House lawmakers yesterday voted down a bill that would ban adults from smoking cigarettes in cars in which children are riding. The bill failed on a narrow vote of 184-167.

On a busy session day, the House also overwhelmingly backed a bill that would ban text-messaging while driving by a vote of 222-137. (For more on yesterday's session, see B1.) Today and tomorrow, the House will remain in session to tackle a docket including the death penalty, gay marriage, medicinal marijuana and transgender rights. Meanwhile, this morning, Chief Justice John Broderick will present lawmakers from the House and Senate with his state of the judiciary address.

The debate on the smoking-in-the-car bill pitted medical evidence on the dangers of secondhand smoke against philosophical questions about the rights of individuals to partake in legal activities and practical concerns about how police officers would enforce such a law.

Sponsor Mary Griffin said she took issue with the idea that the bill represented "undue intrusion into parental privacy."

"On the contrary, there is a long-established legal prohibition against endangering the welfare of a child," said Griffin, a Windham Republican.

She reeled off a list of ailments associated with inhaling cigarette smoke, such as asthma and cancer, and she cited a 2006 Harvard School of Public Health study that found cigarettes smoked in cars can generate hazardous levels of smoke in only a few minutes. She said that other states, including Arkansas and Louisiana, have banned smoking in cars with young children.

Adults, Griffin said, get to make lifestyle choices, but children don't. "Our infants must be given the right to survive," she said.

Opponents said the bill would involve excessive state intrusion into people's lives and could be the start down a slippery slope.

"The next step would be to control how and when a person does a legal activity in their home," said Rep. Jennifer Coffey, an Andover Republican.

Proponents wanted to make smoking in a car with children a secondary offense, meaning that police officers couldn't pull a driver over for breaking that law alone but could cite a driver for smoking if they were pulled over for something else.

Nashua Rep. Michael O'Brien said he agreed with just about everyone else in the debate - that secondhand smoke is bad for children but that the bill would go too far.

"To make a law on being a bad parent is not something that I'm willing to accept here," said O'Brien, a Democrat.

He called for education on the subject, and he said lawmakers would be better off "opening our hearts and our wallets and supporting groups such as the American Pediatric Association and the American Lung Association."

The legislation was decided on a "division" vote, meaning that it's impossible to know how any one lawmaker voted or to see the partisan breakdown on the bill.