Nonsensical Priorities: Smoking
Now I do a lot of thinking, as I'm sure as many of you all do. But throughout my life I've looked at certain things and thought, that just makes no sense. Today I want to talk about smoking but more specifically the laws around smoking. My local hospital has published online it's status as a smoke-free site effective May 31st, 2017. This would mean smoking would not be permitted anywhere on the premise, within building or outside. We're currently in October 2019 and If I was to go down now and drive past the main entrance, I would see small groups of people sat/stood smoking. Many of these are actual patients too, which baffles me even more. How is one in hospital being treated for their health but going out to ruin their health even more whilst they're there? The NHS is already on the verge of a crisis and is in need of money and cost reductions. Treating patients who are by choice ruining their health more by smoking whilst being treated, only to come back possibly in the future to be treated for something caused by this smoking is frankly stupid. The cost of treating cancer patients for the NHS is around £5 billion and when you factor in other costs to society such as loss of productivity, this rises to an astonishing £18.3 billion. Cancer is a horrible illness and is a trial for all those suffering and their families and friends around them, but there's so much we can do to help prevent and reduce the amount of people diagnosed. Failure to enforce no smoking rules in public places such as hospitals doesn't make matters better, rather worsens them.