Banning Government Indoors – Step 1

The provincial government here is looking at making it illegal to smoke inside your car, if you happen to have kids inside the car.

Now, I don’t smoke, but sometimes even the government can get carried away with it’s initiatives. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said, “the government has no business inside the bedrooms of the nation.”

Trudeau was talking about proposed laws controlling how people have sex, which thankfully he and the rest of the government at the time were against.

But Trudeau had a solid point – the government doesn’t have a right to control how we do some things, when those things are in our own nesting grounds. Be it inside our bedrooms, our kitchens, our bathrooms, or even our cars.

Everyone knows smoking kills. Smoking is the leading cause of Cancer period – more so than genetic links, and even more so than other environmental factors. Smoking is an awfully addictive, dangerous, and dirty habit.

Because smoking is so wrong, those with children should quit smoking – for their own health and for the lives of those they are bringing into existence.

But quitting smoking isn’t easy. The tobacco companies have made it their mission to make a product which is so full of highly addictive drugs, that once you get hooked, it is almost impossible to stop. Most people require several attempts before finally kicking the habit for good.

Still, despite the dangerous nature of second hand smoke to young developing children, no government has a right to legislate what happens in a person’s own car – even if that means allowing people to smoke in a car with kids.

Good parents will know better than to smoke in close proximity to their kids. Great parents will attempt to quit smoking long before they become parents, so that by the time they have kids, they no longer are putting themselves and their newborns in danger.

If we allow governments to control what happens in personal occupant vehicles, what is next? Where will government controls end and our private personal lives begin? First comes rules for inside the car, then it can move inside our homes.

Then the government may in deed control the bedrooms of the nation – and that is wrong.