A doctor writes
Dr Phil Button writes: I am a senior doctor and have worked at the North Hampshire Hospital Trust for 15 years. I am very happy there and believe our hospital to be one of the best in the country. Our management staff are of the highest calibre and I have nothing but praise for their efforts.
That said, how preposterous to stop staff, patients and perhaps distressed relatives of patients smoking anywhere on site. This is an inhumane and cynical proposal brought about by pressure from a huge league of prominent anti-smoking groups. These organisations have pedalled propaganda on a par with the Nazi antismoking movement before the Second World War. They have saturated the media with untruths and scaremongering at great expense to the taxpayer, the money coming directly out of the Health Service purse.
The whole basis for the ban is the notion that environmental tobacco smoke causes harm to non-smokers. This is against the evidence available at present but nevertheless scandalously repeated by reputable bodies such as the NHS, the BMA and the British Heart Foundation. These bodies extrapolate fictional numbers of barworkers who might be expected to die if there was a link of the size quoted, scaring the living daylights out of the public. There is no such proven link.
So smoking is bad for your health. What isn't? What's next? Stopping doctors drinking, banning cars? The hope is that the hospital is promoting a better image by stopping people smoking outside the main entrance. I disagree. The hospital is mindlessly jumping on a bandwagon and in so doing trampling over decent people's misfortune at times of enormous stress. Why can't the Trust be innovative and accept that smoking is legal, it does no harm to non-smokers and nearly a third of the country do it? Why marginalize and demonise a large minority of the human population? Why not show a little compassion?
It's time in my opinion for smokers to stand up and be counted and stop tolerating this attempt at alienation. Smokers don't harm anyone and add to the colour and individuality of our country. Smoking has tradition and history behind it and the United Kingdom should remain the bastion of tolerance and freedom it has always been. Let's leap off the anti-smoking bandwagon, now!
posted by Simon Clark @ 19:13
10 comments
10 Comments:
A close relative of mine was in hospital for six weeks and I went to visit most days.
I smoke and during the visits, when the nurses were taking her temperature, wheeling her to the toilet etc, I made my way to the main entrance for a fag.
At the entrance there were a crowd of patients, some dragging mobile drips, trying to escape for a drag. Dogends covered the entrance - it was disguting.
This hospital had problems with infection, especially the norwall stomach infection at the time, and these smokers wandered through the hospital via other wards numerous times every day.
Would not a smoking area on the ward been more sensible? Also a lot of staff and paramedics smoked around there although they did it more sneakily and smoked behind the ambulances.
Just come off duty and rumour has it that the hospital I work in as a nurse is going to ban smoking completely.
We are already banished outside by the rubbish bins but it now seems the managers, in their infinite wisdom, half of whom smoke, want to stop this as well.
I said I would go and sit in my car as I already pay to park my car (£27 a year I might add) but apparently they are going to suspend anyone caught sitting in their car smoking and any member of staff they recognise who is smoking at a bus stop on the hospital premises, in or out of uniform.
My question is this - is this not an infringment of my civil liberties? The NHS does not pay me for my breaks so therefore should I not be allowed to smoke in my car, at the very least, when I am not being paid?
I sympathise with the plight of the nurse - it's about time this constant alienation of smokers is stopped and the perpetrators told politely to Foxtrot Oscar.
Can anyone from FOREST advise, or take out a legal case against this sort of case?
Well written Doctor Button and I have visited your courageous Blog site on a number of occasions.
It is my experience that you are not the only person involved in the medical profession to express such views, but many are not as willing to speak their minds so openly.
It is certainly the case however, that SOME members of the medical establishment have grown far to big for their boots, moving way beyond their role as medical practitioners by attempting to dictate our lifestyles and without due regard for the truth as you say.
Moreover, it is surely not acceptable to promote a cause on the back of a lie which requires greater and greater fabrication in order to sustain it. I refer, of course, to the claim that second hand smoke, in the quantities in wich we normally experience it, is a deadly toxic substance.
I was particularly troubled too, by the news report about Liverpool hospital, where a female cancer patient was extemely worried about passing smokers at the door to the hospital in case contact with their smoke worsened her condition.
This was heartbreaking, firstly because the woman had such a condition, and secondly, because she had been made to be afraid of something that she should not be. I honestly begin to wonder how the anti-smoking lobby can feel justified or proud of themselves for generating such needless fears in very sick patients.
As for the CMO's threat to resign if a total smoking ban did not come into effect. This was, of course, an attempt to coerce matters. However, he should indeed go, for he and a number of his colleagues have helped to create this above described climate of fear and, although his original motives to improve people's health were probably very well intentioned, he too must learn that the end does not justify the means!
While unelected organisations such as ASH, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK are able to lobby the Government, the media and the public, without it seems any accountablility for the misinformation they spread about smokers and smoking, we will continue to see our civil liberties vanish. I will no longer support these charities and suggest that others do likewise.
Alison
I agree absolutely and I already chose not to donate to implicated bodies. Well said.
"A doctor writes"...
Are you really a doctor? Good god... how long ago did you qualify? Did you listen to anything they taught you?
From a medical student.
Anonymous, is it the case that everything you have been taught MUST be correct?
How many medical theories and hypotheses have fallen by the wayside over time?
At least Dr Button is an independent thinker and whether his views eventually turn out to be right or wrong, the ability and will to challenge current "recieved wisdom" is essential to the development of a truly healthy society.
I completely agree with the Dr's post. The anti-smoking groups have done a super job of PR. They have the public at large terrified of second hand smoke and are sure it's the cause of all major health issues that plague mankind. Smokers rights are being systimatically taken away, which to my way of thinking is completely unconstitutional and discrimatory. If there had been as much attention put to eliminating cocaine, meth, marijuana, etc. (the ILLEGAL drugs) which certainly kill and cause crime rates to be up, the population would truly be helped. I remember some years ago when it was reported that eating chicken skin and ground beef would surely cause cancer. I find it very difficult to understand how these groups who are pushing for smokers rights to be eliminated, can see no further than the end of their noses. Do they not realize rights taken away from any group increases the risk to all that their rights can be taken also. It definitely is past time for smokers to stand up and say enough! Jan Brizzi, Wa. state USA
My G.P. also seems to have a thing about smoking and smokers. Last time I consulted him (over an entirely unrelated issue), all he kept on about was my smoking 'habit' as he termed it. "How many do you smoke a day?" he asked. I truthfully replied that I didn't know, because I smoke 'roll-ups' and just roll one when I feel like a smoke. I do not count them. He failed to understand this and repeated his question. I started to get annoyed with him and then he produced his 'trump' card. He wrote the phone number of a Group at my local hospital that is supposed to be able to help you stop smokeing.
"But, I don't want to stop, Doctor," I replied, "I enjoy my tobacco".
"Take this number anyway, give them a call and go along and see them" he told me.
I refused, and he quite literally forced me to take the paper, I walked out of his surgery, and haven't seen him since!
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