Law limits smoking in a car with kids
The law would be enforced
as a secondary action.
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
SALT LAKE CITY — Puffing on a cigarette in a car while a young child is along for the ride may get snuffed out by the Utah Legislature next year.
The House Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill last week that would make it an infraction to smoke in a car if a child 5 years old or younger is strapped in, or is required to be strapped in, a car seat.
The bill, which passed in the Senate in the 2007 session but stalled in the House, isn’t “anti-smokers” but rather “pro-children’s health,” said its sponsor, Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City.
“They [children] are essentially captives in a very small space with deadly smoke,” he said.
The law would only be enforced as a secondary action, meaning a person couldn’t be pulled over solely for smoking. The fine for violations would be up to $45, unless a person enrolls in a smoking-cessation course, McCoy said.
Michael Siler, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society in Utah and chairman of the Utah Cancer Action Network, said the U.S. Surgeon General has “really left no question that secondhand smoke is a dangerous poison.”
Greater risk
Children who inhale it are at increased risk for complications ranging from sudden infant death syndrome to respiratory infections, severe asthma and delayed lung development, he said.
Banning smoking in cars, Siler said, “is a way to protect the private rights of children.”
But some committee members worry that such a law would infringe on the rights of everyone else.
“What a slippery slope we are starting down when we start mandating behavior in private places,” said Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem. Rather than the state regulating smoking in cars, “we need to get back to personal responsibility.”