You can see them in front of almost every hospital: patients who have shuffled outside in their bathrobes to have a smoke first. Some mothers sit there shortly after giving birth, some patients with larynx cancer just keep smoking through the hole in their throat. They gather in front of the clinic’s doors because smoking is now prohibited in the building. It’s logical. After all, the hospital should be a place where you get well, not sicker. It is all the more irritating that numerous hospitals and even university clinics are still selling cigarettes in their kiosks, as the Forum Rauchfrei recently pointed out.
Instead of selling cigarettes to smokers, clinics should help them quit
No question about it: the need of smokers is great, their addiction is often elementary. This is especially true in the exceptional hospital situation, where stress and worries increase the need for the calming effect of nicotine. And yet that is no reason to sell tobacco products. Because the special situation of being ill in need of treatment could also become an opportunity for smokers. Instead of making tobacco easily accessible to them, hospitals should help them quit. In clinics of the network of smoke-free hospitals you cannot buy cigarettes anywhere, but trained staff actively approach patients. If you decide to quit, you will get help.
The hospitals are sending a signal that health and nicotine do not go together. If, on the other hand, cigarettes are lying next to sweets and books in the clinic kiosk, they become a product of everyday use. Cigarettes are an absurd product, namely one whose intended use leads to illness and death.
Consistent banishment of this pathogen from sanatoriums is imperative, and it is effective. The extent to which a clear stance promotes rethinking has long been proven internationally. In Germany, too, the image of cigarettes, once the epitome of freedom and coolness, has changed radically since there were strict restrictions. The number of smokers has been falling since then. On the other hand, the number of patients who have to be treated for smoking disorders is still growing – a mortgage from the times of heavy consumption. The last time it was 458,000 a year, 18 percent more than ten years earlier. Hospitals should neither promote nor benefit from the suffering of these patients.