Boy taken into care, level of cigarette smoke cited as major issue
Monday, June 1, 2015 at 15:40 A busy day just got busier.
The Press Association reports that "A two-year-old boy has been taken from his parents' care after a health visitor highlighted concerns about the level of cigarette smoke at his home."
See 'Boy taken from parents over smoke' (Press Association)
I've done an interview for Radio One. (A soundbite will be used on Newsbeat at 5.50.) I've also been asked to do more interviews in the morning.
Meanwhile we've issued this response:
"Isolated incident must not be used to stigmatise all smokers" says Forest
A smokers' group says a report that a two-year-old boy has been taken from his parents' care after a health visitor highlighted concerns about the level of cigarette smoke at his home should not be used "to stigmatise all smokers".
Simon Clark, director of Forest, said:
"It's important smokers are considerate to those around them, especially children, so we don't condone smoking throughout the home if children are present.
"Nevertheless it's important to stress that a number of other concerns were raised about the way the child was being cared for so it would be wrong to focus only on the smoking issue.
"The overwhelming majority of parents who smoke know how to behave around children. An isolated incident like this must not be used to stigmatise all smokers, nor should it be seized upon by those who want to ban smoking in the home."
I'll keep you posted.
Update: The BBC has a report here – Smoker's son, 2, to be adopted because of health risk.
Reader Comments (6)
Good luck Simon I am doing BBC Radio 3 Counties just after 5.00 tonight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_three_counties_radio
Surprisingly the BBC touches on the other health concerns http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-32957100
No doubt the anti's will blow this out of all proportion and bend it to give the impression that this is representative of all smoking parents. This has to be nipped in the bud now!
What's the evidence about the alleged level of smoke? Was it, in fact, largely the smokerphobic health visitor's imagination that would not have troubled millions of families just 10 years ago?
Also remember our generation grew up with coal fires and smoke billowing out into the room far greater than any cig hanging from my mother's mouth as she lit it.
I said they would be coming for the children of smokers. This needs fighting and if just about cig smoke, this family needs fighting for.
It is an abuse of power by a prejudicial T... and we should not be putting up with it.
”Was it really exposure to secondhand smoke that caused his adoption and justified those headlines?”
Of course not, but the papers – like the obedient little anti-smoking drones that they are – just can’t resist any opportunity to lay the blame for anything squarely at the feet of smokers, partly because that’s what their anti-smoking controllers demand of them, but also because they know that it’ll spark off a good old “anti-smokers versus smokers” argument. Nothing like divide and rule, is there? And the media, as always, are only too pleased to play their part through misleading and skewed stories like these. It’s just a bit of a surprise – albeit a pleasant one - that the usually-obedient BBC saw fit to publish a rather-more-accurate version of the story later. Wow! Perhaps it's finally growing a spine ....
This reportage is extreme propaganda aimed at demonizing and denormalizing smokers. The actual reasons for taking the child into custody were not actually smoking but other hazards. The antismoking angle is emphasized to cause division and persecute smokers. This stigmatism needs to stop!
The stimatisation will not stop since all larger parties are towing the World Agenda funded by the filthy lucre of ......... the list is endless as we all know.
What I detest is how these people claim that they are in it for public health. They have many deaths on their hands and don't appear to give two hoots. If this is what Public Health represents then I want nothing to do with it.
The lies utterly appall me and so does a government so 'wet behind the ears' to challenge them.