Smoking ban for cars due October 2015

From October 2015 it will be illegal to smoke in cars with children present under the biggest crackdown on smoking from the Government since the introduction of the 2007 ban on smoking in public places.

The Department of Health (DoH) said the tighter regulations laid before Parliament to make private vehicles carrying under-18s smoke-free were formulated with the aim to “protect young people from the serious health harms of smoked tobacco”.

The new plans will result in a fixed fine of £50 being given to people who smoke, or those who fail to prevent others from lighting up within private vehicles also carrying children.

Early in the New Year there will be a vote on the subject, involving both MPs and peers. Following this, there will be a period of three weeks for them to thoroughly assess the proposals put forth by the Department of Health.

This appears to be a formality though following a majority approval by MPs earlier in the year. Back in February MPs voted 376 to 107 – a majority of 269 – in favour of the ban, first suggested by Labour as an amendment to the children and families bill. The majority vote even eclipsed that which resulted in the smoking ban from July 2007, forbidding smoking in areas such as pubs, restaurants and nightclubs.

Most of the country could be behind the ban according to a YouGov poll for the anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), which discovered that 77% of adults – including 64% of those who actually smoke – were behind the plans to make it illegal to light up in cars carrying anyone under the age of 18.

The legislation would criminalise smoking from parents, carers or other adults in a car where there is anyone present under 18. According to the British Lung Foundation, there are about 430,000 children that are exposed to second-hand smoke each week in a family car.

Dr Penny Woods, the charity’s chief executive, raved about the Government’s plans, saying she was “delighted” by the proposals.

She said: “We are now closer than ever to helping protect the hundreds of thousands of children exposed to dangerous concentrations of second-hand smoke in cars every week.”

ASH were also happy with the plans to ban smoking in cars with children, but said the legislation should go one step further and stretch to a blanket ban which would also comprise of adults in vehicles too.

ASH chief executive Deborah Arnott said: “We are delighted that the Government is to press ahead with regulations to prohibit smoking in cars containing children.

“As with the smoke-free public places law, this is a popular measure that will largely be self-enforcing. However, second-hand smoke is just as harmful to adults as children and it makes it more difficult to enforce if it only applies to some cars, not all. Seatbelt laws don’t just apply to children, why should smoke-free car laws?”

Drivers could be fined £10,000 if they allow smoking with a child present in the car

Drivers and passengers of cars in England both face being slapped with huge fines if they are caught smoking with children present.

In February of this year MPs voted in a majority for an amendment to the Children and Families Bill, for a ban on smoking in cars carrying children.

However, new regulations could result in drivers of the vehicle actually incurring a fine of over 10 times that of the maximum £800 charge for the person who is smoking (i.e. the passenger).

There are health campaigners who stress such a strict move will save thousands of lives, with children not being forced to inhale the dangerous, toxic chemicals contained in each cigarette.
Opposition to the proposed penalties argue it is ‘excessive and unnecessary’ and merely an example of the government ‘flexing its muscles’.

The idea for the smoking ban in cars was passed by a clear majority of MPs in February, resulting in ministers having to devise clear legislation on the matter.

The cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday led to a consultation leaking out with details of the regulations. In the small print contained information about what offenders can expect to be hit with, stating: ‘A person who does not comply with the law would be committing a criminal offence.’

For anyone caught either lighting up in a smoke free vehicle, or failing to prevent smoking in a smoke free vehicle, enforcement officers will be able to issue a £50 fixed penalty notice.

If this isn’t paid and the case ends up in court, the maximum fine could rise to £800 for anyone caught smoking in a car with a child inside and a ‘level 4’ fine of up to £10,000 for a driver failing to prevent somebody else from smoking.

For drivers wanting to avoid paying potentially thousands, they would need to be able to prove how they took ‘reasonable steps to cause the person smoking to stop smoking, or they did not and could not have reasonably known the person was smoking, or that there was some other reasonable ground for not complying with the duty’.

The Department of Health claims the fines have been created based on those already in place for anyone caught smoking in public places – an act made illegal in 2007.

Public Health Minister Jane Ellison said: “The only effective way to protect children from secondhand smoke is to prevent them breathing it in in the first place. Exposure to secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard, especially to children and a significant number of children say that they are exposed to secondhand smoke in private vehicles.”

Deputy PM Nick Clegg – a smoker himself – unsurprisingly opposed the plans as they went through parliament earlier in the year, saying that ‘as an old-fashioned liberal’ he believed that ‘laws and legislation are not always the solution’.

However, campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) want the banning on smoking in vehicles where children under the age of 18 are present put into action prior to the next parliament.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, said: “Cars are small tin boxes where concentrations of tobacco smoke can reach dangerous levels very quickly.

“As David Cameron himself has said, the time has come for it to be illegal to make children breathe in these toxic fumes. Laws stopping smoking in cars with children are popular with the public, with parliament and with children and we urge the Government to bring them into force before the next election.”

Many parents smoke inside the car and damage their child’s health

A new study that has been released online and due to appear in the December 2012 issue of ‘Pediatrics’ has revealed that parents will often carelessly expose their children to tobacco smoke in their cars. This is even happening when the parents are still adopting a ‘smoke-free’ policy inside the home.

In the study, researchers from MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) quizzed 795 parents who were smokers, regarding their car-smoking policy and behaviour. Specifically, investigators were trying to determine whether or not the parents actually left their children exposed to tobacco smoke inside the car.

The parents were interviewed upon leaving their child’s doctors’ office in one of 10 paediatric practices, spanning eight U.S. states. The results showed that 73% of parents acknowledged that there had been someone smoking inside their car within the previous three months.
There were 562 parents who had not bothered to adopt a ‘smoke-free’ policy for themselves or others inside the car, and almost half (48%) of this total admitted that they had smoked in the car when their child was present.

Many of the parents said they adhered to a strict no-smoking policy inside the home; however only 24% said that they also had a ‘strictly enforced’ smoke-free in their car.

In addition, some statistics attained from the interviews shows that there is definitely a lot more work to be done in regards to how paediatricians can play their part in encouraging parents to completely protect their children from cigarette smoke.

It was found that only approximately one-fifth of the parents claimed that the paediatric health care provider had bothered to ask them about their smoking status. Moreover, only 12% of parents reported that they have received advice to refrain from lighting-up inside their cars.
Emara Nabi-Burza, MBBS, MS, the study’s lead author, says those parents who smoke need to take more responsibility for protecting their children and recognise the huge negative impact that tobacco smoke can have on their child’s health.

Emara commented: “Workplaces, restaurants, homes and even bars are mostly smoke-free, but cars have been forgotten. Smoking in cars is not safe for motorists and non-smokers – especially children, who have no way to avoid tobacco smoke exposure in their parent’s car. Now that we know the magnitude of the problem, paediatricians and the public can act to help these children.”

Involuntary/secondhand smoking (SHS) such as the aforementioned example, is an incredibly understated subject that Medical Specialists believe the government and health authorities need to put more work into, in an attempt to reduce it. Babies and new-borns are a particularly major high-risk group when it comes to SHS. A mother who smokes during her pregnancy will leave the unborn baby with a decreased oxygen supply and the baby will have raised levels of carbon monoxide in their bloodstream.

Other problems that could therefore arise include the baby having a low birth weight, miscarriage, premature birth or sudden infant death syndrome; whereby babies of mothers who smoke are twice as likely to die from this compared to babies carried by a non-smoker. Children that are exposed to SHS, such as when their parents smoke in their cars, could be left with long-term suffering from persistent colds, ear infections, pneumonia, bronchitis, and severe asthma. SHS can severely impact lung growth in children and can then cause them to cough, wheeze, and suffer with breathlessness.

If you are a parent and this article has concerned you, it is not too late to make some positive changes to your life to improve the health of both you and your children. For example, never allow smoke into your house. If you, a friend or family member wants to smoke, go outside to do it. Explain this policy to your guests when they enter your home and do not put out any ashtrays around the house. Also do not allow smoke into your car. If you or a passenger wishes to smoke, stop at a place where you or they can smoke outside of the vehicle.

For anyone who does smoke though and wishes to stop for good, whether a parent or not, allow Medical Specialists to help you with hugely effective smoking cessation treatment. Champix is a prescription medication that works out from as little as just £75.00 per pack, an incredibly small price when it comes to your long-term health and the health of those around you. Champix mimics the effect of nicotine on the body, reducing the urge to smoke and relieving withdrawal symptoms. It can also decrease the enjoyment you experience of smoking if you are still smoking whilst on the treatment.