LATEST research suggests that people exposed to passive smoke have a 50 to 60 per cent risk of heart attack.

And according to a study published in the British Medical Journal, non-smokers who live with a smoker, have a 15 per cent greater risk of premature death than those living in a smoke free household.

Clearly these figures apply to adults. So how might children, with under-developed/delicate immune and respiratory systems be affected, especially where both parents smoke?

Then if these children are also ferried around in the confined space of a motor car for the first 10 years of their lives while their caring mother or father smokes a cigarette or three, then they really don't have much of a future. At least in the home they can escape to their bedroom, but in a car there is no escape.

Other research has identified that when smoke is inhaled, nicotine receptors (which cause the craving and can exist indefinitely) are created in the brain. It has also been identified that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. So how many children might be addicted to nicotine before becoming teenagers - the time when most people start the potentially lethal habit.

Would it be right to inject children with heroin? Hardly, it is a crime that would attract a prison sentence. Why then are adults, in effect, allowed to "inject" their children with nicotine? Why isn't this a crime? There was a time when ignorance would have been an excuse, but not any more.

Children who inhale passive smoke, and are exposed to a condition that will shorten their lives (some within days, if not hours, of being born, and then at regular intervals for much of their young lives), are totally innocent, ignorant and gullible victims. According to the NHS, 17,000 children visit hospital every year suffering from the effects of passive smoke inhalation.

And not only should children be protected from carcinogenic cigarette smoke, but also from the harmful image that suggests smoking is cool and grown up. I had my first cigarette when I was 11; and I was 26 before I managed to kick the habit. Thirty years on, am I thankful and better off for doing so.

It might be difficult to protect children from smoke in the home, although in Ireland the ban can extend to the home on account that it becomes a work place when a tradesman enters it to carry out household repairs or installations. But it wouldn't be difficult to protect children by banning smoking in the car they are travelling in, with the added advantage that the driver - without the distraction of lighting and disposing of cigarettes - becomes a safer driver. It's all a matter of responsibility and a duty of care.

Allan Ramsay

Ashcombe Drive

Radcliffe