Another country has banned adults from smoking in cars with children
Starting today (Oct. 1), it’s illegal in England and Wales to smoke in a car carrying someone under the age of 18.
Rolling down the window or opening the sunroof won’t cut it. The ban applies to all cars except convertibles with the top down (inadvisable most days in typical English weather).
Drivers who break the law face a £50 ($75) fine, but police acknowledge that enforcing the rule won’t be a top priority. Like the UK’s 2007 ban on smoking in indoor public places, the new smoking-in-cars law is mainly intended to influence attitudes over the long term. The percentage of smokers in the UK has fallen from 21% of the population in 2007 to around 18% last yea
Doctors welcomed the ban when Parliament passed it in February. British kids visit the doctor 300,000 times a year as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the BBC. Similar laws banning smoking in cars are in place in parts of the US, Canada, and Australia.
Civil liberty advocates called it a step too far.
“Do we let the police into people’s homes where children are watching six hours’ television? Do we have the state going into kitchens to say that is one Coke can too many?” Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, said of the ban last year. “I think sometimes we have to say, hang on a minute, laws and legislation is not always the solution.”
Indeed, the best-intended bans sometimes result in unintended consequences.
A year after the UK’s 2007 public smoking ban came into effect, demand was down for dry cleaners and up for chefs, as pubs scrambled to find another offering to keep customers in their chairs. And after the US passed a 2012 law mandating healthier school lunches, school meal programs across the country lost money. Children tossed more of the low-sodium, low-fat food into the garbage, or opted to bring in their own meals from home.
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