Another fine mess
Friday, January 22, 2016 at 7:53 Local residents have failed in their bid to get smoking banned in their road which borders a local hospital.
Since smoking was banned in the grounds of the hospital up to 30 people allegedly gather at any one time to light up.
According to reports most are nurses and ancillary workers.
Three hundred residents signed a petition in favour of banning smoking in their street but the council has rightly rejected the idea, arguing it would be impossible to enforce.
As it happens I have some sympathy for residents because I wouldn't fancy that many people gathering near my house, some in the middle of the night.
But prohibition isn't the answer because even if you could enforce it all that does is divert the 'problem' elsewhere.
The solution is screamingly obvious to me (but I'm not a highly paid hospital administrator).
Patients, staff and visitors must be allowed to smoke on hospital grounds, if not everywhere then at least in designated smoking areas.
It's not rocket science but the war on tobacco seems to have dulled people's ability to make the simplest decisions.
No wonder the NHS is in such a mess.
Reader Comments (5)
I totally agree Simon and this truly does show just how stupid people really are because not one of the 300 residents who wasted their time & effort (signing) would have batted an eyelid had the motion been about cars/exhaust fumes etc. (considerably more poisonous).
Just because a hospital declares that 'it' and the grounds are smoke free, it does not mean that such has suddenly become law - yet people are daft enough to think so!
Leicester Royal Infirmary continuously bleats out the same old message from the highly irritating tannoy system, telling people that it is against the law to smoke on hospital grounds (which, incidentally, seldom stops people gathering outside A&E!) and they are amazed when I tell them that it isn't against the law at all-it's only what they want you to believe!
This entire war on smokers has been a costly failure, but, like the American drugs war (wasted $40tr) they will continue until they finally conclude that they can't win!
Now what could our beloved NHS do with £1/2bn every month I wonder???
I'm sure the residents took this step to stop 30 people chatting outside their houses in the middle of the night. It had little to do with smoking. Any rational smoker who wanted a good night's sleep would also sign the petition. I would. As to your main point, I completely agree. Banning smoking on the hospital grounds displays a callous disregard for the quality of life of nearby residents.
Absolutely well said, Simon. THANKS !!!!
“Patients, staff and visitors must be allowed to smoke on hospital grounds, if not everywhere then at least in designated smoking areas.”
Well of course, that would be the most obvious solution to anyone but the most wilfully blind anti-smoking zealot. The trouble is, the kind of people who make decisions like this, i.e. to ban smoking on an entire hospital campus, are wilfully blind anti-smoking zealots. And, to them, the idea of doing a U-turn on their beloved gold-plating of the anti-smoking legislation would amount to a massive loss of face. Almost an admittance of [whisper it quietly] failure of an anti-smoking measure. And they can’t do that – they just can’t. Not only would such an admittance deduct them the Brownie points recently (they think) gained from the Great and the Good in Tobacco Control, but, more importantly, it would shake their jealously-guarded beliefs, that Anything Which Is Anti-Smoking Must Automatically Be A Good Thing, to its very roots. It’s tantamount to asking a devout Christian to publicly accept the concept that there might – just might – be some doubt as to the very existence of God. Such a thought is so terrifying to them that they'll cling onto it with their fingernails rather than shift, even a tiny bit, towards a different viewpoint.
So, whatever the hospital’s solution to this might be, you can guarantee that won’t be your very obviously sensible one, Simon, but instead that it’ll involve all sorts of extraordinary mental and verbal gymnastics as they vainly try to find another “solution” to the “problem,” whilst at the same time trying not to admit that this “solution” has been nothing short of a dismal failure.
Thing is, if you're an informed member of the public you can point out that no law is being broken by smoking in the grounds; if you're a member of staff you can bet that the issue will be in the disciplinary manual. Once upon a time the union would have been up in arms about it.