We’ve all seen it on our roads or on our way to drop a child off at school – addicts in school parking lots with young children in their vehicle who think their right to a puff supersedes the health of the children they are transporting.

While smoking is a tough addiction to kick, lighting up in one’s car in the presence of children is simply criminal. The bleeding hearts in our community who would argue that smoking in the car with your kid present involves a lack of education on the part of the parent need to pull their heads out of the sand. We are constantly bombarded with information about the harmful effects of second-hand smoke. To say parents who expose their children, especially those confined to the back seat of a vehicle, don’t know any better, is asinine. If that is the case, proof of an IQ along with age of majority ought to be required when purchasing tobacco.

Those who use the common refrain about the inability to legislate stupidity are missing the point altogether. We have a responsibility to protect those most vulnerable in our society to the best of our ability, and when parental instincts are not strong enough to achieve that, the heavy-handedness of the law is required.

Parents or care providers who cannot hold off on their addiction long enough to ensure their children are out of harm’s way ought to be slapped with an idiot fine.

There’ll be no mistaking the message when it directly hits their pocketbook.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, when asked whether he would support the smoking ban, stated that he is going to remain neutral on the issue and hear what Ontarians have to say.

Politicians like McGuinty afraid of infringing on people’s rights by passing such legislation need to be shaken out of complacency. At no time are our laws more salient then when they enforce the rights of those unable to protect themselves.

T.d.V.