Voices from Occupy Wall Street

Colorado Springs, Colo., Hospital Issues Warning on Smoking-Ban Plan.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News June 22, 2003 By Cary Leider Vogrin, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Jun. 22–Memorial Hospital is giving employees, patients and visitors six months warning that come Jan. 1, it plans to ban smoking on its campus.

The hospital now allows smoking at a picnic table inside the parking garage and has an indoor smoking area that can be accessed only from the outside. When the weather’s nice, people use Boulder Park, adjacent to the hospital, for smoking breaks.

An 11-person hospital committee has met twice to talk about how to institute the no-smoking policy and how to enforce it.

“What do you do after Jan. 1? Do we need more security officers? More signs? What are the conse…uences? How serious are we going to be? That’s on the table,” said Chris Valentine, hospital spokesman and committee member.

The policy, which will include the hospital’s other medical offices throughout the city, has received backing from the hospital board, administrators and physicians, Valentine said. this web site eastern maine medical center

“We promote good health, and we need to walk the walk,” he said.

Some employees, visitors and patients have signed a petition against the proposal, but Valentine said he doesn’t know what, if any, effect that will have on the policy.

Overall, the idea hasn’t caused an uproar, he said.

The president of the Personnel Advisory Committee, an employee panel that addresses workplace concerns, said she hasn’t received a complaint about the policy.

“I haven’t heard anything, and I work with a lot of smokers, too,” Lynn Twohig-Burman said.

Smokers on the hospital’s new smoking committee declined re…uests for interviews.

Valentine said it’s hoped that many employees will give up cigarettes and that the hospital will help them do that.

Free smoking-cessation classes will be offered to those who want to enter the new year tobacco-free.

The hospital doesn’t track how many of its 3,400 employees are smokers.

Robin Vanderwege, a pharmacy tech at Memorial, said she thinks the policy might become a problem during bad weather, particular during winter, when there’s not a sheltered place to smoke a cigarette. this web site eastern maine medical center

“Either they’re going to have a lot of grumpy nurses or people are going to be gone way too long,” she said.

Renovations at the hospital will make finding a place to smoke even more difficult. The hospital plans to put up a fence along Foote Avenue, which would block easy access from the hospital into Boulder Park.

Other hospitals across the country have instituted similar policies that are being used as models for Memorial.

Two hospitals in Bangor, Maine — the Eastern Maine Medical Center and St. Joseph — went tobacco-free in January 2001.

Employees and immediate family were given free nicotine gum and patches and even prescriptions for Zyban, a drug that helps curb the urge to smoke.

Eastern Maine Medical Center gave staff scripted cards on what to say to patients or visitors who broke the rules.

The policy got so much attention that the local newspaper did a daily countdown to Jan. 1, 2001, said Wendie Lagasse, director of community wellness service for Eastern Maine Medical Center.

Still, it hasn’t eliminated smoking among employees.

Some have simply moved to a sidewalk abutting one of the city’s main streets.

Although the smokers are perhaps more visible now than ever, the hospital stuck to its policy.

“The medical staff and board felt it was very important to send this message that as a health care institution, we were no longer going to provide space on our campus for people to smoke,” Lagasse said.

The El Paso County Department of Health and Environment banned tobacco on its South Union Boulevard campus at the start of this year, but smokers use a small area at the back of an adjacent building that’s not part of the department.

As for Penrose-St. Francis, it allows smoking at specified outdoor areas at its two Colorado Springs hospitals, spokeswoman Tanya Bell said. Neither hospital has an indoor smoking area.

Across Colorado, one in five adults smokes, according to statistics from Colorado Quitline and the American Lung Association.

Of those who try to …uit on their own, fewer than 5 percent will make it a year, said Kristen Reed, manager of Quitline, a telephone counseling service that tobacco settlement funds pay for. Twenty percent who go through the Quitline program make it 12 months.

From Jan. 1 through Thursday, Quitline took 383 calls out of El Paso County, Reed said.

“A lot of preparing (to …uit) is building up confidence to believe you can do it,” said Reed, a former smoker.

“Most people think, ‘I’ll just get up today and I won’t smoke.’ But it actually takes planning, and you have to prepare to …uit and get support.

“It does sound hokey, but it really is important to have a plan, and that’s where we can help people.”

• Anonymous

  It’s important to note disparities in the system but it is also important to address how we as a society can agree to bring about changes to those things that grieve us and perhaps the mainstream media is right in this one respect- at the moment, no concrete plan or idea has been fostered as to how to exact changes in a very one sided system, and certainly waiting for the powers that be to come up with some watered down ideas hardly constitutes for much change, but then again at least the act of creating dissent and bringing awareness to what ails greater society is a good sign.Perhaps what then is needed next is a constituency of those individuals who work within media, medicine, insurance, education,finance and politics and so forth to propose ideas that will go some way in addressing the legitimate grievances of greater society-and to bring back some checking of the system and evening of the playing field. 

  http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2011/10/finally-america-begins-to-revolt-against-the-moneyed-classes-but-will-the-rebellion-actually-lead-to-any-changes/

• http://twitter.com/MerlinYoda MerlinYoda

  Finding a problem and wanting to fix it: good.
  Finding a problem and coming up with a legitimate a solution to fix it: better.
  Finding a problem and coming up with a solution that won’t cause its own problems: best.