Jayne Dowle: Why smoking should be banned in cars

WHAT kind of selfish person would smoke in a car when a child is present, anyway?

We shouldn’t even have to hold a big debate over the new law which punishes adults for lighting up in a vehicle when under-18s are present.

You would think that in a modern and apparently civilised society, individuals would be capable of exercising enough self-control without having to think about it. Should they really need the threat of the law and the prospect of a £50 fine hanging over them?

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It would seem so. When the prospect of this new legislation was first mooted a couple of years ago, people were up in arms on the all sides of the smoking shelter.

There were those – and I suspect they live in a bubble somewhere – who could not believe that this could even be considered as a matter for the police to deal with.

There were those who saw it as an infringement of civil liberties, which it is technically, but one with justifiable reason.

And then there were those who are so dim that they did not even register it properly or take it seriously.

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These are the kind of people who also smoke in their own homes with all the windows and doors sealed shut and then complain that their children are suffering from asthma. These are also the kind of idiots who walk along the street with one hand on the pushchair handle, leaving the other hand free to puff away.

I’m sorry to sound blunt, but there is simply no reasoning with this latter category. Medical research suggests that 300,000 children in the UK see a doctor every year because of the effects of second-hand smoke – and this figure only represents the ones who actually present at the surgery or A&E. What are their parents and grandparents thinking? That their families are somehow immune to the well-publicised effects of passive smoking?

And then there are the people like me, the vast majority of the population, I would imagine. Perhaps we have smoked in the past and realised eventually just how detrimental to health, well-being and bank balance tobacco can be. We know how addictive the craving is, how hard it is to kick it in the teeth. We’ve done the mental maths on ourselves, come through with lungs which are slowly recovering to full strength, could probably still murder a fag some days, but we can look our children in the eyes and tell them never to start.

If you meet anyone who’s been through such a process, they will tell you the same thing. Choosing not to smoke, or choosing not in smoke in certain situations, basically taking control of the habit instead of letting it control you, must be done in your own head.

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It is one of the most personal decisions you can take. No public health campaign, no series of radio ads featuring the plaintive voices of children begging Daddy to give up, can get through to you unless you are ready to take the plunge and screw up the packet. All the publicly-funded “stop smoking” clinics in the world won’t help if you don’t actually want to stop. Nothing makes trying to give up worse than a hectoring voice in the ear.

However, I would argue that “not smoking” is entering a new phase, one which has been marked indelibly by the introduction of this £50 fine. It is still an intensely personal decision, but is one that is underpinned by a growing shift in public hearts and minds.

This is why you have to look beyond the slightly-hysterical argument which surrounds the car issue. It’s not about the fine as such, or the power of the police, who have indeed admitted that they will be exercising a “light touch” approach towards enforcing it.

As Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation told Radio 4’s Today programme, how can police officers give precious resources to this new legislation when they are already struggling to attend burglaries? No, what this law really represents is further evidence of the growing cultural shift to make smoking unacceptable in Great Britain.

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Look around next time you’re out and about. You’ll see pubs, restaurants and bars where it has been illegal to smoke since 2007.

When I was in London recently on a family day out, we had a drink outside a well-known pub chain and were even directed to the terrace specifically for non-smokers. The tobacco addicts were confined to a small concrete corner by the wall. In every hospital car-park, on every school playground and the surrounding area, you’ll see the signs saying that smoking is forbidden. In shopping malls you’ve no chance of lighting up. The same applies in bus stations, train stations and even town centres, where you’ll be fined if you drop a cigarette butt.

When those children we seek to protect grow up, lighting a cigarette might have become as quaint and old-fashioned as taking a pinch of snuff or applying a leech to a boil. And then we can say that smoking has finally become the antisocial habit we were always told it was.