently that’s not going to happen.
Mr Cameron told MPs last year that while he backed the ban on smoking in pubs, he felt “more nervous” about proscribing what people should and should not do in private vehicles.
Which is a real shame. Because cigarette smoke wafting around a toddler’s airway and respiratory tract is not a good thing. And if parents are not responsible enough to realise this for themselves, I fully support any attempt to make them realise it by force. It’s not rocket surgery, people. Do not smoke cigarettes with your children present in a confined space. Give yourself cancer and emphysema if you must, but don’t give it to your kids. They rely on you to protect them, after all.
