Iamthefallen

Ridiculous.

Poor Diet, Lack of Exercise as Lethal as Smoking

Would you guys then support pulling over vehicles because a chubby kid is eating some Cheetos?

Between "omigawd won't someone please think of the childen" and "booga booga the terrorists are coming", it seems there's no end to what laws people can come up with to regulate the behavior of others.

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RandomGuy

In these situations we civilians need to step up our brow-beatings instead of relying on the police to do it for us.

xTYBALTx

Cing,

I kind of like the idea of non-enforcement. Look at places like the Netherlands; sin-laws are on the books (largely because of international treaty obligations, but they're there all the same), but officially not enforced. And they have a living utopia!

Put the laws on the books to placate the puritans, don't enforce them for the sake of our sanity. Recipe for success? Maybe?

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SmokingTarpan

This, like the seatbelt law, is good in spirit but rediculous in reality and should not be in effect. If for nothing else, the amount of times that a parent lights up in a car is paltry compared to how many times the light up in the home or elsewhere. Then again, it would only be a matter of time before police were allowed to fine/arrest you for smoking in your own home.

Waste of taxpayers' money and police officers' time.

edit: btw, non-smoker here, against legislated smoking bans (private establishment decisions to ban are fine, however)

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Rick_the_new_guy

Iamthefallen makes a good point.

I believe that feeding kids empty calories and poor chow, thus causing obesity and early on set diabetes is child abuse also.
With the logic I used before, you would think I would arrest or fine the parent for feeding a child poorly.

I do not because nearly all foods that contain calories can bring about obesity and piss poor health if eaten in large portions and at certain times of the day.

Who is to say the obese kid who is eating a milk shake is not enjoying a treat his parent got him for going four days of eating good chow they fixed him.

So I say no to fines on feeding kids certain types of foods, and yes to inhibiting cig smoke into their lungs as much as possible.

Obviously, the total package with regards to further decreasing the smoker population without burning them at the stack, implies much more ideas and what not. Such ideas to help improve the youths health are:

A. Have personal trainer/s in the school system at the High School level. Very similar to the School Counselors, but with regards to health and body image.

B. Create a since of health in the youth with excellent marketing/advertising.

C. Rewards those who have good health with tax breaks and lower their insurance co-pays. Note, do not punish those who "out of shape", their life may be already depressive enough, this would only make things worse.

D. Tax Cigs more, and brainstorm on taxing garbage chow in a logical way.

These are just some ideas to throw around. But I remind you all, our health care crises is only getting worse, one we must prepare more and more for.

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Kerostasis

Of course, an obesity epidemic is very different from, say, a flu epidemic. If your next door neighbor doesn't take care of himself and comes down with some disease, there's a chance he might infect you as well. But if your next door neighbor doesn't watch his weight and becomes morbidly obese, and dies of a heart attack, your own life is pretty much completely unaffected.

In short: Obesity is not contagious. Individuals' weight management (or non-management) decisions don't impact the other people around them, and so there's no justification for the government to step in and mandate what you can and can't eat.

Now, obese people do incur higher medical costs, so an argument could be made that they drive up insurance premiums. But insurance agencies are pretty clever, and if they don't charge different rates to people based on their weight already, I imagine its only a matter of time. Just like smokers already pay different insurance rates than non-smokers, so smoker's health problems don't impact non-smokers rates.

If insurance companies don't already ask about your weight, I'd guess thats probably because of some federal privacy law that prohibits it. In that case all we need to do to solve our health crisis is change that law and let insurance companies fix it themselves.

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Iamthefallen

Except that kids eat what their parents give them, so it most definitely impacts the kids eating habits. You can't catch obesity from your neighbor, but you can catch it from your parents.

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Kerostasis

So what would you propose? Fining parents who don't teach their kids healthy eating habits?

A lot of kids refuse to eat what their parents fix for them anyway. My own sister was like that...she isn't overweight, closer to underweight, but the point is she wasn't going to listen to our parents ideas on nutrition.

There's hundreds if not thousands of different things parents should be teaching their kids, and the government just can't feasibly regulate them all. At some point you just have to trust parents to be parents. Unless you want to go with that suggestion about sterilizing people until they pass a parenting test that I saw somewhere around here...

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Iamthefallen

Have government stay out of parenting.

It's that simple.

It's funny how the same people who are OK with spanking, want to take away the kids because the parents are smoking in the car.

Some people have the opposite opinion.

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Trooper

No just need people who shouldn't breed to get out of the gene pool and stop breeding. Common sense is a wonderful thing and people should try using it more often. Spanking doesn't hurt your child mentally or physically, its the simple adage action gets reaction. You do something wrong and their is consequences.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
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Iamthefallen

Whatever makes you think that it's your decision whether or not someone should stop breeding? Am I the only one who didn't have perfect parents and still came out OK? Parents are people too. They'll screw up, they'll make mistakes, they'll make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the kids. But somehow, kids tend to still come out alright in the end.

It's OK to have a discussion about what is good parenting and what isn't, it's when the discussion goes into government regulating it that I start to get bothered. When people throw out "child abuse" and taking kids away because of their personal peeve, it starts to get plain scary.

Agreed. Like banning any potentially dangerous toy is just common sense, right?

Others would disagree, but I'll look forward to a reference from a reputable source proving that spanking does not cause any mental or physical trauma, ever.

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Trooper

with out discipline you have issues like juvenile hall being over crowded and then the federal pens being the same way. Spanking your child til he/she is bleeding or bruised does qualify as child abuse. Yeah and i do think social services should step in and take kids for that reason alone, if not for a few weeks to figure out why the parents did that.

I was raised in a family who did foster care, I've been to all the classes, I've seen all the problems abusive parents create. So for someone to say " i will do what ever to my kids that i want" really doesn't sit well with me.

I know plenty of kids who grew up with parents that let them do what ever they want, 4 are in jail and 2 are the biggest brats i have ever met. I don't need a source to prove anything, just ask kids. I was spanked, my brother and sister where spanked. My kids will be spanked, no law is ever gonna change that.

The law she is trying to pass covers 0-3 years old, i wanna see one parent get thru age 2 without spanking their child. Yeah granted under 2 the child doenst know better, but the childs brain takes off like crazy and starts to define who he/she is gonna be.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
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Iamthefallen

Data is not the plural of anecdote. Your personal experience is your personal experience, nothing more. A scientific study would have somewhat stringent collection methods before arriving at a conclusion.

I was never spanked, beaten, or otherwise physically punished. Shock and horror, my mom even smoked. But even if I do say so myself, I still grew up to be a functional adult. So spanking is not necessary for raising good kids, and smoking in the car isn't necessarily going to create screwed up kids.

I haven't spanked my oldest yet. He says please and thank you, and hasn't yet shown any tendencies to overthrowing civilized society.

Imagine that, despite different approaches and methods, kids are still apparently coming out OK. So why do we need government to be involved in the method you disagree with again?

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Trooper

i got my own topics confused.


Back on topic. you would agree smoking is bad for your health correct? So by sitting in a car with a 8month old, whos lungs are developing, and smoking on a cigerette and blowing smoke all around the place. What air is your 8month old gonna breath in? Im gonna guess that which is in the car, the second hand smoke. So now your child is sitting in a car filled with smoke and is developing pnumonia, ashma, lung cancer, throat cancer, mouth cancer, ear and sinus infections.

Im all for this bill i actually hope more states enact and enfore this. If you arent responcible enough to care for your child and make sure his/her health, then you should be pulled over and fined. Will make you think about it when you are needing that money for that pack of smokes you need.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
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SmokingTarpan

The argument, largely, is not about second-hand smoke being bad for your child. Same with the seatbelt law, we know seatbelts are good. The argument is about invasion of privacy.

I don't believe that a police officer should be able to pull me over for seeing at a passing glance anything short of me holding a gun/knife to someone's head. I'm inside my car, which is my property. Police can't search that at random, they need to either have my consent or have a valid reason/warrant. The same with my house.

If we're doing things in the name child welfare, it's possible for things to get out of hand. Would you care to be stopped by the police to make sure the child is dressed warmly enough? How about having your home searched to make sure the child's crib is safe enough? These things may be a bit far fetched, but others like them are within the realm of possibility.

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