Will health police outlaw smoking in your own home?
(CBS/AP) Smokers are already fuming about bans on lighting up in public places. But the health police can't stop smokers from puffing up a storm in their own homes, right?
Maybe they can, at least in Honduras.
A new law that took effect Monday bans smoking in most public and private spaces in the Central American nation. It doesn't actually outlaw smoking at home, but it includes a provision allowing people to file complaints about secondhand smoke in homes.
Violations would bring a verbal warning on the first offense. After that could come arrest and a $311 fine - the equivalent of the monthly minimum wage in Honduras - where 30 percent of the people smoke, and nine out of 10 Hondurans suffering from acute bronchitis live in homes where there is a smoker, according to Honduran health authorities.
The law bans smoking in most closed public or private spaces and orders smokers to stand at least six feet away from nonsmokers in any open space. It bans smoking in schools, gas stations, nightclubs, restaurants, bars, buses, taxis, stadiums and cultural centers.
The law includes a clause saying that "families or individuals may complain to law enforcement authorities when smokers expose them to secondhand smoke in private places and family homes."
"The law is clear and we will comply with it," said Rony Portillo, director of the Institute to Prevent Alcoholism and Drug Addiction. "Authorities will intervene (at a home) when someone makes a complaint."
The law also outlaws all advertising for tobacco products and requires photos of lungs affected by cancer to be placed on cigarette packs. Tobacco and cigarette companies have 60 days to comply with both requirements.
The law says businesses, such as bars or restaurants, that allow smoking could be fined between $1,000 and $6,000 and repeat offenders could be shut down.
"The law is stupid because it bans smoking in bars or nightclubs, and everyone knows that people who go there smoke, and if they don't like it, they shouldn't come and that's that," said Gustavo Valladares, a bar manager and smoker.
Stupid or not, the law could be a life-saving one, given the consensus among medical experts over the dangers posed by secondhand smoke.
In the U.S., secondhand smoke is responsible for 46,000 deaths a year from heart disease among nonsmokers who live with smokers, according to the American Cancer Society. In addition, secondhand smoke causes about 3,400 deaths from lung cancer each year among nonsmokers, as well as hundreds of thousands of respiratory and ear infections.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS IT TIME TO FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO BAN SMOKING AT HOME?