Can Smokers Really Risk Losing Their Children?

Lets be honest over the recent years it’s not been the best time to be a smoker. From being told that you cannot smoke in your own car, light up in a restaurant/pub or just the general fact of having to look at disturbing images of diseased lungs, gangrened feet or cancerous tumours every time you want to buy a packet of cigarettes smokers are being targeted all the time. But is the following taking it a little too far?

A sheriff in Scotland has put into question a mother’s parental aptitude on the basis of her cigarette habit. The case has been referred to Ayr Sheriff court to the Children’s Panel and if this woman is found to be guilty of breaching the Children Scotland Act 1995 she could face losing her three children.

It has been reported that social workers said that the children’s clothes smelled of cigarettes.

Under the law if the children’s health and development are impaired due to improper parental care then at the very least compulsory supervision will be obligatory.

An MP, Brain Donohoe, said “I hope there is a reality check when it comes before the panel and the wider picture’s taken into account...Not just the fact this woman likes a cigarette — but is she a loving mother?”

While another MP, Jackson Carlaw said the ruling ran the risk of getting “ludicrously overboard”.

I agree and am in full support of the public and indoor smoking ban but I too feel this case has the potential to get out of hand. Ok so parents should not smoke in front of their kids, in fact they shouldn’t even smoke in another room that the child has access to as research has shown that it can linger in the air for hours at a time, however few would argue that the best place for a child is well, with its parents...within reason. All because a parent smokes it doesn’t mean that they love a child any less than a non smoker.

So what do you think? Is the removal of a child from their home a necessity in order to protect them from the dangers of the smoke or should more be done to educate and teach the parent as to the dangers they are putting their child in?

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Story Source: www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4980962/Parents-warned-they-could-face-court-for-lighting-up-at-home-in-front-of-kids.html