This time in the North Dakota Legislature, it's smokers who light up in a car with children in the back seat. But the details hardly matter.
The bottom line is that once again, it's smokers who are on lawmakers' "villains" list.
Not drivers as a group -- including nonsmoking drivers -- even though car accidents kill 2,000 young people each year and injure more than 250,000. Motor vehicle accidents are by far the leading cause of children's deaths.
Not coaches, even though sports-related injuries send 8,000 young people to emergency rooms every day, and some 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries among children in America stem from sports and recreation activities.
Not teachers, even though some 2.2 million children suffer injuries at school each year. Not playground monitors, even though most of those injuries take place on the playground.
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Not parents who use fireplaces or wood-burning stoves, even though the Children's Health Environmental Coalition reports that children in wood-burning households experience "higher rates of lung inflammation, breathing difficulties, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases."
Not parents who let their youngsters ride snowmobiles, even though "snowmobiles are a significant source of multitrauma for children," the Mayo Clinic reports. Not parents who take their children hunting or fishing, even though every year brings reports of accidental shootings and drowning deaths.
And not parents who buy hamburgers and french fries for their children, even though childhood obesity is the No. 1 pediatric health concern in the U.S. (Although those parents probably are next.)
No, it's smokers.
Why?
Given that almost every activity of daily life involves risk, and given that most of those risks are 100 percent avoidable if a person refrains from that activity, why are smokers singled out?
Maybe this is why: Because while a majority of the public enjoys (and subjects their children to) countless risky behaviors leading to many thousands of injuries and deaths, that majority doesn't happen to indulge in smoking.
And given the pleasure people take in feeling self-righteous, it's natural for lawmakers to reflect the majority's view by turning the screws on smokers ever tighter.
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Natural -- but not productive or right, at least in a society that's properly suspicious of government meddling in family life.
Let's recognize that this anti-smoking zeal has become obsessive. Let's acknowledge the Law of Diminishing Returns -- in other words, that it's now taking bigger and heavier interventions to bring about smaller and weaker improvements in health.
Let's accept that extending the government's reach into the family car soon will be followed by power grabs in the home.
And let's at last respond to a smoking issue by backing off, saying 'We've gone far enough' and trusting parents rather than the government to best evaluate an ordinary risk.
That's what we do when it comes to skiing, skateboarding, hockey playing, wood-stove burning, ice-cream eating and television-watching, after all.
Let's leave smokers in cars alone.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
