Published at 09:00, Saturday, 06 March 2010

It is, in many people’s view, unsavoury, smelly and disgusting. It damages health and frequently kills.

But smoking is not a crime. And so NHS staff in north Cumbria, as elsewhere around the country, are faced with problems when attempting to stop people smoking outside hospitals.

Hospital patients sucking on cigarettes is a sorry sight. Anyone dragging on a cigarette at the entrance to a building dedicated to improving health is not a spectacle likely to gladden the heart.

No surprise, then, that frictions have arisen when hospital staff have asked members of the public to stub out their cigarettes.

Chief executive Carole Heatly was recently close to phoning the police after someone responded to her request with verbal abuse.

Hospital staff have been placed in a difficult position. NHS trusts are not allowed to permit smoking anywhere in hospital grounds.

But staff have no real power to enforce the ban. Prosecution for littering by dropping cigarette butts is the only realistic means of enforcement.

The common sense approach would surely be built around an acceptance, however unsavoury it is, that many people are addicted to nicotine.

A smoking shelter somewhere on the premises would end the sight of patients and visitors smoking at hospital entrances.

Health workers are happy to support attempts to give up. They should not be pressed into being powerless police.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk