Zoe Williams writes:
I mean, really – who wouldn't choose the
interests of a child, in a car, over those of a smoker, wishing to smoke while
driving? Children are cute, while smokers are grey, stupid people who smell of
70s pubs.
It's a child protection issue, not a civil liberties issue – the rights of those who don't have a choice should come before those who are free to make idiotic choices at any time.
This week's free vote in the Commons – 376 MPs voting for a ban on smoking in cars, 107 against – underlined this: right-thinking people protect children.
In reality, this is not about child protection or civil liberties.
It's dressed up as a clash between those two titanic, so often oppositional, principles but anybody with a passionate – or even moderate – interest in either would have much more pressing concerns.
In perspective: secondhand smoke is implicated in one in five cases of sudden infant death.
Since smoke is more intense in a small, enclosed space, it is logical to assume that babies are more endangered by smoking in cars than by smoking elsewhere.
However, the smoking figures are almost always in constellation with other factors – factors surrounding or inherent to the child, from poor housing to low birth weight.
Birth weight is of course related to smoking in pregnancy, but again other factors, such as maternal education, age and class, have an impact.
A study in Ohio found mould spores in the lungs of sudden infant death victims; and midwives regularly say that mould is dangerous.
Kia Stone, a young mother profiled in the Guardian's Breadline Britain series 18 months ago, lost her daughter shortly afterwards.
A large mushroom was still growing out of the damp plaster in the bedroom when she got home from the autopsy.
Nobody even collects figures for mould as a risk factor – separate from damp and leaks.
Bedrooms that are too hot are also a factor, as is frequent house moving, and living in overcrowded conditions, B&Bs or hostel accommodation.
The connection isn't made – presumably through sheer lack of interest – that buildings in which people can't control the heating are often too hot or too cold.
Since the connection between sleeping position and sudden infant death was made in the 90s, very little has been said that is radical, because everything left to say concerns problems considered to be "intractable" – which is shorthand for "related to poverty".
We can't blame the coalition for that attitude, which has obtained for years – but skyrocketing numbers living in squalid B&Bs, or families moved repeatedly by councils and slung into flats a hundred odd miles away, in anticipation of the housing benefit cap?
These are all prices the government is prepared to pay, indeed pays enthusiastically.
Secondhand smoke is also blamed for ear infections, meningitis, asthma and eczema.
Malnutrition, for comparison, can cause all these things and pretty much everything else, indirectly, by putting children under constant physical (never mind mental) stress.
Indeed, food poverty in this country, according to David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool, has "all the signs of a public health emergency", with hospital admissions as a result of malnutrition almost doubling in the past four years.
Where are the Conservative MPs tweeting their humble calls for advice about that?
Almost all the Tories so fervently against smoking in cars are simultaneously pretty sanguine about foodbanks. Six weeks ago nearly 300 MPs voted against a motion calling on the government to reduce dependency on emergency food aid.
It is difficult to observe, without the option of yelling and swearing, how disingenuous this is, how slimy and mawkish for a government happy to live with the idea of people living in squalor, in fuel poverty, going hungry, suddenly to find itself unable to bear the idea of a child in a smoky car.
But even those who care about smoke and poverty – let's call them, for brevity, the opposition – need to be more careful before they rush into this territory.
The extent of in-car, child-centric smoking is unknown. Its impact is unknown, there being no realistic way of determining whether a child got a particular condition from a house or a car.
This is the definitive modern non-issue, the phenomenon that sounds so bad we needn't trouble ourselves with how widespread it is.
It stamps into public lore an image that so fixates conservative opinion – that of the negligent parent, the one who might profess to care as much about their children as you or I, but is just waiting for society's back to be turned before smoking all over them.
Who makes the best parent?
The middle class, of course: in the feedback loop of the bourgeoisie, their behaviour (breastfeeding, long maternity leave and well-planned paternity leave) begets better bonding, leads them to care more, which leads to even better behaviour.
Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Middle class people never smoke all over their children in enclosed spaces – in the rather circular logic that comes about, once "middle class" is synonymous with "responsible", smoking at all makes you no longer authentically middle class.
This is a narrative that runs in a straight line from the fascination with parenting classes (often prescribed for parents against whom there is no case but poverty – as if failing to be rich enough were in itself proof of inadequacy in this area) to the dark, usually – but not always – tacit suggestion that some people only have children in the first place for the child benefit.
Progressive politicians must take it as a principle that parents love their children with the same intensity regardless of income bracket, and they must make this principle the foundation of their political activity.
They are trapped time and again, by the apparently innocuous language of risk management, into positions that, designed to demonise behaviour, actually demonise a class.
It's a child protection issue, not a civil liberties issue – the rights of those who don't have a choice should come before those who are free to make idiotic choices at any time.
This week's free vote in the Commons – 376 MPs voting for a ban on smoking in cars, 107 against – underlined this: right-thinking people protect children.
In reality, this is not about child protection or civil liberties.
It's dressed up as a clash between those two titanic, so often oppositional, principles but anybody with a passionate – or even moderate – interest in either would have much more pressing concerns.
In perspective: secondhand smoke is implicated in one in five cases of sudden infant death.
Since smoke is more intense in a small, enclosed space, it is logical to assume that babies are more endangered by smoking in cars than by smoking elsewhere.
However, the smoking figures are almost always in constellation with other factors – factors surrounding or inherent to the child, from poor housing to low birth weight.
Birth weight is of course related to smoking in pregnancy, but again other factors, such as maternal education, age and class, have an impact.
A study in Ohio found mould spores in the lungs of sudden infant death victims; and midwives regularly say that mould is dangerous.
Kia Stone, a young mother profiled in the Guardian's Breadline Britain series 18 months ago, lost her daughter shortly afterwards.
A large mushroom was still growing out of the damp plaster in the bedroom when she got home from the autopsy.
Nobody even collects figures for mould as a risk factor – separate from damp and leaks.
Bedrooms that are too hot are also a factor, as is frequent house moving, and living in overcrowded conditions, B&Bs or hostel accommodation.
The connection isn't made – presumably through sheer lack of interest – that buildings in which people can't control the heating are often too hot or too cold.
Since the connection between sleeping position and sudden infant death was made in the 90s, very little has been said that is radical, because everything left to say concerns problems considered to be "intractable" – which is shorthand for "related to poverty".
We can't blame the coalition for that attitude, which has obtained for years – but skyrocketing numbers living in squalid B&Bs, or families moved repeatedly by councils and slung into flats a hundred odd miles away, in anticipation of the housing benefit cap?
These are all prices the government is prepared to pay, indeed pays enthusiastically.
Secondhand smoke is also blamed for ear infections, meningitis, asthma and eczema.
Malnutrition, for comparison, can cause all these things and pretty much everything else, indirectly, by putting children under constant physical (never mind mental) stress.
Indeed, food poverty in this country, according to David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool, has "all the signs of a public health emergency", with hospital admissions as a result of malnutrition almost doubling in the past four years.
Where are the Conservative MPs tweeting their humble calls for advice about that?
Almost all the Tories so fervently against smoking in cars are simultaneously pretty sanguine about foodbanks. Six weeks ago nearly 300 MPs voted against a motion calling on the government to reduce dependency on emergency food aid.
It is difficult to observe, without the option of yelling and swearing, how disingenuous this is, how slimy and mawkish for a government happy to live with the idea of people living in squalor, in fuel poverty, going hungry, suddenly to find itself unable to bear the idea of a child in a smoky car.
But even those who care about smoke and poverty – let's call them, for brevity, the opposition – need to be more careful before they rush into this territory.
The extent of in-car, child-centric smoking is unknown. Its impact is unknown, there being no realistic way of determining whether a child got a particular condition from a house or a car.
This is the definitive modern non-issue, the phenomenon that sounds so bad we needn't trouble ourselves with how widespread it is.
It stamps into public lore an image that so fixates conservative opinion – that of the negligent parent, the one who might profess to care as much about their children as you or I, but is just waiting for society's back to be turned before smoking all over them.
Who makes the best parent?
The middle class, of course: in the feedback loop of the bourgeoisie, their behaviour (breastfeeding, long maternity leave and well-planned paternity leave) begets better bonding, leads them to care more, which leads to even better behaviour.
Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Middle class people never smoke all over their children in enclosed spaces – in the rather circular logic that comes about, once "middle class" is synonymous with "responsible", smoking at all makes you no longer authentically middle class.
This is a narrative that runs in a straight line from the fascination with parenting classes (often prescribed for parents against whom there is no case but poverty – as if failing to be rich enough were in itself proof of inadequacy in this area) to the dark, usually – but not always – tacit suggestion that some people only have children in the first place for the child benefit.
Progressive politicians must take it as a principle that parents love their children with the same intensity regardless of income bracket, and they must make this principle the foundation of their political activity.
They are trapped time and again, by the apparently innocuous language of risk management, into positions that, designed to demonise behaviour, actually demonise a class.
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