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What’s the difference between smoking and smoking?

Professor Steve Field is the chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

So one would imagine that Professor Field knows what he’s on about, when he talks of matters of health.

In today’s Guardian newspaper, Professor Field has said that parents who smoke in cars, in front of children, are committing a form of child abuse.

What? Wait!

Only parents who smoke in cars? Not people in cars who might not be the parents of children present?

I’m confused.

I agree with much of what Professor Field is saying here. I agree that parents need to take much more responsibility for the health and wellbeing of their children.

But what’s the difference – when children are present – between parents who smoke in cars and passengers who smoke in cars?

And also, what’s the difference between parents who smoke in cars and parents who smoke at home?

I’m not waging an all-out war on parents who are smokers, I’m just wondering why Professor Field appears to have tunnel vision that is focussed on smoking in cars and not parents who smoke at home?

As the country’s leading General Practitioner, Professor Field is in a position of public influence.

He seems to have been behind the recent policy shift, to stop using the word ‘obese’ and instead, to call people ‘fat’ – another change in policy direction I wholly agree with.

But I don’t understand why Professor Field’s campaign to get parents who smoke in cars classed as ‘child abusers’ is not extended to *people* who smoke in cars.

I also don’t understand why the ‘smoking in cars when children are around’ campaign is not rolled out to include ‘smoking in the home when children are around’.

Ah well, that’ll be why I’m not a professor and he is.

8 thoughts on “What’s the difference between smoking and smoking?”

  1. I don’t follow…

    Have you read this news on another newsite as well because I can’t see the emphasis on smoking in the car in the article you link out to. He says immediately after: “I suppose the same people also smoke at home in front of their children” so I can’t see where he’s suggesting that there is a difference? I just wonder if he mentions the car first because it’s such a confined environment?

  3. Right! In a car, one can roll down the windows and drive 60 mph but it’s hard to do same with a house or flat!

    At my work, the employees who smoke seem to be able to go outside at various intervals IN ADDITION to their coffee breaks to smoke! We are rewarding unhealthy lifestyles and punishing the healthy ones! Unfair is what that is!

    Now you’ve got me started!

  4. Hmm, I still don’t see that that’s his emphasis. He’s come out condemning parents that have been mollycoddled by the Nanny State to the point that they either unable to adequately care for their kids because they don’t know how or they simply do not care. It’s the media that has honed in on the car comment – one of many.

  5. It does seem to me that the majority of smokers have a complete disregard for the health of those around them, never mind their own.

    My own childhood experiences taught me that being in a car with a smoker is worse than at home, because at home you can at least retire to your bedroom, but in a car you are captive. Opening a window isn’t an option when it’s a bit chilly outside and the smoking/driving parent insists that the window is kept completely shut.

  6. I agree with S. Le, the heavy smokers at our place are out at the end of the car park having a cig every time I walk past the window. They go out for about ten minutes at a time so at, say ten cigs a day, that’s 100 minutes. 500 minutes a week and with 4 weeks holiday taken into account plus a week for assorted ailments, that’s 500 minutes a week times 46 weeks. 23000 minutes a year, or 47 work days. I would like to be able to take my 47 work days that I haven’t spent huddled at the end of the car park under a golf unbrella trying to light up in a force 8 gale as holiday. However the MD would tell me to sod right off. Unfair? Oh yes.

  7. I’m a smoker. I wish I wasn’t.

    I must be in the minority rather than Masher’s majority.

    I’ve got two kids. I would never smoke in the car. We’ve lived in our current house for ten years, and I’ve never had a fag inside the house.

    If I’m with non smokers, and want to smoke, I will move away so they are not subjected to my smoke.

    The work thing I can understand. It must be very frustrating to see people effectively getting extra time off just be because they’re stupid enough to smoke.

    I don’t really see that it needs to be pointed out that if you are stupid enough to smoke that you don’t smoke around your children, wherever it is.

  8. I agree with the gripes about people smoking at work and getting extra time ‘off’ for their fag breaks. When The Designer goes for a cigarette, he sometimes messages me: “Stroll?” As a result of smoking laws, smokers obviously have to leave the building. Our company has also declared that employees are not allowed to huddle outside the building while they puff away because it doesn’t a good impression make! So they have to move away from the building and The Designer tends to walk to the park around the corner and back again, inviting me to walk with him.

    When I do go, which I don’t always, I daren’t tell my manager that I’m popping out for a quick walk around the block (even though many companies claim that their staff are encouraged to step away from the computer regularly – pah, as if that really happens!). If I said: “[Boss], I’m just going for a walk” it would be like I was taking the piss somehow. So I pretend I’m nipping up to see one of the directors, or going to the loo. I then spend the entire walk feeling agitated about the time! So, his cigarette break is allowed and not frowned upon and he is relaxed by it, whereas the same amount of time spent by me doing the same thing except without the cigarette is frowned upon and I feel more stressed at the end of it!! And I don’t even join him every day, let alone multiple breaks in a day!

    I try to console myself with this: I might not get this ‘extra time off now’ but I’ll get it at the end of my life, when I live longer… in theory anyway…

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