We applaud the town of Wolfville for its unanimous decision this past week to pass a bylaw prohibiting smoking within the town limits in motor vehicles where children aged 18 and younger are present.

It’ll be difficult to enforce and will no doubt create headaches for local police, who will need to be even more diligent than they are currently with potentially more offenders to monitor.

At the same time, though, something needs to be done. While smokers do have a right to light up if they so choose, it’s more and more difficult to find a place to do so.

As tricky a tightrope as this issue is to walk, the public ultimately has a right to complain about having to breathe in second-hand smoke, which has been proven to have significant negative effects to one’s long-term health.

Youngsters, and particularly infants whose lungs have not yet developed fully, are especially susceptible to the negative effects of second-hand smoke. According to Statistics Canada, one in five children under the age of 12 is exposed to second-hand smoke in vehicles on a daily basis.

If breathing in second-hand smoke is unacceptable at the best of times, it must be particularly problematic and dangerous in an enclosed space such as an automobile. Other than putting down the window, which isn’t all that practical in cold weather, there’s no escape.

There are two things to applaud here. The first is a municipal government that has had the foresight - not to mention the will - to pass this kind of a bylaw, which is sure to be precedent-setting in terms of its impact, and to do it unanimously besides.

Wolfville, it should be noted, is no stranger to precedent-setting decisions, especially surrounding the use of tobacco products. In 2002 it became the first town in Nova Scotia to ban smoking in public places, a precursor to what is now province-wide legislation.

The second thing is the message it sends to the community; that, in Wolfville at least, it’s no longer appropriate to smoke in public. First it was all public buildings, then the entire Acadia campus went smoke-free. Now it’s motor vehicles.

Groups such as Smoke-Free Kings, Annapolis Valley Health and the Canadian Cancer Society have applauded the Wolfville decision.

Meg McCallum, director of programs and district services for the Cancer Society in Nova Scotia, termed the bylaw a good thing for children across the country, and something she hopes will become a nationwide trend.

McCallum suggests that while it should be a matter of common sense for adults not to smoke in close proximity to their young children, particularly in enclosed spaces like automobiles, a lot of adult smokers simply aren’t getting the message.

Lila Hope-Simpson of Smoke-Free Kings referred to the bylaw as the way of the future, suggesting that Wolfville is the first, and won’t be the last, municipality to enact such a law. For the sake of non-smokers, and especially our young people, we hope she’s right.