Tobacco war at Riverview

http://www.leg.bc.ca/38th3rd/3rd_read/gov10-3.htm

"No puffin at the Hospital" The following is an excerpt from the new no smoking regulations that allows the Governor to change the regulations as required.

" (3) Without limiting subsection (1), the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations as contemplated in sections 2.1 to 2.3, and for the purposes of those sections the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations as follows:

(a) defining a word or phrase;

(b) exempting persons or places, or parts of places, from all or part of those sections, with or without conditions;

(c) prescribing persons, including by class;

(d) prescribing places, including

(i) by class or use, and

(ii) a private place.

(4) For the purposes of subsection (3), different regulations may be made for different persons, places or things."

So I guess we have to lobby the Lieutenant Governor to tweak it.
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My reply to the Hospitals: Smoke-free initiative "Feedback Form"

Issues/Concerns:

What has got lost in this debate is who the staff serve. CLIENTS


As a volunteer, who also has this disgusting habit, I am asked all the time for cigarettes. The volunteers will be placed under great pressure to acquire tobacco for the residents.

I do know that when I personally talk to the doctors and staff many of them acknowledge that tobacco is an adjunct to the medications, therapies that the patients receive. But they will not go on record by writing it down, fearing censure.

Many of the patients realize that tobacco is no good for them, but it does help mitigate some of the side effects of the medications that they receive.

The hospital is THEIR HOME, and as such they should be making the decisions, to sell or not to sell tobacco, or smoking or non-smoking.

A few of the 20 questions posed in the survey violate OUR countries rights and freedoms act.
#5 especially.
#6 If staff members want to buy tobacco for the residents on their own time that is their right.
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#9 It is verging on cruel and unusual punishment to totally cut the locked-wards off.

#16 This has been going on for years with native tax-free cigarettes circulating around the site. By enforcing this new smoke-free proposal, we just give the drug dealers, another sideline.


Coffee-free initiative, next? Good luck