PEA-41 MAUI: Smoking in Cars with Minors

Yesterday, 8 youth from Molokai and 9 youth from Maui spoke before the County Council, asking them to pass a bill prohibiting adult drivers from smoking in any vehicle with minors under the age of 18 years old.  Some teens even spoke about the adults in their family, forcing them to put up with the second hand smoke.

Before we all go talking to our children about the importance of hiding our family dirt,  let's take a look at why the teens felt it was necessary to go all the way to the County Council to get results.  Have we been listening to our children?  Do we really listen to them?  They're not just complaining about our smoke to anyone, they took it to the next level. 

Let this be an indicator that as adults, parents, role models, aunties, uncles, we have NOT been listening to the voice of those who are the most important - those who control our futures.  Whether you have kids or not, you are either going to die young or get old one day.  Facts are facts.  And when you get old, who do you think will be in the workforce?  Who do you think will be our policy makers of that time?  Those very same youth that we are obviously not listening to now.

Well, after hearing Moloka'i, council went on to hear Maui's testimony.  There was an underlying essence in the air, of all the voices that have gone unheard, the testimonies of the past, people crying for their voices to be heard, and here we had a gallery full of hopeful youth - unsure of whether they would be silenced one more time; shut down to appease the wants of a grown generation too ignorant to listen to them in the first place. 

What kind of things do you think went through their nervous minds, as they waited their turn to testify?  How many of those youth were truly thinking that they were going to be silenced once more, because nobody had heard them all these years when they couldn't speak to say how the smoke bothered them?  Do you think they were confident about getting this bill to pass? 

This morning when I opened my email to find out that it had passed the first round with its first follow up hearing to be held on January 19, 2018 and a final reading on February 3, 2018.  Yukilei was extremely supportive of the bill and the council voted unanimously in support of the proposed bill.  The Policy & Ag Committee also decided that $25-50 wasn't enough of a fine, but that a $200 violation was a more appropriate figure to propose. 

Let this be a wake up call

that we can't just go around doing what we please 

around children

because we are older and more ignorant.