CLEAN-AIR KOOKS INVADING HOMES
DURING Prohibition, making and selling liquor was illegal, but
drinking it wasn't. With tobacco, we're moving toward the
opposite situation, where it'll be legal to make and sell
cigarettes but not to smoke them.
A smoking ban recently approved by the city council of Belmont .
. .
One of Galef's colleagues, Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette
(D-Queens), said lighting up around kids is worse than physical
abuse. "They're both horrible things," Lafayette said, "but one
is going to kill the child."
As those remarks suggest, the next rationale for banning smoking
in residences may be child protection, which will allow the
government to go after smokers in houses and apartments. Already
several jurisdictions have banned smoking in cars carrying
minors.
Such laws raise the question of why legislators are ignoring the
setting in which the vast majority of children's exposure to
secondhand smoke occurs. Now that anti-smoking crusaders have
crossed the threshold into people's homes, they aren't likely to
turn back.
