SFGate: Senate votes to ban smoking in cars carrying young kids

[chomerics]

I am against it just because i can't stand the "nanny" form of government. it drives me up a wall. I do see Predicto's point though, and yes, there are "nanny" state rules such as child abuse and what not.

For example, i think if you have a child in the car and you are caught driving drunk, you should be also charged with endangering the life of a child. That is not the nanny state, but stricter enforcement. With smoking, I think it is a bit too far over the line. Should you charge parents for not putting sun block on their children? Where does it end? I think it is a bit ridiculous, but then again, to each his own I guess.

[Popeman38]

How is it that you can quote my debate and then proceed to not even acknowledge it and claim it's my debate? In fact, you did exactly what I asked for people not to do.

Slavery? Are you kidding me? Context...Context...Context. Do I need to provide a link to www.dictionary.com?

Logic? We're talking about a lifestyle choice here that has zero redeeming social value and is undeniably a health hazard. You talk to me about logic?

Again, I'll ask two simple questions. It's not that hard folks. All you have to do is answer "Yes" or "No".

1. Does anyone believe it's a good thing for children 6 years old and under to be exposed to smoke in a vehicle?

2. Does anyone believe it's a bad thing for adults to refrain from smoking in a vehicle when there are passengers 6 years old and under?

You can not pass laws by passing your test! There are consequences and ramifications that go with laws. 1) They set precedence - precedence is referenced many times in courts. 2) You have written a "blank check" for the govt to deem something dangerous and then pass a law regarding. To answer your questions: 1) No and 2) No. Let us take those same questions and apply them to something else:

1) Does anyone believe it's a good thing for children 6 years old and under to be exposed to 5 hours of video games a day?

2) Does anyone believe it's a bad thing for adults to refrain from allowing any child 6 years old and under to play 5 hours of video games a day?

Now, substitute: twinkies, soda, toy guns.... for video games. Do you see the problem with allowing the govt to make decisions for you? And for whoever said that after a while, the ****ing will go away? Place a frog in a covered pan in cold water, place pan on stove, turn stove on to low. Allow stove to warm, gradually increasing water to a boil. Guess what, the frog never moves or coomplains, but he is no longer alive....

[TheKurp]

Let's try this. http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=7836

Study Shows How Secondhand Smoke Injures Babies' Lungs

August 15, 2006

UC Davis researchers today described in unprecedented biochemical and anatomical detail how cigarette smoke damages the lungs of unborn and newborn children.

The findings illustrate with increased urgency the dangers that smokers' families and friends face, said UC Davis Professor Kent Pinkerton, and should give family doctors helpful new insight into the precise hidden physical changes occurring in their young patients' lungs.

"Smoke exposure causes significant damage and lasting consequences in newborns," Pinkerton said. "This research has a message for every parent: Do not smoke or breathe secondhand smoke while you are pregnant. Do not let your children breathe secondhand smoke after they are born."

Pinkerton added that the results from this study are further proof that secondhand smoke's effects on children are not minor, temporary or reversible. "This is the missed message about secondhand smoke and children," he said. "Parents need to understand that these effects will not go away. If children do not grow healthy lungs when they are supposed to, they will likely never recover. The process is not forgiving and the children are not going to be able to make up this loss later in life."

The 2006 Surgeon General's Report on secondhand smoke estimates that more than 126 million residents of the United States age 3 or older are exposed to secondhand smoke. Among children younger than 18 years of age, an estimated 22 percent are exposed to secondhand smoke in their home; estimates range from 11.7 percent in Utah to 34.2 percent in Kentucky.

To get the word out to parents about the dangers of secondhand smoke, two states (Arkansas and Louisiana) have made it illegal to smoke in a car with young passengers. In California, a similar bill, AB 379, is currently under consideration in the state Legislature.

The new UC Davis research is reported in today's issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The lead author is Cai-Yun Zhong, a former UC Davis graduate student now working at ArQule Biomedical Institute in Boston; the co-authors are Ya Mei Zhou, also a former UC Davis graduate student and now investigating breast cancer signaling pathways at Buck Research Institute in Novato, Calif.; Jesse Joad, a UC Davis pediatrician who studies children's lung development and cares for sick children in the UC Davis Health System; and Pinkerton, a UC Davis professor of pediatric medicine and director of the UC Davis Center for Health and the Environment.

The Pinkerton research group is one of the few groups in the nation capable of studying the effects of environmental contaminants on unborn and newborn animals. Their 15 years of studies on mice and rats have yielded greater understanding of how air pollution affects human lungs and health through experiments that attempt to reproduce true exposure conditions to environmental air pollutants.

The new study was done with rhesus macaque monkeys, in order to obtain the best possible understanding of what happens in people. Pregnant macaques were exposed to smoke levels equal to those that a pregnant woman would breathe if someone in her home or workplace smoked. Newborn macaques were exposed to secondhand smoke levels similar to those a human baby would breathe if it was cared for by a moderate-to-heavy smoker.

What the researchers found is that environmental tobacco smoke wreaks havoc in babies at a critical time in the development of lungs -- when millions of tiny cells called alveoli (pronounced al-VEE-o-lye) are being formed.

Alveoli are the place where oxygen passes from the lungs into the bloodstream. Human infants are born with only about one-fifth of the 300 million alveoli they will need as adults. They construct almost all those 300 million alveoli between birth and age 8.

Pinkerton's group had previously shown that rats exposed to secondhand smoke while in the womb and after birth developed hyper-reactive, or "ticklish," airways, which typically occurs in children and adults with asthma. The airways in those rodents remained hyper-reactive even when the secondhand smoke exposure stopped. Thus, this early exposure to environmental tobacco smoke created a long-lasting and perhaps permanent asthma-like condition.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed step-by-step how the alveolar cells' inner workings reacted to cigarette smoke. They found the normal orderly process of cell housecleaning had gone haywire.

In healthy people, cells live and die on a schedule. Programmed cell death, called apoptosis (a-pop-TOE-sis), is regulated by genes that increase or decrease various chemical reactions in the cell.

But in this study, when baby monkeys were exposed to cigarette smoke before and after birth, apoptosis went awry. Critical cellular controls regulating cell death turned off. Alveolar cells died twice as fast as they should have.

"If you are killing cells at a higher rate during a critical developmental stage, when they are supposed to be proliferating in order to create new alveoli, the lungs may never be able to recover," Pinkerton said.

Funding for the study, "Environmental Tobacco Smoke Suppresses Nuclear Factor Kappa B Signaling to Increase Apoptosis in Infant Monkey Lungs," was included in a five-year, $1.5 million research grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and $450,000 from taxes on sales of tobacco products in California.

[redskins4life234]

With smoking, I think it is a bit too far over the line. Should you charge parents for not putting sun block on their children? Where does it end? I think it is a bit ridiculous, but then again, to each his own I guess.

You guys are taking your comparisons way out of line. Inhaling any second hand smoke, espically at such a young age, is a hell lot more sickening[in health] and will affect the kid's future way more then getting a sun burn. Like the article said, one hour is one and a half packs, at 3 4 or 5, thats horrible, and espically at that age, its even worst. One hour in the sun, doesnt give you a better chance of skin cancer. Skin cancer is way less likely, then getting any lung problems from this.

[TheKurp]

You can not pass laws by passing your test! There are consequences and ramifications that go with laws. 1) They set precedence - precedence is referenced many times in courts. 2) You have written a "blank check" for the govt to deem something dangerous and then pass a law regarding. To answer your questions: 1) No and 2) No. Let us take those same questions and apply them to something else:

1) Does anyone believe it's a good thing for children 6 years old and under to be exposed to 5 hours of video games a day?

2) Does anyone believe it's a bad thing for adults to refrain from allowing any child 6 years old and under to play 5 hours of video games a day?

Now, substitute: twinkies, soda, toy guns.... for video games. Do you see the problem with allowing the govt to make decisions for you? And for whoever said that after a while, the ****ing will go away? Place a frog in a covered pan in cold water, place pan on stove, turn stove on to low. Allow stove to warm, gradually increasing water to a boil. Guess what, the frog never moves or coomplains, but he is no longer alive....

Are you even reading what I've written. I'm not here to debate anything but the topic of this thread. Get it?

[Popeman38]

Are you even reading what I've written. I'm not here to debate anything but the topic of this thread. Get it?

You are over-simplifying the issuie in the thread. Get it?

Edit- These are the issues. Once you cross the line with this law, there will be more.

[TheKurp]

You are over-simplifying the issuie in the thread. Get it?

No, the issue is protecting young children, those who are not in a position to protect themselves, from the effects of second-hand smoke. THAT is the issue.

[redskins4life234]

Another thing to this, you may have the right to smoke, but in no way, do you have the right to hurt your kids via second hand smoke and that is what this law is protecting. It is protecting your kids and their rights!

[rincewind]

You guys are taking your comparisons way out of line. Inhaling any second hand smoke, espically at such a young age, is a hell lot more sickening[in health] and will affect the kid's future way more then getting a sun burn. Like the article said, one hour is one and a half packs, at 3 4 or 5, thats horrible, and espically at that age, its even worst. One hour in the sun, doesnt give you a better chance of skin cancer. Skin cancer is way less likely, then getting any lung problems from this.

If this was true, there would be more cases of lung cancer than skin cancer.

[redskins4life234]

If this was true, there would be more cases of lung cancer than skin cancer.

Im not saying that noones gets it, what I was saying to that is, Put a kid in a car for an hour with people smoking, or a kid outside at the ebach for an hour with so sun screen. Which is more likely to hurt the kid. [excluding sunburns]

[TheKurp]

You are over-simplifying the issuie in the thread. Get it?

Edit- These are the issues. Once you cross the line with this law, there will be more.

Really? Try this on for size.

Smoking cigarettes is illegal for children under the age of 18.

Consuming alcohol is illegal for anyone under the age of 21.

It is against the law for a parent to give their child alcohol prior to the age of 21.

It is being proposed by California, and is already the law in two other states, for a parent to give a child what is the equivalent of a cigarette via second-hand smoke in a car.

Spare me your "the sky is falling" mantra. Deal with THIS issue.

[The Evil Genius]

BTW - the CA legislature approved the ban of handheld cellphones being used while driving (unless its an emergency).

Hands free devices will be allowed.

Not sure the exact date it will go into effect.

[Predicto]

BTW - the CA legislature approved the ban of handheld cellphones being used while driving (unless its an emergency).

Hands free devices will be allowed.

Not sure the exact date it will go into effect.

New York has had this law for a while now. Maybe other states too.

[Predicto]

If this was true, there would be more cases of lung cancer than skin cancer.

Well, skin cancer is usually not as serious as lung cancer (unless it is melanoma).

However, the point here is more specific to the increased problems when infants' developing lungs get exposed to smoke. According to that study quoted above, it is a bigger deal than ordinary secondhand smoke, and may lead to other problems than just cancer.

[rincewind]

Im not saying that noones gets it, what I was saying to that is, Put a kid in a car for an hour with people smoking, or a kid outside at the ebach for an hour with so sun screen. Which is more likely to hurt the kid. [excluding sunburns]

That's an illogical argument. In your life you will be trapped in a car with a smoker X amount of hours and you'll be out in the sun Y amount. I guarantee everybody in the world's Y is at least 1,000 times their X. So the two don't compare very well.

Plus, it can only take sitting in the sun one summer to get skin cancer. The same is not true for smoking - lung cancer.

[rincewind]

Well, skin cancer is usually not as serious as lung cancer (unless it is melanoma).

I know - I just thought it was an odd, cumbersome argument to make.

Also - skin cancer is one of the most deadly cancers if not caught early enough.

[redskins4life234]

That's an illogical argument. In your life you will be trapped in a car with a smoker X amount of hours and you'll be out in the sun Y amount. I guarantee everybody in the world's Y is at least 1,000 times their X. So the two don't compare very well.

Plus, it can only take sitting in the sun one summer to get skin cancer. The same is not true for smoking - lung cancer.

But most people use sun screen, while 5 yr olds have no defense again second hand smoke except not breathing, which you willf iant and end up breathing anyways or not being exposed to it. And at such a young aage like that, it affects them more then you or me, and still I would be more affected then you. I personally want to have healthy lungs at an older age. You have to see where im coming from too on my views. I am 15, still a kid, still growing. Still have a future ahead of me. I want to keep that future bright and healthy, not full of problwems because my parents smoked wiht me in the car. [ They don't smoke really though, thank God!] Really and at age 15, I feel I can stick up to my parents and say, Mom/Dad don't smoke around me if they really did. While a 4 year old would never say that to a parent, as one, they don't know the harm of it, and too, they just aren;t rebelious in that sort of way at that age. This alw is protecting the rights and health of young kids more then taking away the rights of adults.

[Predicto]

Also - skin cancer is one of the most deadly cancers if not caught early enough.

Yes - if it is melanoma. My uncle died from it (he was a surfer beach boy) and we learned all about it.

Most skin cancer is not melanoma and is not as serious. The doc will just snip a piece off you with the scissors and you are good to go. My dad had several cancers removed that way.

Lung cancer is not the same. It got my grandma and my wife's grandma, and neither of them had a chance.

[rincewind]

But most people use sun screen, while 5 yr olds have no defense again second hand smoke except not breathing, which you willf iant and end up breathing anyways or not being exposed to it. And at such a young aage like that, it affects them more then you or me, and still I would be more affected then you. I personally want to have healthy lungs at an older age. You have to see where im coming from too on my views. I am 15, still a kid, still growing. Still have a future ahead of me. I want to keep that future bright and healthy, not full of problwems because my parents smoked wiht me in the car. [ They don't smoke really though, thank God!] Really and at age 15, I feel I can stick up to my parents and say, Mom/Dad don't smoke around me if they really did. While a 4 year old would never say that to a parent, as one, they don't know the harm of it, and too, they just aren;t rebelious in that sort of way at that age. This alw is protecting the rights and health of young kids more then taking away the rights of adults.

Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I don't think people should smoke in cars with kids - I just don't think it should be illegal. Personally, I think people should be smart enough to realize that they're ****ing up thier kid. But, stupidity is not against the law.

[redskins4life234]

Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I don't think people should smoke in cars with kids - I just don't think it should be illegal. Personally, I think people should be smart enough to realize that they're ****ing up thier kid. But, stupidity is not against the law.

Your right. But people are dumb, and so the goverment is feelign what is their job to protect kids from dumb ones by taking away smoking in cars with kids. I don't see it as a big deal. Protecting people, espically those will no voice at all at their age, why is that bad?

[Thiebear]

Kids at 5 have no defense against the sun without a parents help either.

Both my parents smoked *I do not*... I have a 7/4 year old girls...

So whats the age its o.k.: 9? 10 makes it magically o.k. to be in the car for secondhand smoke?

If the windows are open and or airconditioner going how much smoke is getting to the child in an average car? They've done the studies not based on passive bar smoke but a vehicle right?

Being a state law your going to end up having to conform or move... It will be enforced only when a quota is needed to be met for money. As is the speed/red light camera's in D.C. are used.

[rincewind]

Yes - if it is melanoma. My uncle died from it (he was a surfer beach boy) and we learned all about it.

Most skin cancer is not melanoma and is not as serious. The doc will just snip a piece off you with the scissors and you are good to go. My dad had several cancers removed that way.

Lung cancer is not the same. It got my grandma and my wife's grandma, and neither of them had a chance.

Yeah, my mother-in-law seems to get skin cancer every other year. She has a place at the shore and barely ever wears any sunscreen. I understand what your saying about the types though - lung is bad no matter what, while skin can be pretty easy.

Sorry about your grandmothers. My mom is a survivor (she had colon - which is easy to beat early but VERY hard to beat once it's in the third stage), and we're about to lose a cousin (they've given him less than a week). He's 62 and has lukemia.

[Popeman38]

No, the issue is protecting young children, those who are not in a position to protect themselves, from the effects of second-hand smoke. THAT is the issue.

No, the issue is the GOVT passing laws that restrict your personal choices.

[Predicto]

Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I don't think people should smoke in cars with kids - I just don't think it should be illegal. Personally, I think people should be smart enough to realize that they're ****ing up thier kid. But, stupidity is not against the law.

Stupidity isn't, but hurting your kids can be against the law, depending on the circumstances.

[rincewind]

Your right. But people are dumb, and so the goverment is feelign what is their job to protect kids from dumb ones by taking away smoking in cars with kids. I don't see it as a big deal. Protecting people, espically those will no voice at all at their age, why is that bad?

It's bad because it's an infringement on a right. Like people have said 'What's next, telling us we can't feed our kids McDonald's?'