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| No | 54% | 136 votes | Total: 253 votes | |
| Yes | 46% | 117 votes |
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Add to FavoritesA hospital to many represents a place where one goes to recover from illness or injury, to be given medicine or treatment that encourages one's survival and well being. To think that such a place would provide an area to decrease one's health and risk harming others by indirect exposure defeats the purpose of that image. It is like providing candies in the waiting room of a dental office - it isn't ethical. So should hospitals have a designated smoking area? Absolutely not.
All across the world many businesses and public places have assessed the question of smoking in areas and the rights of both those who smoke and those who do not. The question comes back with roughly the same answer or variation argument, that it is unethical to subject someone who is not willingly submitting themselves to the same or even greater risk of exposure. Because of this point, most places have eliminated previous designated zones and replaced their original workings with a no-tolerance policy. The no smoking rule has spread across many forms of transportation, public gathering places, and has even started to move into bars and clubs to encourage better business.
While the counter point of smoking being a limiter to stress for those already addicted, even if so, the person in question should be allowed to leave the building if they wish to enjoy their drug. If people are feeling stressed, then that is all the more reason they need to overcome their addiction. By allowing de-stressors in the form of designated smoking zones within a medical facility, it is almost advertising itself and encouraging those who smoke to indulge in their negative behavior. Banning smoking outright will help to move more people towards quitting.
With all the health related ailments smoking leads to, it's a wonder hospitals would even consider it. Although it's unlikely, if smoking made the cut, wouldn't alcohol as well? Then the danger wouldn't be just lung cancer and all the other ailments, but liver damage as well. That sounds like a great way to promote the health of staff and patients alike - not quite.
Despite all the negatives surrounding smoking, it is true that it is still a choice. However, for those who start the habit, it is their responsibility to maintain an orderly following of it without involving those around them who want nothing to do with it. Because of this reason alone, they shouldn't try to press any more allowance out of their day than what they already have at their homes or when outside. Pushing it into hospitals simply for self-satisfaction? That's just not right.
Learn more about this author, Morgan Carlson.
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Yes
On first thought, it seems ludicrous to think that any hospital would ever allow smoking; cigarettes are a direct cause of lung cancer, emphysema, and all manner of debilitating diseases. And it's safe to say that a great number of patients in hospitals are there as a direct result of years of smoking. Cigarettes kill the people hospitals are there to save.
But there is one part of many hospitals where not allowing patients to smoke sometimes does more harm than good: the psychiatric ward.
I'm not writing here about all patients in psychiatric wards or all people who are admitted to them. I'm writing about one in particular: my brother. He's been in and out of psych wards for most of his adult life, a victim of bipolar disease and atypical personality disorder. One of the hazards of his illness is that he is also prone to addiction, and that, unfortunately, includes cigarettes. In fact, there was one point when his cigarette habit had reached four packs a day.
During one downward spiral into the depths of his illness, my brother had to be hospitalized for several days; it was the only way, his psychiatrist said, that my brother could be stabilized and kept safe from committing suicide.
For the first couple of days, my brother was put on strong doses of anti-psychotic medication and was so disoriented, he didn't think about smoking. He seemed on the way to some kind of recovery. But by his third or fourth day in the hospital, he became more himself and suddenly, his craving for cigarettes became so intense, he couldn't sleep. As a patient, he wasn't allowed to smoke anywhere in the hospital; all the smokers in that ward had to leave their cigarettes with the staff, who would take the smokers out of the building once or twice a day to have one cigarette.
One or two cigarettes for a person who is used to smoking 80 is like not smoking at all. So here was my brother, once again battling the demons that have plagued him for years, faced with the added pain of having to withdraw from a serious addiction that held him tightly in its grip.
Under any circumstances, quitting smoking is extremely difficult. It requires concentration, focus, and enormous effort. But for someone who is fighting to stay sane, it is virtually impossible. For my brother, cigarettes were a way to stay calm; they were a crutch he needed to hold on to reality. On one of the nights I visited him in the hospital he told me that he couldn't stay in the hospital to get better because he absolutely had to smoke. He said, "I came in here to get my mind back, and now I'm losing it because I can't smoke. This is no time to quit, believe me. I just can't do it."
A few days later, even though he was still dangerously ill, my brother left the hospital. Not long after that, he tried to hang himself.
It might seem impossible to believe that something like smoking cigarettes could have that much of an effect on a person. But mental illness is a scourge that has no rational explanations; it takes its own course and makes its own rules. It requires every ounce of a person's emotional, even physical, strength to battle it. Given that fact, it seems almost cruel to expect people who are trying to get better from it to give up something, perhaps the only thing, that makes them feel like they're not completely lost. I saw this time and time again among the other patients who were in the ward with my brother.
There should be some kind of exception made for hospital patients in psychiatric wards who smoke. Hospitals might try creating outdoor areas where these patients can smoke when they need to, instead of forcing them into nicotine withdrawal at a time when they're least able to cope with it.
Thankfully, my brother's illness is stabilized for now. But I dread the time, and it is sure to come, when he has to go to the hospital again and can't smoke. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken for him, and for all those who know his pain.
Learn more about this author, Sheralyn Welch.
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