Almost thinking outside the box on smoking

Well done the Telegraph for stating the obvious on smoking – that any arrangement resulting in patients smoking in beds and adjacent to oxygen tents is a thoroughly bad one and needs to be changed urgently. 'Let the patients puff away in their shelters,' it says. Well, that would be a marked improvement on having to go out on to the street. There was never any excuse for implementing comprehensive site bans in the first place – nobody can say they weren't warned.

But it didn't go far enough. Shelters are not the answer if you are confined to bed and have mobility problems. If on the other hand you are with a relative who is seriously unwell and you want to go for a quick smoke while they are undergoing treatment, the last place you want to be is in a shelter round the back of the hospital where you cannot be found if needed. I appreciate that the Telegraph might not want to condone breaking the law, but in this case they should have gone further.

The only solution to the problem of hospital smoking is large comfortable smoking rooms (preferably with coffee facilities) that will attract patients and visitors out of doorways and other places where they feel driven to smoke. Instead of treating smokers as culprits and driving them to situations where their smoke will inconvenience or endanger others, how about allowing them some dignity – or is that now considered to be against the national interest?

And well done Duncan Barkes of Talksport for making this very point on this morning's show (about 3.45 am)!