From the editor’s desk: The right kind of priority?
By Pat Caldwell
Sunday, April 26, 2009 2:05 PM PDT
In terms of messed up priorities, the “no smoking in cars with children” ban approved in the Oregon House of Representatives earlier this month should go right to the top of the list.
The legislation outlines a policy where anyone caught smoking with a child in a car will face a fine. Minors are children younger than 17.
The House bill — House Bill No. 2385 — seems to fit all of the attributes of a truly “feel-good” piece of legislation.
Everyone knows smoking is unhealthy. It is also unhealthy to those nearby, the so-called second-hand smoke.
Yet, war is unhealthy too. So is driving while drunk. Running a chain saw the wrong way can be potentially unhealthy was well. So can driving in a snowstorm. The list is endless.
The point is, there are many, many things in life that are unhealthy.
Even breathing the air, at least in some places, is unhealthy.
Yet, we can’t pass a law to make the air be healthier. It would be hard to enforce.
Neither can we outlaw war. Or chain saws.
I’m not a smoker. But I can see if I was one how I would begin to feel, well, shall we say, discriminated against. That’s right. I said it.
I want to shower kudos on the elected leaders of our state that decided I needed to be protected from second-hand smoke by creating a mandate that, potentially, forces police to focus on smokers. Let’s conveniently forget that police in this state already have more than enough to do. Let’s even forget, for a moment that smoking is a personal choice, and anyone who takes it up is rolling the dice in terms of health.
The question should be: Is this law for real?
Real enough that it is probably going to be on the books in Oregon.
Yet, the priority issue resonates. The state is in a fiscal meltdown of historical proportions; the unemployment rate is climbing. There should be a clear-the-decks mentality by lawmakers to find a solution immediately.
Instead, we see bills about smoking in cars and concepts like the effort to close armories across the state.
If the Legislature ever made sense before (which is an open question) it certainly seems lost in la-la land now.
None of this, by the way, negates the negative connotations to smoking. Let’s face it, smoking isn’t good for you and is certainly not a good thing to do around children.
And, as some critics charge, perhaps the legislation sends the right kind of message, a signal that smoking around your children is a form of child abuse. Children, after all, are too young to consent and have no idea about the long-term impacts on health from cigarettes.
I can buy those assertions, up to a point. My issue is, and has been, that in terms of priorities, spending time on an anti-smoking law right now in our collective history is misguided.
We face a number of challenges in our state, and while smoking should not be dismissed as a legitimate health concern, it falls short in the worry index compared to something like massive unemployment.
And there is always the uncomfortable sense that passing a law similar to the anti-smoking mandate feels and seems like a clear invasion of privacy. To smoke or not to smoke is a personal choice. Whether that act harms those nearby — parents, children and dogs — is a legitimate issue to ponder, but should our police spend time chasing down smokers in a car?
Maybe. Either way, though, the law could be part of our judicial system from now on.
Whether it is the right kind of priority now, though, is the real question, and, so far, no one has really been able to answer why this issue pushes aside problems like the budget deficit and unemployment.
Pat Caldwell is the editor of the Argus Observer. He can be contacted at PatC@argusobserver.com
