Letter to the Editor: Smoking, infants and barking dogs

By MIKE SAWYER Birmingham
Ala.

Editor,
If kids could bark like “Chipper.”
On a beautiful spring morning in Alabama, I noticed a policeman at my truck door in the parking lot of a major department store as I returned.
I could hear my very spoiled grand-dog Chipper a chocolate Lab loudly barking at this policeman who was close to my trucking looking in at Chipper.
As I walked up, I jokingly asked the policeman was he going to arrest Chipper. “No,” he answered back without smiling.
The policeman stated there was a law that would allow them to break in a vehicle to rescue pets from the heat of the weather, but he mentioned that my both my windows were down and Chipper was OK.
Great that we protect pets in Alabama and America while in vehicles, but my humble question is what about innocent kids who breathe toxic secondhand smoke in tightly sealed vehicles in summer and winter?
The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported on May 11, in their article titled “Study: Smoking sins of parents visited on children” that US scientists have the first time detected cancer-causing chemicals from tobacco smoke in the urine of infants whose parents smoke in their vicinity, according to an article in the just-released May issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. “The take-home message is, ‘Don’t smoke around your kids,'” said Professor Stephen Hecht, an expert in cancer prevention at the Cancer Center of the University of Minnesota.
Do you think our police, politicians, and preachers would be more attentive to our smoked-choked kids in cars if they could bark as loud as Chipper?