Rules are for everyone!!

Whitewave, I am sorry for your loss and I can quite see why you have your point of view. However, for many people the stress of stopping smoking doesn't ever go away. I have heard of people still getting withdrawal symptoms ten or more years after giving up. I, for one, would not have been able to cope with that. Giving up smoking is not a process that lasts a few hours and then goes away.

I know antonia I gave up smoking in 1981 New Years Eve 20 a day habit. I still very occasionally dream of smoking. But I would never encourage a single soul or be sympathetic to someone who wants to smoke in a hospital.

If it just affected the smoker it would be bad enough , but it is everyone round them that suffers too , I know all about the addiction side of things , but surely the offer of patches or whatever should help with that ? I do remember reading about smokers blowing themselves to Kingdom Come by smoking through their Oxygen Mask !!

oh dear I shouldn't laugh!!!

My reaction too !!

Whitewave, I was not advocating that smoking should be allowed on the wards or near to hospital staff, only that the hospitals should have catered for the needs of smokers (some of whom are hospital staff themselves anyway), by providing somewhere where the smoke was not a danger to anyone else and which would alleviate the stress of ill patients. Why not a room with a powerful extractor fan? My point is that a blanket ban has caused unnecessary stress in situations where stress should be alleviated.

Lived in Oslo for a while and I was shocked at the number of smokers there. I don't think I knew anyone who smoked in Oxford and I lived there for twenty years. Re the people can always move away thing... not always, not if you're down wind of a smoker and s/he's at the windward end of the platform. This happened a few times. I'm perfectly mobile (some people are not) but the smoker needed to be at the leeward end of the platform not to inconvenience non-smokers. Just saying. Consideration for others and all that.

Simply because smokers ( maybe patients, staff, visitors) want a cigarette in the grounds of a hospital, they are banned because of leaving cig butts ?Bins can be provided.This doesn't seem reasonable to me at all.If they are desperate for a smoke(this could particularly apply to visitors, who are staying all day with relatives who are patients) why not smoke out in the fresh air, it's not harming anyone else.
Am not a smoker, but it seems that along with sensible measures ( banning smoking inside hospitals, schools, cinemas, pubs etc) we have become too draconian, in banning smoking outside.

I think I shall take up a pipe!

Absolutely, Rosesarered.

I didn't mean your taking up a pipe, I was responding to your earlier post about draconian measures.

Outside, yes, I agree, but not outside in the doorway

As I once argued long ago, and even convinced smokers: I don't care if you want to smoke yourself to death. That's your choice, your freedom. But you have no right to interfere with my freedom to breathe clean air.

So, yeah, bugger off outside. Really outside and away from the thoroughfares of in and out traffic (people traffic, obv).

Including when it's raining or blowing a gale.

Right, I'll take me pipe elsewhere!

Yes, yes, I get your point thatbags! I have often stood outside in the freezing cold, in the snow even, when visiting my DD, to have a cigarette. That is why I am just so glad now to have given up, but without an e-cig I could never have done it.

That's the spirit!

Had a friend (female) at uni who sometimes smoked a pipe but I think it was more for show than anything else. She was quite a character, and a law student.

Good for e-cigs then, I say, Antonia. Wish they'd been around when my dad was trying to stop smoking but couldn't. He died of lung cancer a long time ago.

My mother died of COPD. Having seen the agony she went through I shudder every time I see people smoking. I believe that hospitals should make patients who break the non smoking rule leave. Those who wish to stay should be given patches to help them beat their addiction. Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind.

Many hospitals have reversed their non smoking policies as they led to an increase in arson (people smoking near flamable stuff), but also taking away smoke free outdoor spaces for non smokers (as smokers smoked their in the absence of smokin shelters)

Hospitals are also supposed to offer smokers the option of nicotein replacement for the duration of their stay but many are pretty crap at asking/offering that on admission and expect patients to know that they can ask for free patches to manage withdrawl while ill/bedbound.

So.. while she was out of order, I think the hospital was too

On leaving out local hospital you have to run the gauntlet to get through all the smokers standing just at the exit .
Not much fun if you have a sick child with you.

I was waiting on crutches at the drop off whilst my sister went for her car when a when a young lady came out with what looked like s new born baby in a car carrier.
she placed the carrier on the ground and lit up a cigarette

I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for smokers
How would they feel if a toxic substance other than cigarette smoke blown over them or their child?

I don't personally feel in a position to have no sympathy for smokers
I tried cigarettes in the past, but they never "took hold" as it were. So I really can't comment on how easy it should be for addicts to not smoke.
I do think that hospitals should deal with the reality that people will smoke, and take measures to limit the impact of it.

I don't think you can draw the line in the sand at smoking in hospital. There are people in hospital with other lifestyle issues that they can't break free from: businessmen on their phones to work while being treated for heart attacks, people having weight related health problems drinking fanta and lucozade etc..

How many of us have truely lived the perfect healthy lifestyle?

The woman in question wasn't an inpatient - she had been at an outpatient clinic judging by the conversation as she approached with her friend. She wasn't exactly being deprived of smoking time/space, neither did she need a nicotine patch for an outpatient appt. Yes, there are patients eating/drinking the wrong things but these actions do not affect other people. Smoking does.

If someone is that desperate why can't they use nicotine patches even if they are an in-patient?

I used to see people standing outside in dreadful weather, drip stand dragged behind them, smoking.
Now they have banned smoking anywhere in the hospital grounds.