Entirely smoke free not realistic: Thomson

An entirely smoke-free hospital campus was an unrealistic concept and only served to push smokers out on to the footpath, Otago District Health Board chairman  says.

The smoke-free philosophy had to be balanced with common sense, he said.

As he walked through Dunedin Hospital's main entrance to attend yesterday's hospital advisory committee meeting he had to pluck a "still glowing ember" from his jacket, thrown from a patient standing with a smoke in one hand and a drip in the other, Mr Thomson said.

"We should be doing everything we can to assist patients who come in who have an addiction, but that doesn't mean we should be blind.

"There are some people who are going to drag themselves down there to have a smoke and it is not fair that they should have to walk that gauntlet."

It needed to be accepted some people were going to smoke and if a smoking area was provided at Dunedin and Wakari Hospitals they could be directed towards it, he said.

Mr Thomson was commenting on a letter from the Ministry of Health encouraging health boards to make their entire campuses for mental health inpatient services smoke-free.

"If we make the grounds smoke-free, all that is going to happen is they will move six inches further out on to the footpath. We just need to be sensible about it," Mr Thomson said.

The letter, from ministry acting director of mental health Dr Charles Hornabrook and national director tobacco control Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there had been much debate about the issue in New Zealand, but legal advice sought by the ministry said mental health service users who were compulsorily detained did not have an inviolable "right" to smoke.

Smoking rates were much higher among mental health service users than the general population and they bore a disproportionate burden of tobacco-related illness and early death, the letter said.

Board member John Adams said it was not just patients smoking outside hospital entrances, but staff as well.

Perhaps "some sort of outdoor smoking area" was needed, he said.

Mr Thomson said he understood the matter was under investigation.