A New Attack on Personal Freedom by a Local Municipality in Georgia
To begin with I would like to stress that I am not a smoker and never have been. I never
wanted to smoke and it is my right and choice not to. And in the same vein, I feel that if
someone wishes to smoke in their own car or home, and yard that is their right to do so.
I have heard that the City of Stockbridge in Henry County wishes to create an ordinance that
says you cannot smoke in your car with a child aboard. I see this as a governmental intrusion upon the private life of a citizen. In the Declaration of Independence, it says that people have the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that show three examples of the unalienable rights which the Creator or God and which governments were created to protect. The City of Stockbridge should be protecting the individual right for a person to smoke in their car. Georgia law says that the citizens car is an extension of their home. I don't like seeing individual rights abated by the government in any form. This is a road that has a slippery slope to it that will cause further governmental intrusion into your lives. The most obvious concern is perhaps the most troubling: a fear that these laws invite a new level of government intrusion into people’s private lives. Many people believe that they have a sphere of privacy in their cars, much like in their homes. For example the following case law is a good point of reference:
In City of Zion v. Behrens, the Supreme Court of Illinois invalidated a
city ordinance that made it unlawful to smoke tobacco in any public place because it was “apparently an attempt on the part of the municipality to regulate and control the habits and practices of the citizen without any reasonable basis for so doing.” The court further found that the ordinance could not be upheld on the grounds of preventing fire and protecting city property because it sought to control smoking in places other than those with highly combustible materials. This also would have carried over into the home and vehicle of the citizen and they found this unlawful. Another case law example is the following:
In Hershberg v. City of Barbourville, for example, the Kentucky Court of
Appeals struck down a local ordinance that made it illegal to smoke within the city limits of Barbourville because the law was so broad as to make it illegal to smoke within one’s own home or other private premises and vehicles. They found this unconstitutional. We must stress that we have to protect that which we don't like because if not then we are sacrificing our freedoms in the long run.
In summing up, the right of privacy is a broad concept, used in diverse contexts to refer to a variety of claims or entitlements. One of the more significant branches of the right of privacy concerns the right of an individual to make personal decisions about his or her life free from government control; that is, the right of individual autonomy. The right of individual autonomy or privacy potentially may encompass matters such as the right to marry, the right to have a family, the right of reproductive freedom, the right of bodily integrity, the right to ingest substances such as alcohol and smoking, the right to refuse medical treatment. and so on. The concept of privacy or autonomy often is used interchangeably with the concept of liberty, both referring to a fundamental right of self-determination. The right of privacy is based on the principle that “a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole.” It embodies a sense of “personhood”—an “autonomy of self”—that should remain free from intrusion or coercion by society or the government. It comprehends that there are certain personal decisions concerning one’s life that an individual should be able to make for oneself free from interference by the state. The right of privacy has developed primarily through decisions of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the Federal Constitution. It is the right of privacy for a person to smoke in a home or vehicle that is theirs. If a child is in the vehicle the parent is usually the one who is driving and if they wish to smoke around their child it is their choice as a parent. When the government steps into your life in this manner to try and ban you from smoking in your car or home it is another step towards a dictatorial government that has it's fingers in too much of your life as it is today. And for a city that has been embroiled in too many court cases for over a decade now, they shouldn't go down this road of attacking a citizens rights. They should go about the job they were elected to do and make sure the citizens have a police, fire, roads and utilities instead of getting into the cars and bedrooms of the community.
Dr. Mike Moon
