Sir, - As a "reformed" smoker I have every sympathy with reasonable efforts to curb smoking and to ameliorate its effects, both on smokers themselves and on the victims of secondary smoke inhalation. I am appalled, however, at the decision by the Limerick Regional Hospital to ban smoking, not just from the building itself but from the campus in general. This is a case of moral hygiene blinded by its own righteousness.
The main victims of this health Stalinism will be people at their most vulnerable: those accompanying sick and dying relatives and friends, often in the small hours of the morning, in conditions of utmost stress, a time when they most need the comfort that a smoke can give. Instead of making sensible, sympathetic provision for such people, the LRH grandly proclaims itself a "health promoting hospital" (what could it have been heretofore?) and displays a chilling indifference to their psychological and emotional needs.
In the 1940s and 1950s we were oppressed by those who knew best what was good for our souls. It appears that we are now to have our lives constrained with equal indifference by those who know what is good for our bodies. - Yours etc.,
Frank M. Flanagan, Brookville Avenue, Clareview, Limerick.