Nanny-staters, busybodies, and all the It Takes a Village brethren are doubtless giddy that the Bangor ME city council has passed an ordinance forbidding smoking in your own car if children are passengers.

I won’t mention what an effrontery to property rights this measure is. I won’t mention the drain on police resources that will ensue, if there’s a serious enforcement effort. I will mention that parents and guardians sometimes don’t make the best choices regarding their offspring; I’ll also say that the government on whatever level should just butt out.

If my plans ever include travel to Maine, I’ll skip Bangor and whatever it has to offer. I will say their paper has a good website, and of all the comments on the article, I liked this one:

Reading all the comments, so far, I haven’t seen anyone wonder what will happen the first time a motorist pulls over to the side of the road, takes his child and childseat out of the car, set it on the side of the road so the motorist can get back in the car and have a smoke, gee I hope it isn’t raining. Dumb ordinance passed by dumb people oh, but it’s all for the children so that makes it ok. If you people that are all for this don’t mind that your government has no problem telling you what you can do in your private property, will they have to knock before they come into your house to check for smoking around your kids?

A good observation. I always held out hope for local-level government; Bangor has unfortunately decided to join the “Year of the Chickenshit” as an early adopter.

-k-

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