MORGANTOWN — Sen. Tom Takubo told his colleagues on the Health Committee on Tuesday that he had nearly thrown in the towel on his perennial bill to prohibit smoking in a vehicle where minors are present.
But after receiving urging from a patient and a constituent, he brought it back one more time.
Now, its future remains uncertain, but at least it got out of committee.
SB 378 says: “No person who is 18 years of age or older may smoke or possess a lit tobacco product in a motor vehicle if an individual 16 years of age or less is in the motor vehicle.”
It makes the act a misdemeanor with a $25 fine; the fine remains $25 no matter how many kids are in the vehicle.
And it’s a secondary offense, meaning the vehicle would have to be pulled over for speeding or some other violation before a smoking charge could be applied.
Takubo said he promised to resurrect the bill at the request of a patient who’d lost half her lung function. Her dad was a three-pack-a-day smoker and she has asthma.
Any type of noxious stimulus can make an asthma patient’s lungs spasm and make it hard for them to breathe, he said.
But when she would beg her dad to not smoke in the car, he would roll the windows up and she would have to climb down onto the floor and stick her face under the seat to be able to breathe.
A constituent wrote him a letter, he said. He grew up in Mingo County in the 1940s and 1950s, the patient told him, and his whole family smoked. Riding in the car was unbearable.
He’s now 78, he wrote to Takubo, and his brother died of cancer and his sister died of emphysema.
Because of those stories, Takubo said, he brought the bill back.
The committee approved it in a voice vote, with one objection; it was unclear who voted no.
It now goes to the full Senate.
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