‘Roken bij kinderen strafbaar’
Het was niet de vraag óf, maar de vraag wanneer het zou komen: rokende ouders uit de ouderlijke macht ontzetten.
In de staat Washington is er een campagne begonnen die een eerste stap zet in die richting. Deze beweging van anti-rokers streeft ernaar om wetgeving in te voeren waarin het roken in de buurt van kinderen behandeld wordt als kindermishandeling. De beweging gaat er vanuit dat over niet al te lange tijd het roken in huis, als er kinderen zijn, wordt verboden. Daarmee zou het gelijk worden gesteld aan een misdaad en zou de overheid het recht krijgen kinderen weg te halen bij hun rokende ouders.
Dr. Michael Siegel haalt op zijn blog hard uit tegen dit initiatief: het middel is erger dan de kwaal.
However, there is another anti-smoking movement brewing behind the scenes, with the potential to reach much further into people’s private lives.
The movement is to make smoking around kids a form of child abuse. The crime would include smoking while you are pregnant, smoking around kids inside your home and smoking inside a vehicle with kids inside.
KATU News research shows a majority of people think it is about time, but it is politically difficult to pull off with worries about big brother.
Dr. Chris Covert-Bowlds is a member of the informal, unorganized and quiet movement toward making it a criminal act to smoke around kids.
The physician is the father of Washington’s new sweeping anti-smoking law for public places. He believes protecting children from smoking parents is next.
Doctor pushes to make smoking an act of child abuse
And removing children from their parents who smoke in the home would benefit these kids exactly how?
Frankly, this is one of the most disturbing things I have seen occur in the anti-smoking movement in a long time. Equating smoking around children with child abuse would be the most devastating and damaging thing that could possibly be done to these children – far worse than the exposure to the secondhand smoke itself.
It’s one thing to be at an increased risk of developing an upper respiratory infection, middle ear infection, or asthma, but quite another to be seized from the custody of your loving parents.
Classifying smoking around kids as a form of child abuse would open the door to placing these children under the scrutiny of child protection services, and ultimately, to removing them from the custody of their parent or parents who smoke in their presence.
And that would be a complete disaster; it would be a true tragedy for these children. I can’t think of anything that could possibly be worse for the health and welfare of these kids.
