Rules are for everyone!!

I had a hysterectomy and DH came to the hospital to take me home. I was in a very weak state so he found me a bench by the main door while he fetched the car. Two men came and sat either side of me. Both lit up their fags and blew smoke all over me. I felt like vomiting. How inconsiderate they were. I hate the smell of smoke.

Antonia I am not objecting to smoking, if people want to smoke, that is their business.
I do have a problem running the gauntlet of smokers at the entrance to a hospital, when I am on my way to a respiratory appointment and already struggling to breath. Neither am I saying that walking past a smoker will cause long term damage. A whiff of smoke is enought to start a coughing fit and then I start wheezing. I understand where the OP is coming from.

Marydoll, I am not agreement about smoking in a school staffroom. I used to teach in a junior school where lots of people smoked, and smoked in the classroom with children standing next to them! In those days, attitudes towards smoking had not reached the manic, shock-horror proportions of today. No-one batted an eyelid over classroom smoking. It is our attitudes that have changed. I do think it is a bit for an over-reaction to imply that walking past someone smoking is going to cause long term damage. A whiff of cigarette smoke doesn't cause cancer, it's longterm exposure that is harmful.
No-one takes this attitude towards people filling up their cars at a petrol station, and yet the fumes from petrol are seriously bad for you. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1981951
Sue1169 I hope you had a lovely time in Dubai.

grannypiper I totally agree that it is addictive and addicts need help. However, they have no right to inflict their poisonous fumes on others. e.g standing at the doors of a hospital and blowing their poisonous fumes as sick people go past. Anyone who has experienced an asthma attack will tell you, it is one of the scariest things you will ever experience.
I worked in a school years ago, where nearly everyone smoked. I couldn't used the staffroom as there was always a thick fog of smoke in it. Those staff members who smoked, thought they had a right to inflict their poison on others, without any regard for other staff's welfare. It was the non-smokers who had the problem. We were selfish in complaining.Totally self centred!
As for chemicals under the sink, we people with chronic lung disease can make that choice not to buy them, nor do we inflict them on others.
Smokers, puff if you like, that's your business, but don't inflict it on those who do not want to inhale your carcinogenic poisons.

..have just read all this with great interest!...unfortunatly AM still battling with the 'weed'. keep stopping/starting..cutting down..smoking more..changing brands..patch on patch off..aaaagh BUT never ever impose my smoking on other people! Antonia I would have used the lift too!! Its a horrendous addiction!!! Happy for all of you who've conquered it ?

Smoking is addictive and addicts need help to give up.It is not any different to giving up heroin or alcohol.Yes i agree passive smoking is dangerous and causes asthma but so do diesel fumes and i don't see many people giving up their cars, household cleaning products cause asthma also, what stash have you got under your sink ? We are all as guilty as each other.

Notanan, my first SIL led the perfect healthy lifestyle. Extremely active, a non smoker etc. He died of leukaemia aged 24.

Its a persons choice if the wish to smoke but their life style choice should not impact on others
Patents leaving a hospital should not have walk through other people's smoke.
Young babies and children are more susceptible to the Nicoline fumes

I understand that there are people with addictions but they don't usually affect the public around them.
I would be very upset if I got sprayed in fanta every time I stood next to a person drinking outside.
But a least that would not affect my health,,
Unlike Passive Smoking !

I was never offered a nicotine patch, even though I was an in-patient, I was just left to suffer withdrawal symptoms. No-one even asked if I was a smoker. This was in the days before e-cigs, I might add.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Right, I'll take me pipe elsewhere!

Including when it's raining or blowing a gale.

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).

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

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

Absolutely, Rosesarered.