Saturday 3 August 2013

Hospital smoking bans, and not learning from the past

While Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust realises that a smoking ban on NHS premises is unenforceable, Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge decides that a ban thought to be unenforceable a few years ago is now enforceable. Whatever difficulties were found with enforcing the ban in 2008 now no longer apply. Incredibly, the ban won't apply till 1 January next year. That's a sure sign of a non-essential prohibition that is allegedly being introduced for health reasons – don't worry about enforcing it for six months.

Meanwhile in Grampian the same mistake is about to be made. Again it's a case of revisiting a policy that has been abandoned in the past.

Back and forward, to and fro. When will those who run the Trusts realise that the only way to get rid of the doorway smoking problem is to campaign for the return of comfortable indoor smoking rooms that people will be happy to use.

4 comments:

Bill Gibson said...

Times may have changed with Local Authorities having been passed the power from Government and what we now see is a testing of that power.

David Banks said...

Hospitals have well known no-smoking policies. If smokers find that they can't desist from their habit whilst on NHS property there's an easy answer - don't go there. Why do smokers think that they have a "right" to indulge in a smelly and dangerous activity whenever they choose regardless of the views of normal people who don't smoke?

Anonymous said...

David Banks:

If a person was smoking in the hospital then they are fair game. However, smoking in hospital grounds has never been illegal. When the hospital encloses and then roofs its grounds, it will then be illegal to smoke there! Until then, people are rightly exercising there right to outside!

LFB

Junican said...

@ D Banks.
Hospitals are things. They do not have policies. The hospital board members may announce that it would like to have a policy about smoking in the open air, but it does not have such power.
I have a few policies, one of which is to exercise my freedom to decide. Another is to confront emotional clap-trap wherever I come across it.