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Smokers constantly hold that the only people they hurt are themselves and so they have a right in exercising their "freedom" to light up whenever and wherever they feel like.

talk to any smoker and chnaces are that you will get resposnes such as "even if smoking is just like burning money, I'm burning my own money which I work very hard for" or "smoking relaxes me and since I am not hurting anybody elae..." or even shockingly the one you often hear of in high schools "if it is that harmful to myself and others why is it legal? Why doenst't the government just outlaw it"?

What we do not know is that all these arguments were extinguished long ago by a study that showed conclusively that long-term exposure to tobacco smoke harms the non-smoker by among other illnesses reducing the small airway function in the lungs.

The research entitled "Small-Airways Dysfunction in Nonsmokers Chronically Exposed to Tobacco Smoke," was published in The new England Journal of Medicine on March 27, 1980. Done by James R. White and herman F. froeb, it showed that passive smoking caused a loss in breathing capacity as tiny air tubes and sacs in the airways of the lungs became scarred and permanently damaged.

So passive smoking is no longer jsut an isssue of being annoying or irritating but often ends up being deadly with estimates in the US showing tens of thousands of its citizens die premturely due to the effects of passive smoking.

Passive smoking is the involuntary inhalation of Environmental Tobacco Smoke, or ETS which consists of sidestream smoke from the burning tobacco found in cigarettes, pipes and cigars as well as that whichescapes from the non-burning ends as well as the that which has been inhaled by the smoker and thene xhaled.

Sidestream smoke unfortunately is not filtered as is that inhaled by the smoker and so has higher concentrations of toxic substances including at least 17 cancer causing or carcinogenic chemicals than mainstream smoke.A prime example of this would be the extremely carcinogenic N-Nitrosamine. Its concentration is so high in sidestream smoke such that being in a veryu smoky room for just one hour a non-smoker would inhale the equivalent they would if they actually smoked 15 cigarettes. This clearly illustrates the gravity with which passive smoking should be understood.

While you are involutarily ingesting this carcinogenic ETS in a confined space also subjects you to discomfort which can include coughing, wheezing and allergic reactions. If a non-smoker has certain heart and lung diseases or allergies, their symptoms will probably be exacerbated by ETS.

Twenty years ago the US Surgeon general's office made several major conclusions on passive smoking in a report- "The health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking 7". Firstly involuntary smoking is a cause of disease, including lung cancer, in health non-smokers. next was that children of smoking parents have an increased frequency of respiratory infections, increased respiratory symptoms, and slightly smaller rates of increase in lung function as the lung matures.

Finally the report stated that the simple seperation of smokers and non-smokers with the same airspace may reduce, but does not eliminate the exposure of non-smokers to environmental tobacco smoke.,/p>

yet here in Kenya we want to constantly bring up the old arguments all over again questioning the dangers associated with tobacco use every time our smoking "freedoms" are questioned. yet smoking is not s elf-contained activity but one which leads to tobacco smoke diffusing far away from the smoker and going on to contaminate the air many feet away for hapless nonsmokers to get sick on.

But this scenario is even worse when we now add children to the equation. For where children are present and there are adults smoking in the house, or in the car or other places where children are in close proximity, this is simply akin to child abuse. there are no two ways to look at this.

For to smoke where children are present even contravenes Article 3 of the UN convention on the Rights of the Child which states that "In all actions concerning children, whether undetrtaken by public or private social welfare instituions, courts of law, adminstrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."

Looking at the effects of ETS on the non-smoker I do not see where smoking constantly where your children are would be constitute having "the best interests of the child" as a "primary consideration" with the emphasis here on "primary".

For the influence on adult smoking on a child's health can be felt in three major ways with the first being right at the beggining of life even before the child is born through maternal smoking. Secondly is through ETS while the third way is through role modelling by smoking parents, wehere children learn to smoke by observing and wanting to emulate their parents.

According to a WHO paper Tobacco & the rights of the child maternal smoking is a major cause of sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS as well as having been demonstrated to retard foetal growth and to increase the risk of having a low-birth-wieght baby or even result in spontaneous abortion.

For the younger children the paper states that ETS exposure is perhaps the most dangerous risk associated with tobacco use. The WHO estimates that nearly 700 million, or almost half of the world's children, breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke, particularly at home. Most have no choice in this matter.

Yet for decades there was no controversy over smoking and people smoked how they wished and many considered it to be quite fashionable.

But the argument now cannot hold water as the writing is on the wall and the evidence is all around us. parents must realise that no matter how much they proclaim to love their children, as long as you smoke where they are - you are committing child-abuse and should be prosecuted.

The writer is a recovering alcoholic and the programmes director of the goinghomedotcom Trust a media NGO involved in drug absue awareness. A freelance journalist Ogot can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com website: www.goinghomekenya.org.

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