Seeing seriously-ill patients and their so-called friends smoking in hospital grounds is horrific. As if their lives were not bad enough. Well done to the Glasgow hospital which has hired hit squads to make patients and visitors stub it out. The cessation officers, to use the horrible NHS jargon, will also give advice on quitting the appallingly stinky, manky habit.
But does splendid move go far enough? What about the staff? With all the information available to them about the harm they do themselves and others, they have no excuse for ingesting cancer-causing chemicals and poisoning their partners and offspring. They might as well put a gun to their heads. Yet that is precisely what many of them still do.
A junior hospital doctor once confided in me that he had a run-in with nurses who kept nipping out for a quick intake of such toxins. Visibly moved, he described smoking as the ultimate betrayal by supposed health professionals. Having raised his concerns with a senior quack, the concerned young medic was told to drop it. He was only young, he was told. He would soon learn that medical people have the same failings as everyone else.
That is not good enough. These people are either worthy of the title health professionals or they are not. The truth is that all smokers have a mental deficiency. How else can you explain that they continue to do so with all the evidence there is nowadays? Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion about why you should never trust a smoker.
If a smoker is prepared to inflict that kind of damage on their own bodies, just think what they would to anyone else’s? We do not like to think of our friends in such a harsh light – especially the angels that are nurses or doctors or other medical staff – the associated health professionals such as physiotherapists, radiologists and so on. But the sooner we do, the sooner we can put the whole entire curse of smoking into perspective and really do something about it.
