Sign of the times

I took this photo outside my local hospital yesterday.

There are so many ‘smoke free zone’ signs on the grounds I lost count.

The funny thing is, to my right (out of shot) a man was quietly smoking a cigarette on the grass. He was alone and there was no-one within 50 yards of him.

Twenty yards from the main entrance, in another grassy area, two elderly female patients were sitting on a bench, each holding a lit cigarette.

Wearing woollen coats over what appeared to be their nightwear, they were talking and smoking.

On another bench a little further away a third woman also had a cigarette in her hand.

On previous visits to the same hospital I’ve even seen ambulance crew smoking next to their vehicles.

However the claim that by lighting up outside hospitals smokers are forcing non-smokers (patients and visitors) to breathe ‘plumes of smoke’ is patently false.

Non-smokers, we are told, often have to ‘run a gauntlet’ of smoke when entering hospitals and perhaps there are some entrances where this is the case but I’ve visited several hospitals, large and small, in recent years and it’s never been an issue.

At my local hospital yesterday I had to walk past the women on the first bench twice to confirm they were smoking and it wasn’t immediately obvious that the woman on the second bench was smoking either.

The good news is that the hospital managers seem to be using their common sense and are not out and about reminding people of the policy or, worse, enforcing it which would be difficult because it’s not yet illegal to smoke on hospital grounds in England, unlike Scotland and Wales.

Presumably, in England, NHS trusts rely on smokers being intimidated by all the ‘smoke free zone’ signs.

The reality, I suspect, is that while many hospitals claim to operate a ‘smoke free’ policy most have far more important priorities and managers rightly use their discretion before jumping in to try and enforce it.

Smoking on the grounds of my local hospital is clearly not a major issue. This was my fourth visit in recent weeks and there has never been more than a handful of people smoking at any one time. They were in the open air and well away from the entrance.

The ‘problem’, I believe, has been largely manufactured (and exaggerated) by the anti-smoking lobby so they can claim another pyrrhic victory when smoking is either banned on hospital grounds (Scotland, Wales) or NHS trusts in England announce they are going ‘smoke free’ (sic).

As Forest has consistently argued (Prejudice and Prohibition: Results of a study of smoking and vaping policies on NHS hospital trusts in England) many people smoke when stressed or under pressure and there are few more stressful places than hospital, especially if you have just been given bad news or, if you are a member of staff, you have recently finished a long and tiring shift.

Why is it so hard to understand that in those circumstances some people may wish to have a cigarette, outside and in the open air where they aren’t bothering anyone other than the righteous and easily offended?

Congratulations then to the management of my local hospital (which I won’t name!) for apparently demonstrating some much needed empathy for patients, visitors and staff for whom a comforting cigarette might be just the thing they need to pull them through a difficult moment.

If you’re a stickler for rules and regulations it can’t be easy turning a blind eye but in this instance it’s the right thing to do.

See also: Dear Tracy Brabin (March 2019), an open letter from me to the former Labour MP who in 2019 tried to introduce a private members’ bill to ban smoking on hospital grounds in England.

Brabin, a former Coronation Street actress, is now Mayor of West Yorkshire.