To think smokers should not smoke next to a no smoking sign?

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(My first aibu - am bracing myself)

Today, I was parked outside a hospital waiting for my parents to come out. Right outside the entrance of the hospital and for about 50 metres, there are numerous signs (I counted eight from where I could see) signs saying "please do not smoke here" and "no smoking". I was waiting for about ten minutes, and I saw lots of people (15) smoking around the whole no smoking zone inc. several people (6) actually smoking next to a no smoking sign. I was partly amused by the irony of it but I also thought there must be a reason why it's a no smoking area, so why are they smoking there? Why could they not walk a little way and smoke where there were no signs? Just to let you know, the whole entrance area inc. way beyond the signs is sheltered and it was not even snowing nor raining.

It's an anomaly though. Our pub obviously complies with the law regarding smoking. To appease the smoking clientele they've erected a wooden gazebo, with heaters and ashtrays. It is at a push 20 steps from the door and front windows.

But the smoking clientele smoke right by the door and windows. This means all the smoke blows back into the pub.

Our hospital is the same. Smart shelters erected, costing the NHS money of course, again no more than a few feet away from the building and then totally ignored. Why don't you sit in your car? At least you'd be comfy and warm FGS.

Smoking people literally are having the smoke blown up their arses to appease them, and providing comfortable areas where they can all have the best craic with all the other fantastically buoyant, jovial types.

Yet they'd seek to want to be as close as possible to those smug, po bastards that have realised smoking is for mugs.

People shouldn't be selfish. But most people find it difficult to truly comprehend the effects of their actions, without previous experience of being on the receiving end. Add to this, that most people smoking outside hospital are thinking about their own personal reasons for being their that day. Then we have the "well, she's doing it" effect. A fit, fully-dressed young man/woman will see someone in their dressing gown on a drip, who could not have got any further, and feel entitled to smoke outside the door too.

And frankly, if management at other sites don't realise how ridiculous it is to place smoking shelters where everyone has to walk past to get in, I'm not surprised individual smokers don't realise that they're a hazard to people with breathing difficulties trying to get into the building.

What has happened since they introduced these policies was eminently foreseeable (I did foresee it!)

The people responsible for these utterly inane policies need to be put on the naughty step. An hour for every year of their age seems appropriate to me.

People simply won't go all the way off the grounds. They were never going to. Indeed, some of the patients would be practically forbidden to wander about that far, by the staff! The only way that a no-smoking in the grounds policy achieves its laudable health goals is by discouraging a segment of the population from seeking treatment, and I think these people are more than counter-balanced by all the "I'll just smoke here by the door, then" lot.

Yours,

Jessie,

Choking-In-Fumes

Please don't tar all smokers with the same brush (see what I did there!).
I smoke (moderately) and I wouldn't dream of smoking in an entrance or by a no smoking sign. I don't smoke while walking down the street, in crowds or at bus shelters! I have never smoked in a car or in my home. I do not drop cigarette litter.
We are not all ignorant and selfish!

Because it's the right thing to do Mrsdavid? That's why. Because the hospital have kindly asked that they don't? Same as they ask for only 2 visitors per bed and use the hand gel when arriving and leaving. Thoughtful, unselfish actions that every bugger seems to ignore.

Lilith My experience is that most smokers are kind and considerate. It's the selfish few (as always) that seem to ruin it for everyone and give other smokers a bad rep.

I have smoked in Hospital grounds but NOT near the door, in fact if the entrance to the hospital is 3/4 covered ie canopy or roof then its actually against anti smoking legislation anyway and any hospital has the right to stop people doing it.

But If I am in hospital grounds away from other people and putting my ash and butts into a portable ashtray then the hospital can put up signs ten feet tall and written in letters of fire and I will totally ignore them (in fact I would use the fire to light my fag)

Lilith you're completely right. Not all smokers are selfish. But as all smokers are human beings, some smokers are either deliberately selfish, or simply unthinkingly selfish.

If I needed a subset of calm people, totally undistracted by personal issues and with space in their heads to think about other people... A hospital wouldn't be the first place I'd look!

^Why should they obey it sparkling? I can put a notice like that up in my garden
but I don't have the legal powers to enforce it and neither does the hospital.^

Where I live, it is actually illegal to smoke within four metres of a non-residential doorway. (Also anywhere that serves food and beverages (including outdoors in restaurants, pubs, clubs, etc), on beaches, in public parks, bus stops, taxi ranks, ferry terminals and public stadiums. You also cannot smoke in a car with a person under the age of 16 in it. Very civilised.) Sadly, they really do have to legislate for common sense.

These threads are proof that the smoking ban should be repealed- all it has done is make the neurotics worse. Now, having infested pubs and clubs with their dreary, humourless presence, they are trying to annex the outdoors.

Ha ha ha! Nice one....

Good luck with the repeal of the smoking ban.

Alice I imagine very few people will support a smoker's right to smoke outside a hospital entrance. Christ Alive, some people!!!

Alice, have you ever had a smoking allergy? Do you realise what it feels like to have to walk through a smokey area and know that is likely to set off an attack? I was very humourless in the years before the smoking ban came in. That's because I was often struggling to breathe and breathing is a great aid to humour. My quality of life has improved no end since the ban came in: I can go to a pub, I can go out for parties, I can go on the bus without worrying. I am a far sunnier, pleasanter person.

'Hospitals used to have smoking rooms and they should bring them back along with repealing the smoking ban in pubs clubs and restaurants- all it has done is attract self righteous bores who nobody ever wanted in entertainment venues.'

What, all those people with lung disease? Yep, self righteous bores, the lot of us

You can screw up your own lungs if you really want to (I wouldn't recommend it, personally, what with having lung disease and all, not from smoking I must add) but please let me keep breathing when I go into hospital. Don't think it's a lot to ask.

I do think there should be shelters within walking distance. Banning all smoking on hospital grounds is simply going to ensure that hospital doorways are more crowded than ever with smokers.

You should see the respiratory department doorway :(

Apparently I'd forgotten the basic facts. Smokers are cool and if you don't smoke you're boring

Thankfully for me, my social boundaries have adjusted since I was 15 :)

Love the way some of the smokers see themselves as the fun hip crowd, everyone wants to hang out with. Erm weren't you the ones at school being sheep and bowing to peer pressure and trying hard to be cool and rebellious by smoking?

At my local hospital they have a gazebo type thing about two minutes walk from the main door (and clearly visible from the door.) They have seats and a roof so perfectly dry and comfortable for patients.
Yet you still get loads of people hanging around the door in their dressing gowns and slippers puffing away all over patients and visitors trying to use the entrance.

Alice grow up.

A smoking allergy. Jesus wept.

I'll try and put it simply: smoking is obnoxious and antisocial and most people hate it. So if you want to do it, do it somewhere else. Hth.

Smoke smells obnoxious - it's nice to do it ,duh, that's why peole do it (even with electronic cigarettes).

Not anti social - see comments so far

Most people hate it - really? , most people "hate" whatever is currently doing the rounds. Most people didn't hate smoking 50 years ago.

If you want to smoke do it away from non smokers. Very simple.

Why are some smokers struggling with the fact that it would be polite to walk a few extra steps away from a hospital entrance where there may be ill people with breathing problems....?? I've said it before on this thread, it's such a simple solution. It seems as though some smokers on here are trying to deliberately pick a fight and be purposely difficult.

Because they honestly don't understand how unpleasant it is. I can walk by someone who smokes (even if they haven't lit up) and the smell can literally make my stomache heave. They are oblivious to the stink, bet they would turn their nose up at folk with bad BO sitting beside them, same thing. I used to work in pubs and clubs and at the end of the night I stank so bad, I'd go to bed and the smell from my hair would keep me awake - I'd have to shower. Had to take breaks sometimes to go and bath my eyes as the smoke would have them streaming. They just don't get how foul it is. Have known many considerate smokers but they still stink.

My local hospital had the right idea.

They had a special courtyard in the middle of the hospital just for the smokers. When I was a teenager and volunteered at the hospital I would escort patients to the courtyard and help them smoke their fags because i'm really fucking kind like that.

They did away with the special courtyard that never bothered anyone because they became a non smoking site

All the smokers stand outside the main entrance now...

What has 50 years ago got to do with anything?