// December 16th, 2005 // No Comments » // Just Stuff
Smoking foes try to stop parents from lighting up
By Tarron Lively
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Article
December 16, 2005
Anti-smoking activists who are driving cigarettes from public places across the country are now targeting private homes — especially those with children.
Their efforts so far have contributed to regulations in three states — Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont — forbidding foster parents from smoking around children. Parental smoking also has become a critical point in some child-custody cases, including ones in Virginia and Maryland.
In a highly publicized Virginia case, a judge barred Caroline County resident Tamara Silvius from smoking around her children as a condition for child visitation.
Mrs. Silvius, a waitress at a truck stop in Doswell, Va., calls herself “highly disappointed” with the court’s ruling.
“I’m an adult. Who is anybody to tell me I can’t smoke or drink?” she said in an interview yesterday.
An appeals court upheld the ruling, but not before one judge raised questions about the extent to which a court should become involved in parental rights and whether certain behavior is harmful or simply not in a child’s best interest.
Mrs. Silvius says she complied with the decision by altering her smoking habits.
“My children know not to come around when I’m on the front porch with my morning coffee, tending to my cows or out in my garden, because I’m having a cigarette,” she said.
Still, she thinks this was not a matter for the courts because it was not proven that she posed a risk to her children’s health.
“If a child suffers from asthma or some sort of problem, the courts shouldn’t even have to be told to [step in],” Mrs. Silvius said. “That should be the parent’s better judgment. But my kids aren’t sick. If there’s no health issue, it isn’t the court’s place to say someone can’t do something that’s perfectly legal, just because the other spouse doesn’t want them to.”
The smoking-at-home issue also sparked debate about whether such rulings will lead courts to become involved in such matters as parents’ making poor TV programming choices for their children.
The nonprofit group Action on Smoking and Health is among the most outspoken on stopping parents from smoking around children.
I’m in full agreement with Mrs. Silvius. If the government, catering to all the special interest lobbyists, actually wants to do something about the smoking issue (dangerous or not dangerous), then WTF are they not outlawing cigarettes?
Why? Because they make too much money off them. Instead they’ll cater to all the special interest groups so that it seems as if they’re taking steps, while at the same time continuing to make money.
There has been absolutely no validated proof that second-hand smoke is damaging to any bystanders.
And from what I’ve seen in my life, those who have never been subjected to smoke in their young lives, are those who develop allergies to it later in life.
I grew up around cigarette smoke, my family consisted of smokers. What did it do to me? Absolutely nothing.
