Save us from the pollution police and their perishing petitions
Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 10:17 I was on the BBC Radio Wales phone-in yesterday.
Emma Griffiths Hughes, mother of a new born baby has launched a petition to stop people smoking outside the maternity unit at a local hospital.
Ms Hughes said she was driven to action after being forced to leave the Bangor hospital with her baby through a cloud of eight smokers on either side of door.
See Calls for crackdown on smoking outside Ysbyty Gwynedd maternity unit doors (Daily Post).
Needless to say the discussion didn't stop with smoking outside maternity units. It quickly became a more general debate about smoking anywhere on hospital grounds.
Also on the programme was Suzanne Cass, CEO of ASH Wales. Suzanne sounded pleasant if a little patronising but her insistence that every smoker is an addict annoyed me and I became a little shouty.
"People drink alcohol," I pointed out. "They're not all addicted to it."
Like all tobacco controllers she also wheeled out the argument that 70 per cent want to quit.
I disputed that (quoting former Labour health secretary John Reid, once a very heavy smoker, who estimated the figure to be nearer 30 per cent) but added that even if it was true there's a huge difference between wanting to quit and being forced to quit.
Anyway, I know it's bad form to criticise a young mum but I couldn't help it. Smokers are the ones who are usually accused of being selfish but here, it seemed to me, the tables were reversed.
And so I told presenter Jason Mohammad that Emma Griffiths Hughes was being selfish. He was aghast. Nevertheless these are the facts as I understood them yesterday.
Hughes would have been in hospital for perhaps a day or two to have her baby. When it was time to go home she left the maternity unit and a for a second or two her child was exposed to a whiff of tobacco smoke (allegedly).
Emma got in the waiting car (it must have been electric because I can't imagine she would want to expose her baby to any exhaust fumes) and off she went, never to return. (Well, not for some time, hopefully.)
Emma wasn't satisfied however. Angered by having to walk past a group of people smoking in the open air she decided to launch a petition calling for a crackdown on smoking outside the maternity unit.
(I should add that smoking is already prohibited in the area but smokers ignore the signs and, according to one or two callers yesterday, staff get abuse if they ask them not to light up.)
Anyway I hope Emma's house is kept immaculately clean. Even if it is (and I've no reason to think it's not) most houses are full of chemicals from carpets, furniture and curtains, not to mention millions of dust particles.
Imagine exposing your child to all that pollution in your own home day after day and then compare it to the briefest exposure to a whiff of tobacco smoke in the open air!
So save us from the pollution police and their perishing petitions. The fact is, despite being surrounded by pollutants all day long, we survive and are living longer than ever before in human history.
My advice to Emma Griffiths Hughes?
One, enjoy this time with your new born baby.
Two, have some empathy for those for whom a cigarette break may provide comfort and a sociable interlude at a stressful time.
Three, mind your own business.
Reader Comments (6)
My children were born in that hospital. Back then, after the birth, I was brought a cup of tea and an ashtray to my bed. I can assure everyone here that no one died or had a life threatening illness as a result.
The hospital also had a TV room in which we smoked and doctors would often pop in for a chat as we did so.
These people today, who have not been breathing in life for half as long as I have been smoking, have to make themselves feel important and so picking on smokers is one way of doing that. I wish they'd find real causes to support humanity - such as raising a petition to stop the bombing of kids in Syria, who know the real meaning of poison, rather than picking on people who smoke because they are easy targets to single out for discrimination.
We are asking for no more than we have paid for. These intolerant smokerphobics should not forget that we have paid for these facilities which should be provided so give us a shed to keep us out of the way of them and their hate.
If I am to be treated even worse by hospitals then I want to raise a petition to get my 49 years of tax back that I have already paid on the product without ever claiming a penny back in so called "smoking related illnesses" and all my working years of NI. If they give me that back then I won't bother a single intolerant snob outside or inside one of today's exclusive, so called NHS "public" hospitals, again.
Secondly, I am pleased Emma did not lose her baby but for women and men who do, then a smoke is crucial in helping parents to ease the pain of miscarriage or stillbirth.
And just in case these smokerphobics don't realise, women who don't smoke lose babies too and more of them in fact.
Well said!
Sounds more like bad manners than anything that would be fixed by a petition or more legislation. To be fair, you'd hope folk would have the common decency not to blow smoke around a mum leaving hospital with her new baby, but we don't know the facts.
Funnily enough, when I was last at my local hospital, the crowd of desperate smokers outside the main entrance included not just patients, staff and visitors but the security guard taking a break from Saturday night drunks at A&E.
Blaming smokers for everything is over the top. I a smoker pay for hospitals but I do not pay for any NHS administration to tell me how to live as the admin is paid from tax levied at a stupid rate because a little politician has lost the plot.
This could all be resoled if designated smoking areas (indoors and out) were provided and the lies about second hand smoke that trigger fear and hysteria were replaced with honest discussion about risk. Add to that a little reciprocal courtesy and all can co-exist. Of course that would deny the antismokers the pleasure of denormalising and demonising smokers...