As long as the public is well informed, I'm strongly in favor of allowing individuals to make their own choices. The cult of anti-smoking needs to come to an end. The second-hand smoke nuisance has been eliminated in public places, and nobody reasonable has any question about the overall health effects of cigarettes. It's time to let people make their own choices.
As long as X can X freely in their own X while their children are there and unable to escape it, the X has not been eliminated.
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As long as parents can endlessly stock junk food freely in their own homes and cars while their children are there and unable to escape it, the influence of junk food has not been eliminated.
The problem, fundamentally, is that people can be inconsiderate of others. I would classify someone who smokes in their car with non-smokers in their presence, children and adults alike, as jerks. It's a dick move. But don't try to legislate against every dick move - teach people to be more thoughtful of others.
The game isn't to find something exactly analogous to something else in order to expose the flaw in the structure of someones thinking. Example: take a gospel, replace every instance of the word God with Mickey Mouse. Is Mickey Mouse analogous to God? No, but the trick helps us analyze the original text in a more objective way.
My conclusion don't try to legislate against every dick move - teach people to be more thoughtful of others was an objective response to more laws governing what people can do in their own homes. Now let's explore it further because the concept of banning smoking in someone's home is fundamentally flawed:
How do you enforce such a law? Can someone just barge into your home, slap the cigarette out of your hand and give you a fine or take your children away? Could it be abused much the same way neighbors might falsely report you for neglecting a child because they have a beef with you? How much do you fine a person if the purpose of the law is to protect the children when fining the parents will leave the children with fewer resources? Do you give the parent a criminal record? Will that help the children more? What evidence is required before barging into someones home? Do you even barge into someones home or do you politely ask them at the font door "Have you been smoking in front of your children?"
PS: Risking others lives for fun or profit seems to exist in a weird mental place. Drink and drive? Speed? Drive while really sleepy? Second hand smoke? Pollution? CO2? Fire a gun randomly in the air?
As outlined in a separate comment in this thread, your solution is unenforceable unless you want to erode some pretty fundamental freedoms. THAT'S evil. No, wait...it's not evil. "Evil" is a gross oversimplification of things. It's anti-intellectual and avoids any sort of meaningful discussion of why people do the things they do.
You feel compelled to help prevent potential respiratory issues and cancer in children exposed to second hand smoke by policing what people do in their own homes. But in the process of policing this issue you potentially do more harm than good - how do you solve the issue? Fines? Makes the family poor. Criminal record? Makes the family poor. Take away the children? Your intentions are good but I can only see the medicine being worse than the malady.
I just suggested that risking lives should be viewed as more than just 'a dick move'. Cutting in a school lunch line is 'a dick move' dumping lead into a towns drinking water is worse than that.
PS: We used to think beating children was ok so times change even if few people in up in prison.
I did put words in your mouth but the implication of your original comment, that smoking around children be banned in the home, was that there would need to be some sort of policing of this activity. To police an activity in an individuals home we need to impinge on some pretty important freedoms. So we have a choice - a severe nanny state where we address shitty behavior on a case-by-case basis or teach people to be more thoughtful so that we can prevent shitty behavior from the outset.
PS: We used to think beating children was ok so times change even if few people in up in prison.
Sending a parent to jail for beating their child is wise because beating a child imperils the child's life. On the other hand, sending someone's parents to jail for smoking around them will be more damaging than exposure to cigarette smoke. The medicine is worse than the disease. What's more, you assume all people are rational actors which we know is fantasy - just because some people have gone to prison in the past for some random transgression won't be enough to stop another person from doing the same.
Even though this unfortunately isn't the case, jail should only be used to separate violent people from the general population - there are far better methods for dealing with non-violent offenders, chiefly community service or a fine.
Also, if you have 10 equally valid issues at a national level. Then 100% fixing one of them almost impossible and probably extremely expensive where making a 20% dent in all 10 of them is more valuable and probably far less costly.
Food doesn't fly from the pantry into the child's mouth however children can only eat what their parents buy them. There are minor deviations from this rule e.g. the child has money to buy something nutritious or they can source food from another household. Otherwise having junk food in the house pretty much guarantees it'll find its way into the child's stomach.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
For the sake of the exercise I can compare apples to oranges. The exercise is to identify fundamental flaws in the OP's reasoning, not make simple analogies. The OP wants to ban passive smoking in the most private of spaces - feel free to explain how you do that in a way that won't be worse than exposing a child to passive smoking.
I suspect this is not necessarily the case in countries with less public health education, especially developing or poor countries which is where Tobacco has shifted its efforts to grow or maintain revenue.
there's an external dialogue though, for sure... "it's more/less bad than you think"
Reduced, but not eliminated. People still smoke in far too many public spaces in the US. Try standing at the curb outside baggage claim at SFO or SJC. Or, outside many large office buildings.
The only place smoking should be legal is in the privacy of your own single-family detached home. Even then, only if you don't have any minors living there.
That's a bit like saying "the cult of modern medicine needs to end now that I'm healthy", isn't it?
Having won all the battles they should have won, the cult is reaching to win battles they shouldn't. Keeping people well informed about the choices they make is good. Keeping public places reasonably free of smoke is good.
But once you inform smokers about the consequences of their choices and prevent them from affecting those who don't want to make those choices ... it's time to step back and allow people to make their own decisions.
If somebody wants to make an unhealthy choice for themselves, I don't have a problem with it. Maybe they'll need to pay a different health insurance premium to make up for it, and that's okay, but otherwise it is not the prerogative of my self or any government to intrude on personal choices which have effects limited to the individual.
Only in the West. Here in SE Asia you're hard pressed to find a cafe or restaurant that isn't completely engulfed in cigarette smoke during business hours. Public smoking bans seem a long way off here.
It's not much of a choice when you're psychologically manipulated through marketing to start smoking and then physically dependent and mentally addicted thereafter.
The second-hand smoke nuisance has been eliminated in public places
This is nonsense. I can't walk into my office without going through a giant cloud of smoke. Smokers are literally smoking right next to the signs that say, "No smoking within 30 feet of door" that are less than a foot from the door.
I have no respect for this abdication of personal responsibility.
>This is nonsense. I can't walk into my office without going through a giant cloud of smoke. Smokers are literally smoking right next to the signs that say, "No smoking within 30 feet of door" that are less than a foot from the door.
I likewise have no sympathy. There's a difference between an actual public health concern (my intention using 'nuisance') and the nonexistent right to not be offended. Sharing public space means being inconvenienced sometimes. There's a big difference between working in a smoky bar for 10 hour shifts, and smelling cigarettes for 30 seconds as you walk in a building.
This is probably not true. Sure, smokers know that cigarettes are harmful and that their live is probably going to be shortened by smoking, but they do not know the rates or severity of the various health problems.
For example Most men do not know that smoking is a leading cause of male impotence. People don't understand why their surgeon wants them to stop smoking (reduced risks during surgery; better healing after).