by UK Staff (Thu Jun 18, 2009)
Professor Terence Stephenson, the new Head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has called for a change in the law to prohibit smoking in cars, when a child is present.
He has pointed out that second hand smoke has been linked to chest infections in children, asthma, ear problems and sudden infant death syndrome, or cot death. He is absolutely right - who would want to clog up their infant's lungs and cause such damage?
The anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has piled in too, with the frankly dubious statistic that ‘Smoking just one cigarette, even with the window open, creates a greater concentration of second-hand smoke than a whole evening's smoking in a pub or a bar.' Probably because you can no longer smoke in pubs or bars.
Anxious to deter accusations of ‘nannying,' Professor Stephenson claims that ‘seat-belts in cars, health warnings on cigarette packets - were initially met with scepticism or even derision when they were first proposed.' He is right once again - I can remember the controversy when the wearing of seatbelts became compulsory in this country in the 1980s. My own father reacted as if he were being forced to wear a straightjacket rather than a narrow strip of woven nylon.
But the Professor's assertion that legislation to stop smoking in cars would reap the same benefits ‘as with other extremely successful motoring interventions - seat belts, mobile phones and drink-driving' is misleading.
All those measures were to do with the safety of the actual driving experience, and protection for other road users - not the health of the driver or passengers who happen to be sitting in a car. Even if legislation is passed to stop smoking in a car when children are present, presumably smokers can then return home and sit in an airless room, puffing away whilst watching TV with the kids? What if you drive a convertible? Will the Government stop you smoking in that?
A spokesman for the Department of Health says they will review smoking laws next year. So we can wait with bated breath to see if the Government does its usual two-faced approach of pushing forward another piece of half-baked, unenforceable legislation with one hand, whilst raking in over £10billion of tax revenues from tobacco with the other.
