Jump to full article: Glasgow Sunday Herald (uk), 2009-06-23
Author: Muriel Gray
Intro: This is what makes the reaction to the recent proposal, to ban smoking in cars when children are present, somewhat peculiar. Why would anyone complain about a proposed law to protect their own children?
The person suggesting the legislation is not some fundamentalist, nut job, anti-libertarian, but Professor Terence Stephenson, the extremely eminent head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Part of his job is to improve and maintain the health of children in the UK, and as such his concerns should be addressed with the utmost seriousness.
The response, from smokers of course, has been depressing, as if no-one has learned anything at all in the past 50 years. Simon Clark was one of the first to respond. He's director of the proudly unpleasant Forest, the smokers' lobby group funded by the tobacco industry.
Smokers opposing this ban are advertising the fact that they don’t value their children’s health above their addiction . . .
Those who cry "nanny state!" at every piece of new health legislation should reflect on the fact that state intervention is a direct consequence of failing to regulate ourselves. Liberty sometimes means more than just the freedom of personal gratification. It means protecting the rights of the vulnerable.
If Professor Stephenson's advice is taken and law is passed, selfish gits will still smoke in cars with children. Some will get caught. Most will not. But hopefully, just as it's become socially unacceptable to drink and drive, text and drive, or travel without a seatbelt, a new law would make it clear to the transgressors that they are doing something which society at large disapproves of.
. . .
The state only needs to nanny when its citizens behave like children.
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