Quiet sympathisers and dull negative naggers
Wednesday, September 23, 2015 at 14:48 I've had a lot to say about hospital smoking bans recently.
I think it's an area where we can get the anti-smoking industry on the back foot. It may seem logical to some to ban smoking in hospital grounds but it's fundamentally inhumane and demonstrates the ideological zealotry that drives many anti-tobacco campaigners.
In April smoking was banned in the grounds of all NHS properties in Scotland, including psychiatric hospitals, but according to reports the ban is widely ignored.
To combat this shocking insurrection the Scottish Government now wants to make smoking in hospital grounds a criminal offence.
In England there's no national ban (yet), although it's been recommended by those nice people at, er, NICE, but individual hospitals like Chesterfield Royal Hospital in Derbyshire are considering a ban and Nottingham City Hospital – which has introduced a ban – now wants a change in the law so smokers can be prosecuted.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. There are still some decent, even normal, people in public health and following yesterday's post about Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge (where 11,000 people have been challenged for smoking on site in a single year), I was pleased to received this email:
I was recently at an event for the staff of my local hospital. As the smokers gathered outside in the sun we were joined by non-smokers.
It was interesting to hear remarks like "I don't smoke but I always enjoy the smell."
Another shut her eyes and breathed in. "I used to smoke," she said smiling.
A mature well-dressed lady came out and took a cigarette from her bag. There seemed to be a gasp of disbelief from the group and they joked about the fact that they didn't know she smoked.
Earlier I was standing with the non-smoking group and they referred to the smokers as the "fun group", which says it all really.
There are some people who hate smokers but there are many quiet sympathisers. The anti-smoking groups aren't seen as nice people but as dull negative naggers.
That email got me thinking. Somehow we have to motivate those "quiet sympathisers" to speak out or engage in the ongoing battle against the killjoys and puritans.
How we do that I'm not quite sure. After all, it's hardly in their immediate interest, especially if they work in a hospital, to declare openly their laissez-faire attitude to smoking.
The real issue for them is long-term. If the "negative naggers" get their way how many more products will be severely restricted, how many more lifestyles will be severely curtailed? How long before the concept of freedom of choice is extinguished completely?
Reader Comments (9)
It's already moved on using the same junk science, junk stats, and scaremongering via the political exploitation of children.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3241596/Cabinet-rift-new-plan-curb-ads-junk-food-Government-divided-Health-Secretary-Jeremy-Hunt-s-crack-TV-adverts-promoting-unhealthy-food.html
"How we do that I'm not quite sure. After all, it's hardly in their immediate interest, especially if they work in a hospital, to declare openly their laissez-faire attitude to smoking"
I recently basically got thrown out of an interview for an AHP position at a psychiatric unit in Oxfordshire for calling their anti-smoking policy abusive. Name withheld for obvious reasons.
Banning smoking in hospital grounds is inhumane it shows the NHS and its hateful anti smoking groups such as SmokeFree South West in their true colours, bullying patients, the sick and those most vulnerable in our society by forcing them to quit smoking, as they are unable to leave hospital grounds.
The NHS are disgusting beyond contempt bringing about such bans, lets hope action is taken against these health dictators before the law is changed banning smoking outdoors which would be enough to dissuade many in need of medical attention from visiting hospital at all.
I do wonder sometimes whether all this push for all-grounds smoking bans is precisely because of the views expressed in the e-mail you received, Simon. The anti-smoking zealots won’t admit it, but privately they all darned well know that the vast majority of non-smokers actually don’t give much of a tinker’s cuss either way about smoking and they also know that most non-smokers know that the best company is found in the company of smokers and will very often seek to join them, even if (as non-smokers) they aren’t smoking.
Oh, for sure, in the winter when it’s freezing cold or pouring with rain, non-smokers won’t go outside to join smokers, but if the weather is at least fairly pleasant, in my experience, many will congregate happily with the smokers wherever they are for a bit of light-hearted chat and company in preference to sitting inside with the dyed-in-the-wool antis, who (sorry, but it’s true) are generally the least popular people in the pub/office/club or wherever.
This really does a lot of damage to the whole “denormalisation” programme – it not only shows that antis do not speak for the majority of non-smokers, as they like to pretend, but it’s also a glaring example of how their attempt to divide society into “smoker” and “non-smoker” groups just hasn’t panned out as it should. Hence the constant braying for outside smoking bans. After all, everyone knows it isn’t about health, because there’s absolutely no way of proving, in the open air and changing weather conditions ranging from a Force 10 hurricane to no wind at all, and from monsoon-esque rain to dry-as-a-bone humidity, that smoking is in any way harmful to non-smokers’ health – there are just too many variables for any “study” to come up with any meaningful information. So the real reason must therefore surely be that all those naughty non-smokers simply must be stopped from socialising with their smoking friends. Non-smokers, it seems, are as subject to the “conform, or be made to conform” edicts as are smokers!
There are politicians already swivel eyed in anticipation of stigmatisation of another targeted group.
ttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meat-eaters-should-be-treated-like-smokers-says-the-vegan-shadow-environment-secretary-kerry-10515299.html
Had to pop to my local hospital the other night when a relative was rushed into casualty. All the usual 'No Smoking' signs but leaving the building around 9PM I was amused to see some patients and staff having a fag and chat right outside a main door.
When the public health administrator's away, the mice will .....well, you get the idea!
Smoking rooms must be provided as hospitals are run on taxes.
Politicians remain out of touch.
This country's insane!
Just cross the channel to find a grown-up attitude to the EU's anti-smoking policy - smoking rooms at airports, railway stations, etc.
But not for the infantilised drones in the UK - our Big Brothers know best.
If you think UK hospitals are insane you wouldnt want to experience Irish hospitals, work houses would be a better word for them where the lucky ones get a bed, on any given day up to 30 or 40 people are lying on trolleys waiting to be seen and it could be days before you get a bed and a smoker knows better than to go outside for a smoke, because his trolley would be occupied by someone else on the queue when he got back and he could end up sitting on a chair.
Basket case isnt in it!