A Taiwanese high court has kept a 14-month prison sentence for a Kaohsiung man who smoked meth in a closed room with his young child present, a rare case where second-hand drug smoke was treated as serious harm to a child.

• The man and his wife smoked meth at home over about six months while a child under seven lived with them.
• Tests on the child's hair found high levels of meth, which the court said seriously damaged the child's development.
• Judges said the sentence was already light given the father was a repeat offender who had served time for drugs five years earlier.
• The wife, with no prior record, got a one-year sentence suspended for four years after admitting the crime.
• The court also ruled that harm to an unborn baby could not be charged, since criminal law only counts a person from birth.

Outlook: The father can still appeal to Taiwan's supreme court, but the ruling sets a marker that exposing children to drug smoke will be punished as bodily harm.