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Smokers Barred From Adopting or Fostering Children / / Ban Reportedly First to Apply to Children Regardless of Age 

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first antismoking organization, has helped convince more than a dozen states to prohibit smoking in homes where foster children live, and also helped to persuade judges in the great majority of states to issue orders prohibiting smoking in the homes of children involved in custody disputes. ASH Wales was a major factor in persuading the Merthyr Tydfil Council to take this latest step, which involves both adoption and foster care.

However, this move is not unprecedented. Several years ago a couple has been told they cannot adopt a child because the husband smokes, even though he claims he never smokes indoors. Indeed, the prohibition stands until he quits smoking for six months and provides medical documentation that he is no longer a smoker.

"This is just the latest step in a growing movement to protect the most vulnerable and most defenseless victims of tobacco smoke pollution," public interest lawyer John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), commented at the time.

As a matter of fact, says Banzhaf, even years ago, when the dangers of smoking around children were far less well appreciated, ten percent of social workers specializing in adoption turned down potential parents because one or both smoked.

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