Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
If people won't protect their children from second-hand smoke, then society must protect the children. The rights of the child supercedes all.
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This is exactly right.
As a child, I was subjected to 6-hour drives to our "other" house in BC every weekend. Literally every weekend, as in we would leave Calgary at 5:00PM on Friday and arrive back in Calgary at 10:00PM on Sunday. Every single weekend.
My step-mother was (is) a chain-smoker. Every 15 minutes, she's got another cigarette in her fingers. My father is ex-military, so I was positioned directly behind my step-mother - so that my father could "keep an eye on me." They both despised having the windows rolled down, so the air conditioning was on in full force... blowing everything directly into the backseat.
Long story short, as a 7-year-old child, I was inhaling a constant stream of second-hand smoke for 6 continuous hours every Friday and 6 more continuous hours every Sunday.
Anyone ever see a "smoking room" in a public place? You know, the little room with the yellow-stained windows and the undead-looking people crouched over inside them that you can barely see through the thick, revolting smog hanging in the air. That's what our car was like, and I spent 12 hours in it every single weekend from the age of 6 to the age of 15. That's
9 friggin years.
I then went on to smoke a pack-and-a-half a day, for 15 years of my life, before finally quitting 3 years ago.
You know how happy I would have been to have this law in place when I was a child? I'm not a violent guy, but every time I see some jackass smoking in their car with their kid(s) in the backseat, I want to pull them over and smack the stuffing out of them.