Cigarette law rolling down the wrong road

I hate it when I see adults smoking in cars, their children trapped in a rolling cloud of toxic fumes.

When I see adults subjecting kids to that poison, I have to fight the temptation to ram their cars, to bang on their windows, to yell at them to stop. It is both unhealthy and unkind to force children to breathe in second-hand smoke.

The odds may not be terribly high that the children will grow up to develop cancer as a direct result -but even in the short term, the smoke irritates young eyes and throats, aggravates childhood colds and allergies and asthma, causes more ear and lung infections. It stinks. It chokes. And children, especially young children, are helpless to protest or fight back.

So I understand why the City of Leduc has just enacted a municipal bylaw to ban people from smoking in private vehicles in which minor children are passengers. The bylaw, which follows one passed in Okotoks, is well-intentioned. But it is fundamentally wrongheaded.

A private vehicle is just that -private. The state has the right to regulate how fast you drive, whether you drink before you drive, or whether you use a cellphone when you operate your vehicle, because those actions influence the way you operate your private vehicle. They have a direct impact on the safety of the public roadways and the security of the public at large. We allow the state to limit our freedoms, in these cases, because there is a direct connection to traffic safety. Similarly, we allow the state to enforce laws about seatbelts and child seats, because those things have a direct connection to motor vehicle safety.

But a local municipality has no such ethical right or moral responsibility to control what you do within your own car to influence the pulmonary health of your private passengers.

It is not the role or the responsibility of the city to regulate good parenting. A municipality can't compel parents to vaccinate their children for whooping cough. It can't compel parents to feed their children milk and fruit and fresh vegetables instead of Froot Loops, Dunkaroos and Coca-Cola. It can't stop parents from spanking their children, from letting them stay up late, from letting them watch South Park or play Grand Theft Auto.

Parenting is a matter of very personal choices and values, and a city council doesn't have the constitutional prerogative to interfere in the private relationship between parents and children. The province and the federal government do have the right to pass legis-lation with regards to child welfare or physical abuse. But until and unless those higher orders of government decide that smoking in the presence of a child constitutes a physical assault, I just don't see the logic in local municipal bans on smoking in cars full of kids.

Sure, you can hypothetically protect a baby or toddler from second-hand smoke for the 20 minutes it takes to drive from one end of Leduc to the other -when RCMP officers can spy those icky cigarettes through the car window. But the bylaw does nothing to help that vulnerable little one for the other 231/2 hours of the day, when the kid is at home, breathing in noxious fumes.

After all, if it's against the law to smoke in your vehicle with children inside, why isn't it illegal to smoke in your own house or apartment or trailer when children are present? Or to smoke while you're pregnant, or living with a pregnant woman? If we don't want the government to regulate our private habits in our private spaces, we can't make an exception for cars and trucks and motorhomes, just because they're more visible.

Conversely, I have absolutely no problem with Edmonton Coun. Amarjeet Sohi's recent proposal that Edmonton ban smoking in city playgrounds and parks. (I'll defend your legal right to smoke around your children, in the privacy of your home or car -but not your right to smoke around mine, in a public place.)

City parks and playgrounds aren't private spaces. They're owned and operated by the municipality, for the common good, and the city has a right and responsibility to regulate what happens within them. Second-hand smoke may not be a major long-term cancer threat in a wide open space, but it's still a smelly, eye-watering, throat-prickling annoyance. Nor are poisonous, germy cigarette butts something you want toddlers (or dogs) picking up and putting in their mouths.

Banning smoking in public parks wouldn't infringe on anyone's privacy, but it would send a strong social message that smoking is a nuisance, not a right, and that we, as a community, won't encourage or countenance smoking where children and families specifically come to play.

We have come so far in the past 30 years in our cultural battle against tobacco addiction -thanks to the combination of health education and public smoking bans. In our quest to continue that progress, we mustn't let our noble zeal to protect our community's children erode our most basic civil liberties. That doesn't mean we shouldn't expect our civic leaders to show social leadership -but only within the proper limits of their proper powers.