Truth be told, most anti-smoking laws have no place in a country that truly values freedom and individual responsibility, but then again American isn’t such a country and hasn’t been for generations. Across the country, states and local governments have fallen all over themselves in a mad rush to bar smoking from just about everywhere, save the lunar surface. These measures have ostensibly granted local law enforcement the authority to dictate how private firms manage their businesses. Most of these anti-smoking laws, banning smoking from places like private restaurants and bars have removed any semblance of adherence to a free market approach to such problems

The latest anti-smoking initiative comes from the states like California, Arkansas and Louisiana, which have decreed that foster parents cannot smoke in their homes or in their cars in the presence of a foster child. This move has been taken because of the obvious danger to a child’s health posed by second-hand smoke. For once, the anti-smoking crowd are 100% correct. While an adult can decide whether or not they want to be in the presence of a smoker, and hence banning smoking from restaurants that non-smokers choose to patronize is outrageous, a child has no such freedom. A parent or guardian has a responsibility to protect their children from harm. A child, because of their youth are especially susceptible to the dangers of smoking and those who smoke in the presence of a child, especially an infant, are committing child abuse.

It is quite fitting and proper for the state to mandate that adults should not smoke in the presence of a child, just as other forms of child abuse are illegal, so too should smoking be illegal. Privacy and Smokers Rights advocates complain that this is a threat to privacy and will empower the local police with Gestapo like authority to barge in to homes looking for smokers. While certainly, police should not be searching people’s homes arbitrarily, the simple fact that a practice occurs behind closed doors should not absolve a person from certain behaviors, when those behaviors threaten others will no recourse to protect themselves. No more than an adult would be freely allowed to pour boiling water on a child in the privacy of their home or rape a child in the privacy of their home, should they be allowed to slowly kill their children by smoking in their presence.

While most libertarians would agree with a policy of limiting government involvement in our daily lives, presumably most would also agree that government has a responsibility to protect citizens from having their rights infringed upon by others, hence the need for courts and law enforcement. Smoking in the presence of a defenseless child is an infringement upon that child’s rights to live a healthy life if they so choose and should fall under the duty of the state to protect those rights when parents and legal guardians fail to do so.

Link to Indy Star article