Smoking Fines !

Ask any ex-smoker and they will tell you about the agony of cravings for a cigarette when they have decided to give up the habit and gone "cold turkey  "!    Nicotine is notoriously addictive and is often compared to Heroin for the strength of it's ability to take control of a user's life.   It seems that the campaign to stop people smoking is now moving into high gear and persuasion is being replaced by force.

All forms of tobacco are now prohibitive items in this state's prison system.  Push turned to shove a month ago and by the stroke of a pen nicotine became a banned substance for those "guest's of the government "occupying a prison cell.  No doubt tobacco has become a new "currency " within prisons and is just as readily available today as illicit drugs have been in the past.

Any day we pass Wollongong's main hospital in Crown street we are sure to see a bevy of people on the footpath puffing on cigarettes.  That is despite prominent signs at all hospital entrances warning that it is illegal to smoke within ten metres of entrances and threatening a $300 on the spot fine for offenders.

Now we learn that this state's hospitals have come under pressure to implement those bans and their security people have started handing out fines.   It seems to be an incremental use of the law to gradually tighten the non smoking net, but at the same time leave nicotine as a legal product and net the tax bonanza that Treasury is reluctant to lose.

Hospital patients usually do not enjoy their stay in these medical institutions.  They are places of great tension - and often the deliverer of very bad news.  Unfortunately, pain is often a necessary companion to surgical operations and the fact that patients are separated from home and loved ones adds to the mental tension.  If a person is a smoker, the need for the soothing effect of nicotine becomes almost overwhelming.

That is just so apparent when considering those who congregate outside hospital entrances. Most have a coat over pyjamas and many use walking aids.   They have slipped away from their wards, often with a nod from an attending nurse concerned at their degree of agitation, and they return refreshed - with their craving appeased.   Imposing this ban seems little more than an act of incredible cruelty.

Smoking does cause both early death and many diseases but that damage is done long before they become hospital patients.   Many smokers are eager to quit the habit, but the timing of forcing this decision on them when they are battling the aftermath of an operation seems counter productive. It seems to be a case of diktat from above with little appreciation of how nicotine may help in getting the patient over the stress of an imposed hospital stay.

The likely outcome of this fine implementation move will be to cause patients in Wollongong to disperse further from the rain protected area immediately covering the entrance and congregate further along the street, outside of that ten metre exclusion zone.   Cold, wet and windy conditions are unlikely to counter the desperation for that nicotine fix.

No doubt the person who demanded that the non smoking rule be implemented with sharp teeth thinks they have done a great public service.   Making tobacco more expensive and reducing the number of outlets offering it for sale are legitimate weapons in the anti-nicotine war, but imposing an artificial ban on those under stress and denying them the comfort that nicotine can deliver is little more than the imposition of torture.