City bill would ban smoking in cars carrying kids

Two Honolulu City Council members have introduced legislation that would ban cigarette smoking in motor vehicles carrying children under 18.

Bill 70, introduced Wednesday by Councilman Brandon Elefante and Council Chairman Ron Menor, would include electronic cigarettes in the ban.

“Secondhand smoke in a vehicle has been found to create dangerous air quality reaching 10 times the hazardous limit designated by the Environmental Protection Agency in both the front and the back seats of the vehicle,” Elefante said in a statement.

The bill is sure to generate debate between health advocates, who point to the ill effects of smoking and second-hand smoke, and those who say the measure amounts to over-regulation.

Hawaii County has had a similar ban in place since 2010 while Kauai County has prohibited smoking in a vehicle containing children under 13 since July 2016.

Proposals for a statewide ban have been unsuccessful. In the recently ended 2017 state Legislature, Senate Bill 261 was approved by the Senate but then failed to receive a committee hearing in the House.

Nationally, according to research by Elefante’s staff, eight states and the territory of Puerto Rico have statewide laws (with varying ages for the children) while counties and cities in five other states have similar laws.

Trish La Chica, policy and advocacy director for the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaii, a program of the Hawaii Public Health Institute, views the Honolulu bill as essential for protecting the health of young people. “Secondhand smoke, especially in confined spaces like vehicles, (is) even more toxic, especially for those who are more vulnerable such as kids and older adults,” La Chica said.

Opponents of bills that protect children from secondhand smoke may cry foul that it strips them of their right to do what they want in their cars. But La Chica said smoking by an adult in a vehicle where a child is a passenger places the child in the difficult position of asking the adult to stop.

“They’re not in a position to really leave the environment they’re in,” La Chica said. “We’re not saying people should not smoke in their cars. We’re only saying they should not do it when a child is present, whether it’s their child or someone else’s. We want to make sure that the child should be protected.”

Kahala Howser, executive director for the American Lung Association in Hawaii, said her organization will wholeheartedly endorse the Council bill.

But Michael Zehner, co-chairman of the Hawaii Smoker Alliance, said that in Hawaii it’s convenient for adults to open the windows and blow their cigarette smoke out of the car. “It gets quickly whisked away,” he said, adding that only “a heartless parent” would consider smoking in the presence of a child or whose children have asthma, allergies or breathing issues.

“They’re trying to make it one-size-fits-all and they’re not taking into account a parent who does the right thing by trying to punish everybody,” Zehner said.

The bill also should not include e-cigarettes because there is no definitive proof that they are hurting people, he said.

The bill will likely get its first airing at the Council’s next monthly meeting on Tuesday.

The last two smoking-related bills, passed by the Council in 2013, prohibit smoking of cigarettes in city parks and at or near city bus stops.