WV Smoking in cars update
Ban on smoking in cars with kids passes Senate
Sponsor wants to make point to parents
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February 22, 2007
By Phil Kabler, Staff writer?
A bill that its lead sponsor says is intended to encourage parents to think twice before they expose their children to secondhand cigarette smoke passed the Senate Wednesday on a 23-9 vote.
“The intent of the legislation is for parents to be cognizant of the effects of smoking in front of their children,” Senate Health and Human Resources Chairman Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, said of the bill (SB219) that would make it illegal to smoke in cars when children under age 14 are present.
He conceded that as currently written, the bill is more about sending a message to smokers about the dangers of secondhand smoke than it is about punishing violators.
The bill carries fines of as little as $10 for violations, and police officers could enforce the law only if they had stopped the vehicle for some other traffic violation.
On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, praised Prezioso’s efforts.
“As Health and Human Resources chairman, he sees the enormous amount of money expended in the state because of the effects of smoking,” Kessler said.
Prezioso said afterward that the state-managed Medicaid program spends about $230 million a year on treatment of cancer, heart disease and other tobacco-related illnesses, and that some estimates put the total financial burden of tobacco use in West Virginia at more than $900 million a year.
Nine senators voted against the measure, including seven of the Senate’s 11 Republicans — Sens. Clark Barnes, Donna Boley, Karen Facemyer, Jesse Guills, Mike Hall, Andy McKenzie, and Dave Sypolt — along with Democrats John Pat Fanning, and Shirley Love. Sens. Bill Sharpe and Vic Sprouse were absent Wednesday.
Guills, R-Greenbrier, said he had concerns about how far the state can go to punish parents and guardians for actions the state deems irresponsible.
“I wish parents wouldn’t smoke in front of their children. I wish they’d properly dress their children before they leave on the school bus each morning. I wish they’d properly feed their children,” he said.
The bill goes to the House, where Prezioso said he hopes the House Health and Human Resources Committee will take it up shortly.
In a related matter Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee advanced a Manchin administration bill (SB185) that would permit the sale of rights to the state’s share of payments from the 1998 settlement of a multi-state lawsuit against major cigarette manufacturers.
Under the legislation, the state would be authorized to sell bonds against the next 30 years of tobacco settlement payments. The payments currently have been more than $50 million a year, but the amounts are expected to decrease over time as cigarette sales — and the major manufacturers’ market shares — decrease.
As amended Wednesday, the bond sale would have to raise at least $750 million — up from $700 million in the original bill — for the sale to proceed.
“We feel, and the governor’s office folks feel there’s going to be in excess of $800 million,” Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, said. “If it would dip below $750 million, I have reservations if we should allow the asset to be sold.”
The funds would go to help pay down the massive, $4 billion-plus unfunded liability in state teacher pension funds.
Bill would ban smoking in cars with kids
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2/17/07
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2/17/07
CHARLESTON — West Virginia is on track to become the third state to ban smoking in cars with children passengers, but with a watered down fine of $20 rather than $250 for each offense.
Other significant changes the Senate Judiciary Committee has made to the proposal include changing the type of offense so that police cannot use smoking as a primary reason to pull over a driver, and lowering the age of the children necessary for a violation from under 18 to 14 and younger.
Louisiana and Arkansas have passed similar bans and legislation is pending in a number of other states.
Part of the reason for the changes to the West Virginia legislation was the concern of some senators that the bill as originally written would be difficult to enforce. Additionally, Sen. John Yoder, R-Jefferson, warned it was a “slippery slope” in terms of constitutional rights.
“Traffic police have always stopped people for violating traffic laws, and now they’re going to be stopping people for violating health laws,” Yoder said. “Instead of the traffic police, they’re going to be the health police.”
An amendment proposed by Yoder changed the bill so that smoking in a car with children present is now a secondary, rather than primary, offense. That means drivers have to be pulled over for something other than lighting up with kids in the car, and only if police find them smoking, can they then be ticketed. The state’s seat belt law operates the same way.
Sen. Jon Blair Hunter, D-Monogalia, successfully proposed an amendment reducing the fines for the violation from between $50 and $250 to between $10 and $20, which he said matches the current fine for not properly securing infants in car seats.
“The fine should be substantial,” countered Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph. “Maybe instead of reducing the fine here, we should be looking to raise the other fine.”
The bill now goes to the full Senate for a vote. If it’s ultimately made law, it would put West Virginia among the few states to have such smoking bans, but it wouldn’t be the only law in the state designed to curb tobacco use.
Fifty-four of 55 counties have some form of public smoking ban. Pocahontas County is the exception. In addition, 14 counties ban smoking in all workplaces. West Virginia has the highest percentage of workplace smoking bans in the country.
Despite that, smoking is still a public health problem. About 26.6 percent of adult West Virginians smoke, the fourth-highest percentage in the country, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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