Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 30, 1993 TAG: 9311300366
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ellen Goodman
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Need somebody to stand up for a $1 a pack tax? I'm your gal. Looking for someone to criticize cigarette ads? You'll find me in the nonsmoking section.
Nevertheless ...
For all my sterling credentials as an advocate of clean indoor air, I get uncomfortable when smoking starts to be a criterion for child custody. When you can lose a kid if you can't shake the habit.
In the past few years, more than a dozen such cases have gone through family courts in at least 11 states. In most, of them,the child has had some sort of respiratory illness; andin nearly all, the nonsmoking parents won. Now the numbers are escalating.
Last month in Sacramento, Calif., a mother lost custody of her 8-year-old daughter, who has asthma. The girl was placed temporarily with a grandparent while the court decides on permanent custody between two warring parents.
With my anti-smoking cap on, I would have quite a lot to say to this mother - a 30-year-old nurse! - who is apparently puffing around her asthmatic child. If the girl's health is threatened, if the cigarette is a lethal weapon, there's reason to take the kid and run.
But these legal precedents have a tendency to drift into the nasty atmosphere of other divorce disputes. In nearby Contra Costa, for example, a mother has gone to court to make her ex-husband choose between his cigarettes and his visitation rights. The court will rule on whether he can smoke around his daughters. Neither of whom have respiratory problems.
You will not be surprised to learn that the parents in both cases were involved in long, rancorous fights before they took up the smoking cudgel. A family-court worker in Contra Costa says that, in the past year, smoking has suddenly come up in half a dozen cases. It's fair to ask whether the cigarette is another weapon of warring parents. It's fair to ask whether smoking should be the trump card in everyday wrangles over the kids.
Just about nine months ago, the Environmental Protection Agency released a study of the risks of secondhand smoke. Exposure to secondhand smoke causes 150,000 to 300,000 respiratory infections each year in children between infancy and 18 months. It affects about 20 percent of the 2 million to 5 million asthmatic children in the country.
We may only hear about these kids when they are involved in custody disputes. But the children of divorce don't have different respiratory systems from the children of marriage. If we award divorced kids a smoke-free home, then why not take all the children of smokers out of their dangerous environment? If so, where do we put them?
If health care becomes the pivotal issue in a custody fight, why stop at smoking? An evaluation of Mom and Pop should include a lead-paint check, a radon test, a nutritional balance sheet, a search for dangerous weapons and a knowledge of parental seat-belt habits. For that matter, if wealth is a clue to health, should the richer ex-spouse get the kids?
And what about mental health? Is smoking a better criterion for deciding custody than what we used to call emotional attachment? We're into some very smoky territory.
There have already been two other cases in which asthmatic children were removed to foster care. In one, a Tennessee court refused to return the children even though the mother had entered a program to quit smoking. Now one of the more ardent antismoking crusaders suggests that the next wave of cases will include grandparents who want to rescue kids from a smoky environment.
Children have been the natural allies of the antismoking campaigns. They want their parents to quit. They nag them to quit. The risks of secondhand smoke provides another motive. Children should be a nonsmoking zone. But threatening parents with the loss of their kids is not part of my 12-step program.
Should the smoker lose the kids to the nonsmoker? Not even I want to see that warning on the cigarette pack.
\ The Boston Globe
by CNB