It seems hard to imagine now, but it’s not so many years ago (in the UK, at least) that one might slip out of a ward into the hospital corridor to smoke.
More recently you would find the smokers congregating outside the hospital entrance. Now almost anywhere in the grounds might be a smoke-free zone.
The link – or rather the opposition – between smoking and health is pretty clear and hard to avoid. You won’t see anyone lighting up in the A&E waiting area. Or if you do, they’re apt to be dealt with quickly and firmly.
And one of the ways they might be dealt with is by being offered free e-cigarettes.
This may seem strange, eccentric – even downright reckless – to people like Reina Roa, praised by the World Heart Foundation as “a trailblazer in tobacco control” and a leading negotiator behind the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). Roa, a professor of epidemiology and expert adviser to the Panamanian Ministry of Health, was the driving force behind last week’s decision by Panama’s National Assembly Health Committee not to approve a bill to legalise e-cigarettes.
Aidan Semmens – ECigIntelligence – 2021-05-07.
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