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This Halloween, Tell Children About the Big Danger:
Smoking Parents Killing Their Own Children

Every Halloween, concerned parents — and even grandparents, friends, and neighbors — warn children about the traditional dangers of the holiday. These include drivers who may not see young children in dark costumes, mentally ill people who could put razor blades or poison in candy, or deviates who could try to lure young children into their homes.

But adults could also use this opportunity to remind young children of a deadly danger which surrounds many of them every day, and will probably kill more kids this Halloween than all the adulterated candy they might acquire.

This deadly danger is smoking by their own parents, grandparents,  and adult friends.

The Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine estimates that every year parental smoking kills more than 6,000 children, causes 5.4 million serious ailments such as ear infections and asthma, costs $4.6 billion in medical expenses alone, and ultimately costs the economy $8.2 billion. [Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 1997;151:648-653]

Thus this Halloween, and on every other day including Thanksgiving and Christmas, more than 15 children will probably be killed by the smoking of their own parents.

Unfortunately, surveys show that in families where one or both parents are smokers, the overwhelming majority still smoke indoors where their children are forced to inhale this deadly mixture which includes many known carcinogens, mutagens, irritants, and poisons.

The exposure is even more intense and concentrated when parents force their children to be seated in the smoking sections of airplanes, restaurants, and other public places.

Adults can warn children that secondhand tobacco smoke is even more dangerous to them with their developing bodies and immune systems.

They can urge children not to drive in vehicles, sit in sections, or play in homes where smoking is permitted.

They can also remind the children of smokers that their parents' smoking is much more dangerous than all of the other real or imaginary dangers associated with this scary holiday.

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