Asm. Jerry Hill‘s (D-San Mateo County) AB 574 is relatively simple: it further limits smoking in hospitals.
This bill prohibits smoking in all areas of acute care hospitals, including the general hospital campus, buildings, parking areas, plazas, and sidewalks. Establishes a patient-specific exemption to the smoking prohibition established by this bill if authorized by a treating physician. (Assembly committee analysis 5/6/09)
The one stumbling block to this bill seems to have been removed when Hill agreed to allow an exception for a treating doctor’s letter. So, if this bill gets signed, be prepared to take a little hike if you want to smoke a cigarette near a hospital.
The logic behind this apparently comes from a “teachable moment” philosophy, meaning that when you are in a hospital, a place of sickness, perhaps you should consider what you are doing to yourself. Or perhaps that the smokers themselves should consider that the cigarettes are putting them in the hospital. Perhaps the hike to smoke the cigarette will impress upon the patient just how crazy this whole smoking thing is.
At any rate, as I mentioned above, this one looks set to cruise through the Legislature. Given that there is no organized opposition to the bill, other than the Republicans who are against it just because, you would think Arnold would sign it. However, this is Arnold we’re talking about, so you never know.
This is good for public knowledge as the doctors who let their patients smoke deserve to be known publicly.
(my new year’s resolution was quitting, but still I’d want a doctor who would let me burn one if I was in tough shape)
Did I read that right? The stumbling block to getting this passed was that someone insisted that a doctor should be allowed to write a prescription for a cigarette?
Aside from the shennagans that might happen in the sex clinic, I can’t imagine a situation where a doctor would say “you know what you need to help that problem is a few puffs on a Salem Light in the parking lot.”
Am I missing something?
Now there’ll just be a lot of people guiltily sneaking smokes in places they shouldn’t. Great.
Strangely enough, I picked up my smoking habit in a state-run mental hospital. We were given a cigarette for our hourly ten minute “outside time” during which we were allowed to walk in the sunshine, which was actually a courtyard in the interior of the building. Those cigarettes were the highlights of our days!
It should just become a law to force smokers to walk around with bubbles over their heads to contain the smoke entirely to their own lungs. We all know the only thing this law will accomplish is create hordes of nicotine fiends sneaking smokes wherever they can regardless of whether it is legal or not.