MANITOULIN—While the Manitoulin Health Centre (MHC) will follow provincial rules, which calls for a ban on smoking on all hospital sites by 2018, hospital officials are not sure how this mandated legislation will play out.
“We’ll do what we have to do, but I don’t know how logistically this will work, especially enforcement wise.” The smoking ban on all Ontario hospital sites, “is not our choice, but we have had zero say on the matter,” stated Derek Graham, chief executive officer of the Manitoulin Health Centre (MHC).
As of January 1, 2018, all hospital properties in Ontario have been mandated to be smoke-free, under the Smoke Free Ontario Act.
“We have restrictions in place now on our (hospital) grounds with designated smoking areas,” said Mr. Graham. “We can go ahead and put signage in place but it will be difficult to enforce (a smoking ban). There will be expectations around policing the issue, but our staff are going to be focused as always on patient care tasks and running our hospitals.”
Mr. Graham stressed again while the MHC has not put in place complete bans on smoking on hospital properties, “we did take the first stage to put up signs indicating designated smoking areas. But it’s hard to get people to comply…that’s the challenge. Logistically this is a challenge, and what you see in some other areas is people congregating on sidewalks outside a facility to smoke; we don’t think the provincial laws will meet the accomplishment and goals consistent with health while having to balance the rules.”
“I think having designated smoking areas is fine and I can understand the health benefits stance, but to expect everyone to comply, and enforcement, is going to be extremely hard to make it work,” said Mr. Graham. “But the public and staff members across the province are being told this is the law.” He noted that public health enforcement officers would be required to enforce the provincial laws in this case and that “fines can be levied against an organization like ours.”
“Obviously we’ll do what we have to do,” said Mr. Graham, “but we don’t know logistically how this is going to work.”
