Not sure exactly what I think about this...
At least once a week, usually, I avail myself of a short cut that passes behind University College Hospital.
And always, however inclement the weather (today is relatively mild, but I've seen this occurring even when there are gusting snow flurries) there will be little ones and twos and larger clusters of people huddled in nooks and corners, smoking.
Not the staff. Not the visitors. The patients.
They're out there in their dressing-gowns, not infrequently hooked up to bits of medical technology, or sitting in wheelchairs, etc.
And on the one hand I think 'How ill do you have to be before you stop smoking?'
And on the other I think 'The staff and administration must know that this is going on'.
And on one foot I think 'But I can see that (even without recent legislation) it would send very peculiar messages for a hospital to designate a sheltered smoking area'.
And on the other foot I think 'But it also sends very peculiar messages for the passerby to see someone in a dressing gown with a drip in their arm standing out of doors in all weathers, and this cannot conduce to rapid recovery.'
And on the prehensile tail, I have no idea at all how one would correctly interpret and implement the Hippocratic injunction 'First do no harm' in this situation.