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Law Professor Encourages Coercion to Take Children Away from Parents Who Smoke

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Published on: May 25, 2016

Liberals can’t decide on which end of an issue they want to be.  It’s a travesty and miscarriage of justice when a black individual is shot and killed, justifiably, by a police officer.  Yet, black on black murder rates are higher than other race murders.  They rallied after Newtown, Sandy Hook to push gun control, which ultimately leads to confiscation, if “it will save just one child.”  On the other hand, they support the willful murder of babies in the womb by their mothers calling it “woman’s choice.”  Some even support “post-birth” murder when the baby survives the in utero murder attempt.

It, then, should come as no surprise that a law professor at George Washington University Law School proposed a plan to decrease the number of deaths related to secondhand smoke – take children away from parents who smoke.  John F. Banzhaf proposed his idea at the North American Regional Conference of the International Society for Family Law on Monday in Washington, DC.

After citing statistics indicating that 6,200 children die each year to secondhand smoke, and “laws in certain states that weigh parental smoking in child custody cases,” this man argued the solution to this problem is by removing the children.  Despite a new report claiming smoking has decreased among American adults by two percentage points from 2014 to 2015, settling to 15 percent, Banzhaf suggests using the “law to right serious wrongs” that have been levied against children by parents who smoke.

As the founder of the nonprofit Action on Smoking and Health, Banzhaf stated to the attendees, “We, as attorneys, probably have greater power than other professionals to right wrongs, and to change society for the better, because we can use the tremendous power of the law for the public good rather than just to benefit paying clients.  And you, as family attorneys, can and should be using the great power of the law to right serious wrongs being done to children.”

No, this is not a joke or satire.

According to the source article at ValueWalk:

Smokers Should Lose Child Custody – Intl Family Law Conf

Lawyers to Ban Smoking re Custody, Foster Care, and in Cars
WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 23, 2016): Fighting smoking by challenging the custody of parents who smoke around their children, and requiring emergency room physicians to file complaints of suspected child abuse against parents whose children arrive in hospitals in respiratory distress because of their parents’ smoking, are only two of the proposals put forth on the opening day of the North American Regional Conference of the International Society for Family Law.

The lawyers who handle many of the nation’s divorce and custody cases, and influence many others, were also urged to take legal action to prohibit smoking when foster children are in a house or car, and to punish parents or others who smoke when children are in the car, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

First of all, this man talks about the law while he refuses to “see” the law.  One of the biggest wrongs was the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court that has led lawyers, as well as many of the public, to declare it is “legal” and “lawful” for women to murder their own babies in the womb.  Banzhaf should “show us the law,” the actual passed legislation by Congress or all the States showing murdering babies in the womb is “lawful” and “legal.”  This man talks about “changing society for the better” and using the power of the law “for the public good.”  Well, nothing would be changing society more for the better than recognizing the wrong in murdering innocent babies in the womb.  But, instead of saving these children from wrong, Banzhaf proposes to begin with removing children from the custody of parents because one or both smoke.

Banzhaf was the main presenter on this topic and reminded the influential lawyers and law professionals that “more young children are killed by parental smoking than by all unintentional injuries combined.”  Moreover, he added that “parental smoking causes over five million ailments which add almost five billion dollars to the nation’s medical expenses.”  Yet, mothers who murder their babies in the womb would be allowed to keep another child when they desired to care for the infant instead of murdering him or her.

Attendees were told how to effectively raise the issue of parental smoking in custody proceedings, and how to either prohibit smoking indoors at least 48 hours before the child arrives, or to deny  Child Custody to the smoking parents. Several cases in which the children of parents who lost  Child Custody  because they smoked around their offspring were discussed, says Banzhaf, who was the major presenter on this controversial topic.

From the sounds of it, Banzhaf is encouraging attorneys into coercion with his “nonprofit” to keep parents who smoke from attaining custody of their child in a divorce.  What would happen if one parent was a nonsmoker and a child molester and the other a smoker but a non-molester?

ValueWalk provided a clear, if not involuntary, synopsis of Banzhaf.

Banzhaf, who has been called “The Man Behind the Ban on Cigarette Commercials,” “The Law Professor Who Masterminded Litigation Against the Tobacco Industry,” and “a Driving Force Behind the Lawsuits That Have Cost Tobacco Companies Billions of Dollars,” also explained how emergency room physicians who fail to file complaints of suspected child abuse when parental smoking causes allergic or other serious reactions to the child may be subject to both criminal and civil liability, how their licenses to practice may be challenged, and how they could even be hit with medical malpractice law suits.

Naturally, one should be able to sue an industry for billions because one voluntarily engaged in an activity that would do one harm. (sarcasm)  It is unheard of currently to take responsibility for one’s own actions.  In fact, this same scenario is being touted by Hillary Clinton against the gun manufacturers and sellers when a gun is used in the commission of the crime.

In his argument, Banzhaf cited Massachusetts requirements on physician reporting of possible child abuse for “all but the most negligible or de minimus injuries to children,” which includes even the slightest of bruising.  He stressed that “mere suspicion by the physician is enough to trigger this legal requirement.”  While it is true that medical professionals are required by law to report “suspected” child abuse, medical professionals are to use “sound” judgment and common sense in being able to recognize the difference between abuse and accidental injuries.

Attendees were told “that family law attorneys have a moral and perhaps also a legal responsibility to protect children, especially infants and toddlers, from deadly carcinogenic secondhand tobacco smoke, and to use the legal proceedings in which they are involved, as well as their influence with law makers, to insure this protection.”

Yet, Banzhaf does not see the hypocrisy in protecting children from secondhand smoke while allowing innocent babies to be murdered in the womb by their mothers.

This man believes parents who smoke should be considered “child abusers,” as evidenced by using current laws for medical professionals to report child abuse applied to parental smoking.  What about parents who allow their child to eat excessive amounts of chocolate, cookies, chips, candy bars, and ice cream leading to an obese child?  What about parents who do not exercise and engage their child in exercise activities leading to a sedentary lifestyle, obesity and other health problems?  Or, what about the parents that let their children watch any and everything on TV without parental supervision, exposing children to content in advance of their developmental level?

It isn’t enough that parents are being harangued by police for allowing their children to play outside in their own yard or walk to school when the school is very close.  Now, parents have to worry about being harangued by medical professionals who may report them as child abusers for smoking.  And, it is all because some liberal law professor got a wild hair up his backside to champion the children whose parents smoke while allowing mothers to murder their babied up until the time of birth in the womb.

Liberal mindset – it’s a woman’s choice whether to have a baby or murder it in the womb or even minutes after birth;  but, any parent who smokes around a child, exposing the innocent child to secondhand smoke should be charged with child abuse.  Murdering babies in the womb is the “law of the land.”  Smoking by a parent represents a danger to the child.

Hmm.  There have been approximately 54 million babies murdered in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court.  Using the 6,200 children per year getting health problems from secondhand smoke multiplied by the years since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision produces 266,600 affected children.  Which one is more detrimental to the health of the child?  Exactly!  The abortion mill poses a much greater threat than secondhand smoke.

In their hallmark dissertation on smoking and secondhand smoke titled, “Lies, Damned Lies and 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths,” authors Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont blew holes in the government, medical profession, and politician stance by concluding, “The unvarnished fact is that children do not die of tobacco-related diseases, correctly determined. If they smoke heavily during their teens, they may die of lung cancer in their old age, fifty or sixty years later, assuming lung cancer is still a threat then.”

To be blunt, there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year—or any number remotely close to 400,000—are caused by tobacco. Nor has that estimate been adjusted for the positive effects of smoking—less obesity, colitis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and, for some women, a lower incidence of breast cancer. The actual damage from

smoking is neither known nor knowable with precision.  Responsible statisticians agree that it is impossible to attribute causation to a single variable, like tobacco, when there are multiple causal factors that are correlated with one another. The damage from cigarettes is far less than it is made out to be.

The entire paper by Levy and Marimont is worth the read since it also addresses “smoking related diseases.”  The authors concluded “…, the results are insufficiently reliable to conclude that a particular agent (e.g., tobacco) caused a particular disease.”

Bottom line is sleazy liberal lawyers knowingly conspiring to remove children from the home when their parents or one parent smokes based on exposing the child to secondhand smoke as child abuse is the lowest of lows.  Yet, these same sleaze bag liberals will defend murdering a baby in the womb as “choice” and “law of the land.”

As the FDA issues regulations on the E-cigarette and “vaping” industry to the thrill of Big Tobacco, many individuals have used these devices to cease smoking.  Exactly, where does government and politicians stand?  They promoted less than accurate studies on effects of cigarette smoke to encourage individuals to cease smoking;  yet, issue harsh regulations on an industry that can assist individuals to cease smoking while avoiding secondhand smoke.  This is the problem.  When government, lawyers, politicians, and big money get involved in trying to regulate the personal lifestyles of individuals to what they think is best, it never fails that hypocrisy results from their efforts.

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