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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Smoke Nazis Toss Woman In Jail: It's For The Children! |
| 2004-08-13 |
| A woman was sentenced Thursday to 10 days in jail for defying a court order not to smoke around her children. Tamara Silvius was banned last year from smoking around the youths, now ages 8 and 10, as part of a custody arrangement with her ex-husband. She allegedly violated the order during a trip to South Carolina for Thanksgiving. For that, Silvius was fined $500 and was given a 10-day suspended sentence on the condition she not do it again. But Silvius was back in court Thursday for violating the order a second time in June. Silvius, a pack-a-day smoker, claims the restriction violates her rights. A judge upheld the order in January, citing medical evidence of the effects of secondhand smoke on children. Silvius has appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals. Mark A. Murphy, an attorney representing the children's father, noted that Silvius is free to smoke on days when the children are not with her. |
| Posted by:Raj |
| #4 Dr. Steve: They say tobacco can ward off Alzheimerâs. Is that true? Is it just cigarettes (with all their additives that are cancer causing)? Can you get the benefits, without the risk, by smoking cigars/pipes with ânatural, unalteredâ tobacco? Just really curious. Regarding this story, I agree these guys are going overboard â health and moral choices should not be bench decisions. However, the real problem is that this lady apparently agreed to a custody order whereby she would not smoke around her kids (e.g., "banned . . . from smoking . . . as part of a custody arrangement"; most likely a divorce settlement, with negotiated terms and conditions, later approved as an order). Now, I would guess, the issue is more one of contempt of court than the science of smoking. What this lady shouldnât have done was agree to the entry of an order, and then go ahead and violate it. What she should do now is either abide by the order, or go back into court to get the order modified. |
| Posted by: cingold 2004-08-13 9:42:30 PM |
| #3 I can't believe that the Nanny Police State of Liberalism has gotten its claws so deep into our country, but I guess it has. Pitiful. Land of the Free? Think again. |
| Posted by: GreatestJeneration 2004-08-13 9:38:10 PM |
| #2 I'm a pulmonary physician. I hate cigarettes. If I had my way I'd invent the perfect tobacco phage virus, and then learn to fly an agricultural biplane, the kind with the sprayer tanks. I'd fix the tobacco problem real quick. That said, this is idiotic. We should NOT throw people in jail for being addicted to tobacco. The "evidence" of second-hand smoke is, in my estimation, er, a lot of smoke. It's nebulous, not done very well, and all we really know for sure is, "a lot of second hand smoke might be bad for you. Or not." Far better use of our resources would be to give this woman a few months supply of nicotine patches and Zyban. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-08-13 9:19:40 PM |
| #1 Has she thought about switching to Copenhagen? |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-08-13 4:51:17 PM |