The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently issued guidelines about banning smoking across hospital grounds.
Last week I was asked to comment in 350 words:
Excessive regulation has already forced the closure of all indoor smoking rooms. Further restrictions would send quite the wrong message about our ‘caring’ NHS.
There’s nothing caring about ordering people to walk several hundred yards before they can light up off campus. It could be dark, late at night, or raining. It will almost certainly be next to a busy main road. Why do that to anyone unnecessarily?
I don’t subscribe to the idea that non-smokers are at risk from people smoking outside. You may not like the smell but your level of exposure can be counted in seconds and any smoke is massively diluted in the open air.
I agree it may not look good if people are smoking outside the main entrance but this is one of many unintended consequences of the existing smoking ban. Unable to light up indoors in a separate, well-ventilated smoking room, smokers have to stand outside. Inevitably they choose to stand by entrances and doors where there may be some shelter from the elements.
The answer to this problem is not more restrictions, forcing smokers further away with threats of fines and other penalties. The solution is a well signposted smoking shelter where patients, visitors and staff can light up in some degree of comfort.
If people object to the cost, consider this. Treating smoking-related diseases is estimated to cost the NHS £2.7 billion a year. In contrast smokers contribute over £10 billion annually through tobacco taxation.
Even in these difficult financial times a smoking shelter represents money well spent. After all, what’s the alternative? Enforcing an outdoor smoking ban means CCTV cameras, public address systems and tobacco control wardens ordering smokers to “Put that cigarette out!”.
Behind this policy is a degree of bullying that is unacceptable in a tolerant society. People are no longer educated about the health risks of smoking. Today they are patronised, insulted, and made to feel like lepers.
The public health industry is engaged in a campaign of creeping prohibition. Banning smoking in the open air, even on hospital grounds, is a step too far.