Wales has become the first of the UK nations to make it illegal to smoke on hospital and school grounds, public playgrounds and other outdoor day care and childminding settings.
A penalty of up to £100 could be given to anyone breaking the law, which is aimed at helping to discourage people from starting smoking and to support those trying to quit.
The Labour-led government said it also hoped to protect more people from being exposed to secondhand smoke and reduce the chances of children taking up the habit by making it seem less normal.
So, someone in hospital now needs to be wheeled right out of the hospital grounds in order to have crafty fag rather than being able to nip out the back door?
Sod ’em.
Their gaff, their rules. But from the other end, being a “customer” I would walk out if they allowed any smokers anywhere near me while I was there.
I almost walked out of a jury once because there were smokers stenching the place up – but I’d manipulated them into appointing me chair, so I was conflicted between POWAR! and UP YOURS!
My local ( English) hospital employed Smoke Wardens to waddle around ( they were v fat) to tell people off for having a fag on hospital grounds.
Your tax money at work.
So banning smoking on hospital grounds and playgrounds is implemented to stop children taking up the habit. What about the smoking by parents in their own homes. Will the Welsh gov go the next step and ban smoking in homes to protect the children. It’s always about the children for nannying fussbuckets.
The English hospitals I have visited all ban smoking in the grounds. Not a law, but when it’s a government owned quasi-monopoly supplier, is there much difference?
@jgh, their gaff, their rules. Except when it comes to fines. Civil penalties occupy a grey area in the law. They should only be used for damages, not as punishment. So a contractor can be fined for not finishing a project on time. But when being given a parking fine it must be proportionate to the damages the owner suffers from the car being parked and must not be excessive.
Must admit I loathe breathing in smoke. But provided I don’t have to breathe it, I don’t care what people do.
99% of the whole stuff about second-hand smoking is made-up. If second-hand smoke was that bad they never would have noticed that smokers were vastly more likely to get lung cancer.
Re second-hand smoke… Years ago I saw a study that summed up along the lines of “spending four hours in a very smoky pub increased a non-smoker’s blood nicotine level by the equivalent of eating one medium-sized potato”. “Second-hand smoke” is bollocks-on-stilts (and I say that as a life-long non-smoker!).
“Potato, Blackadder ?”
“No thank you, I don’t.”
– Must admit I loathe breathing in smoke. But provided I don’t have to breathe it, I don’t care what people do.
Same. But smoking in public areas pretty much obliges third parties to suffer; it’s a stinking fist that fails to stop at the end of our nose. Governments have got the rules the wrong way around. Smoking should only be permitted in private, enclosed spaces.
(BTW, if I was a hospital boss I would provide smoking facilities for patient and staff welfare).
(BTW, if I was a hospital boss I would provide smoking facilities for patient and staff welfare).
“Smoking facilities” are generally so manky they are an incentive to quit.
PJF: That’s the rule in Japan. Took me quite by surprise when I was there, popped into a pub for a drink had to rush out to avoid throwing up. “Non-smoking” booths next to smoking booths – the stench obeys the signs y’see. People huddling on the forecourt of the 7-11 to smoke as it wasn’t the public pavement.
Baron: It’s not the nicotine, it’s the tar that does the damage in smoky atmospheres. Nicotine is inflammable, so smoke off the end won’t have much. Cigarettes probably work because hot gases evaporate it out of the tobacco into the inhaled smoke.
There are also very few smokers who don’t carelessly discard their fag-ends wherever they happen to be. Weird.
Smokers regard the world as their ashtray.
As for hospitalised smokers, give them a nicotine patch.