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No way
Smoking is unhealthy, as is second-hand smoke. But is it child abuse? I don't think so. For a couple of reasons...
1) Damage from cigarette smoke is reversable - when a person is away from the smoke, the damage reverses and a person returns to a completely healthy state. Breathing smoke does not create life-long problems, emotional or physical.
2) Your odds of being injured in a car accident are higher than your odds of getting cancer from second-hand smoke if you are not a smoker. Therefore, if smoking in the car is child abuse, so is putting your children in the car in the first place.
That's not to say it isn't a BAD IDEA. But the anti-smoking movement is so eager to criminalize people for behavior that is less dangerous than activities many of us participate in each and every day, that their efforts becoming abusive and intrusive. In the end, we must rely on personal responsibility and simply understand that some people will always make unhealthy choices.
Intentionally harming a child is abuse. Forcing your child to smoke cigarettes could be abuse. Subjecting a child to the same living conditions that you subject yourself to every day is hardly comparable, especially when some smokers live to be 100 years old with no related problems.
I'll say it again, though. Its a BAD IDEA.
But we shouldn't turn smokers into criminals because we think we know what is best for THEIR children.
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