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Columns

Posted by: Brittany_Larmand on 03/03/2009 12:44 PM
Updated by: furlong on 03/03/2009 12:44 PM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM

New law forces butting out while on the road with children

Drivers who transport children will have to pull over to puff or face penalties under a newly passed law.

By Brittany Larmand
theclaw.ca

Megan Palmer, a 21-year-old single mother and smoker, is being forced to adjust her lifestyle - as well as break bad habits - for her three-year-old daughter.

An amendment to the Smoke-Free Ontario Act which went into effect Jan. 21 during National Non-Smoking Week in Canada; on the week’s focal point: Weedless Wednesday states: “No person shall smoke tobacco or have lighted tobacco while another person who is less than 16 years old is present.”

“Being a young mother I have sacrificed a lot of opportunities,” Palmer explained. “Most of my friends are out partying, drinking and smoking most Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

“Having already given that much up I hadn’t thought about giving up smoking in my own car while running errands or dropping my daughter off at daycare, it just saves time to not have plan my day around when I am going to have a smoke,” Palmer added.

Palmer said she began smoking at the age of 16 but quit a couple years later while she was pregnant. She started smoking again after giving birth and in a typical day Palmer went through about a half a pack, four or five of which she would smoke in her vehicle. Since the law has been imposed she still smokes about a half a pack a day but has completely cut out smoking in her vehicle.

Palmer believes this new law will not only benefit her daughter’s life but hers as well; she hopes that by breaking the habit of smoking every time she is in her car, it will bring her one step closer, finally, to quitting permanently.

Smokers who light up in their vehicles while young passengers are inside are being forced to butt-out or pay a fine as high as $150. Public health officials have no jurisdiction over this provision, which can only be enforced by the police. There will be no roadside stops to put this new law into effect but it will be enforced just as every other law is said North Bay Police community spokesperson Yvan Montcalm.

“I think if an officer happens to come upon it, it will be up to that individual officer the kind of discretion he or she wishes to use, whether to enforce the law or give a warning or whether they deal with it,” Montcalm explained.

Banning smoking in vehicles with young passengers was not the first step the provincial legislation has taken to create a smoke-free Ontario. Smoking bans are already in effect for workplace vehicles including taxis, delivery trucks and regular company vehicles.

“Less exposure our kids have to smoking gives us more hope that they will not make the same mistake and start smoking as we did,” Palmer said, adding she would be heartbroken if her example led her daughter to become a smoker when she is grown.