- Joined
- Oct 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,740
- Reaction score
- 1,383
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Other
The ACLU lawyer in the article never asserted the government lacked this power or it was a legitimate exercise of government power. In fact, the ACLU attorney hinted this may be a legitimate exercise of government power, despite its intrusiveness, and to "withstand judicial challenges, at a minimum the city would have to show that second-hand smoke in cars has a negative health effect of minors. This is not an unequivocal rebuke of this type of governmental power by the ACLU attorney.
Now, the following remarks, which you cited specifically in your post, were not made by the ACLU attorney but instead by another individual. "Smoking bans are a symptom of a greater problem with our government, that they can come in and regulate all kinds of lifestyle choices because they've deemed it improper," she said. "It could be anything."
"If they can come into our car, then they can come into our home," she said. "And everybody should be afraid of this, not just because of smoking.".....snip~
Those are not remarks attributable to the ACLU attorney but to someone else. However, the reasoning and rationale in the indented paragraph below is worth posting and should be addressed as this reasoning is the basis for this law and has, as a principle, a basis for many other laws regulating human behavior in regards to other human beings.
"Boo-hoo," he said. "You can't subject kids to 43 carcinogens and 250 poisonous chemicals and claim privacy. Get over it. Their right to privacy doesn't extend so far as to poisoning kids."
A child who spends one hour in a very smoky room is inhaling as many dangerous chemicals as if he or she smoked 10 or more cigarettes, according to the Mayo Clinic.
A U.S. Surgeon General's report from 2006 found there is sufficient evidence to infer "a causal relationship" between secondhand smoke exposure from parental smoking and lower respiratory illnesses in infants and children.
A child who spends one hour in a very smoky room is inhaling as many dangerous chemicals as if he or she smoked 10 or more cigarettes, according to the Mayo Clinic.
A U.S. Surgeon General's report from 2006 found there is sufficient evidence to infer "a causal relationship" between secondhand smoke exposure from parental smoking and lower respiratory illnesses in infants and children.
I'm inclined to agree, at this moment, with the notion the government legitimately has this kind of power. A right of privacy doesn't permit the poisoning of anyone, not just kids. A right of privacy doesn't permit exposing anyone to those poisonous chemicals, not just kids. The government has the legitimate authority to prohibit this kind of conduct because nobody has any right to engage in or exercise conduct in such a manner as to expose another to physical harm or expose them to potential physical harm. This intrusion is similar to those laws prohibiting rape, murder, battery, criminal recklessness, criminally negligent/reckless conduct, neglect of a dependent, child neglect, with each having the same common denominator of precluding physical harm inflicted upon another person or exposing a person to the risk of physical harm. (In the absence of consent for some crimes but in this case children and dependent kids cannot give consent).
It is and always has been a proper intrusion of the government into our privacy, into our lives, property, rights and freedoms to limit, proscribe, prohibit and preclude conduct resulting in physical harm to another person or potentially doing so.
