You Might As Well Light Up, Kids!

Explaining her support for a ban on smoking in cars carrying small children, part of a bill the California Senate approved on Monday, state Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) claimed "children are effectively smoking a pack and a half a day for every hour they are exposed to smoke in a car." So if a 6-year-old travels a half-hour each way to and from school, during which time his mother smokes a total of, say, half a dozen cigarettes, he might as well be smoking a pack and a half? He'd be better off smoking a whole pack by himself than he is riding in a car with someone else who is smoking? This sort of nonsense, rather than emphasizing the hazards of secondhand smoke, implies that the risks of a pack-a-day cigarette habit are barely worth worrying about.

[via The Rest of the Story]