Want to protect children from dangerous or potentially dangerous chemicals? For starters, keep them away from traffic emissions. That means no living in the city, especially in high-traffic areas.
This is a self-evident point that the evangelists of the “de-normalization” brigade will never be tempted to consider, at least out loud. As New York City legislators ponder whether to ban smoking in cars with children inside, no one will draw attention to the obvious point that the only really effective way for kids to avoid inhaling air containing potentially cancer-causing chemicals would be to stay away from cars altogether. Or, to put it another way, a really good solution to the problem would be to ban … New York itself, and the various human activities that create noxious emissions that are inevitably inhaled by everyone, for an entire lifetime.
If the issue is cars and carcinogens, banning the presence of children in cars at certain times and in areas where there are traffic jams would probably do much more to protect young lungs than a car smoking ban. Obviously such a ban is impracticable, of course — but without it, children are inevitably exposed to a high number of carcinogens and poisonous chemicals.
So why the shrill call for a car smoking ban?
As one of the antismoking crusaders admits in a candid moment in this article, the core objective is to “denormalize” smoking. That children are demonstrably not protected from the chemical by-products of combustion in the first place as they are driven around New York in a car is a fact best ignored when the real deal is to misuse the idea of child protection in order to further a larger political agenda. And to do it by persecuting a targeted group of city residents and taxpayers.
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