MUSC Smoking Ban
While I enjoy the smell of cigars and pipes, I abhor cigarette smoke. It stinks, makes my nose itch, causes my eyes water, and it makes me cough. Most of all, it just really pisses me off.
I'm baffled by the millions of cigarette smokers who insist that it's their right to poison the air that I have no choice but to breathe with more than 40 carcinogens. They complain that smoking bans infringe on their right to enjoy a cigarette, yet they could care less that their smoke wafts into my air--and I believe I'm entitled to clean, healthy air.
When Charleston kids put things into their teacher's drink a few months ago, they were accused of assault. If I put lead in your drinking water or poison your food, I've committed a crime. Yet you poison my air and call it your God-given right.
I have nothing against other people putting bad things into their bodies. If you want to smoke, I'm very happy for you; however, if you want to make me smoke your smoke, then we have a problem.
MUSC had a very serious problem because there was no refuge from the smoke, and I'm pleased to announce that I'm very pleased that MUSC has announced restricted smoking areas around the hospital grounds. Now the many nurses, doctors, patients, nervous visitors, and students will be forced to smoke in herds instead of spread out all over the entire campus.
Here's part of the message sent to me by MUSC president, Dr. Greenberg:
Dear Students,
As you may know, effective this month, smoking will be restricted to a limited number of areas at the Medical University of South Carolina. This policy has been adopted by the Board of Trustees and reflects our desire to protect the health of those who work and study here, as well as those who visit our campus. Moreover, we believe that limiting smoking is consistent with our role as the state’s leading center for health education, biomedical research, and advanced clinical care. ...
Unfortunately, the restrictions don't go far enough. This clean air attempt was actually spearheaded by MUSC student government, but it met some resistance from MUSC's board and the lawyers, who, for fear of lawsuits, watered down the smoking ban to the point that it is very nearly meaningless.
1. There is no enforcement, and no penalty has been prescribed for those smokers who insist on polluting wherever they please. We need a smoking ban with teeth.
2. The smoking areas are still right next to entrances. I'm not real sure who decided on the locations for the designated smoking areas, but whoever made that decision must think that the smoke goes straight up into the atmosphere.
The main smoking area is directly outside the major hospital doors, and I still walk through a cloud of smoke every time I walk into the hospital.
We need a smoking ban with some more thoughtful designation of smoking areas--perhaps completely abolishing cigarettes from MUSC's campus.
But if MUSC's board of reagents can't handle that, then I'd humbly settle for smoke-free entrances.
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8 comments:
St. Francis Hospital grounds are going completely smoke free. None allowed any where on the property. Employees can't even go smoke in their cars.
I don't smoke so it won't bother me, but I'm sure there are some grumpy times ahead.
St. Francis has picked the better path.
I think I'm going to try to get a picture of the smoke cloud in front of the revolving doors at MUSC
Why not just ban smoking? Why not ban drinking? Why not ban FUN? Let's all lead lives of toil and struggle so that the government, empowered by our tax dollars, can find new ways to make life suck worse.
Or, a better idea. Why not avoid people who are smoking? Nobody said you have to walk through a cloud of smoke. Find a new way to get where you need to go, and stop whining and bothering people.
Chip,
I think that the right to clean air is similar to a person's right to have peace and quiet in their home. Despite your first amendment rights, you can't blow air horns and scream outside your neighbor's house all through the night because his right to a peaceful night supersedes your right to be a pain in the butt.
I think it's important to consider the effects your smoking has on people around you. What if your smoke triggers an asthma attack in a sick kid? I think that'd make you a real d... .
Most hospitals do not allow latex anywhere in the building for similar reasons.
I'm sorry your life of "toil and struggle" sucks so bad, and you're welcome to kill yourself any way you like--just don't insist on bringing me along for the ride.
Okay here is my take on smaoking bans. Since I myself am a healthcare worker and also a smoker. I truly understand a smoking ban for on duty medical workers. I do not smoke when I am in uniform, I work in the back of small cramped ambulance with piss poor ventilation. The last thing my sick as snot patient with chest pain or shortness of breath wants is to smell the smoke on my clothes. So I refrain from smoking, sometime up to 48 hours (My shifts can last that long) So I compleatly get the smoking bans at hospitals. Now, with that said...I think the smoking bans at BARS and places that are truly bars, not restaraunts, not cafes, but bars is, well wrong. I go to a bar to have a drink, usually a guinness, and yes, a smoke. Bars by they very nature are like that. And most bartenders I know are themselves smokers. And there are several bars here localy that are non smoking. So if you don't want to be around smoking, then choose to go to the non smoking bars. And I will stay out of your non smoking bars, because I do enjoy a smokey treat with my guinness. But I guess now I will have to choose to enjoy my beer at home, (and most of my friends and their friends and thier friends, who says smoking bans don't hurt buiness, just ask the bars owners on Sullivan's Island about smoking bans and buiness) where I can still have a cancer stick in peace. Or do you want to ban that too.
Like everything in life, there is a place for everything. Smoking does not belong anywhere near a hospital, or ambualnce, or anywhere else where peoplce could be sick, immunocompromised, hurt. Or even where people are eating dinner with thier family. But If I want to go to any given bar on King and sit at the bar where there should be no sick people or children, or anyone along those lines, and enjoy a drink and a smoke. I should have that right also. Its like cable TV, if you don't like what's on, change the channel, don't take out the whole broadcasting system.
Painter,
Thanks for your thoughts--I think you're right on.
I have no issue with smoking in bars. (FYI: drinking and smoking at the same time exponentially increases your odds of getting oral cancer.)
But if you're OK with that, smoke it up in the bars--I'm not very interested in protecting smokers from themselves. Besides, nobody goes to a bar because it's part of their fitness program.
I am, however, very interested in protecting myself and others from the multitude of unscrupulous smokers.
Smoking areas in restaurants are a joke... you still get attacked by the haze. Smoking areas outside hospitals appear to suffer from the same problems.
I'm OK twith exempting most bars from smoking bans. However, when exempting bars from smoking bans, you have to determine how to differentiate restaurants that are primary food establishmens and have a bar (i.e. Ruby Tuesday)from businesses that are primarily bars and only serve food because SC law requres all bars to also serve food. So where do you draw the line?
For a while this was how Atlanta was doing it. Placecs that were primarly bars, of course stay open past like 10pm. The Resteraunts however close around that time. So After ten the bars allowed smoking, as long as food wasn't served after ten. Most bars I know round here quit serving food around 10 anyways. King Street Grill, Meritage, and AC's I think are really the only ones that serve up to 1am. So either make them non smoking, or don't serve food after a designated time.
I think we should ban smoking for anyone that has children. There isn't a health organization or doctor anywhere that will endorse smoking as a healthy activity. You certainly have the right to slowly kill yourself but you do not have the right to give your kids asthma and start them on a road to lung cancer. While I don't have children, I think most parents would agree that when you do you give up alot of things, the right to privacy, you give up time, money and sleep for sure. Why not give up smoking?
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