4.

In pushing their deranged world view, contemporary eugenicists are very much in line with their predecessors. They use lies, exaggeration, manipulation, pitting groups against other groups to achieve their goals, e.g., propaganda/denormalization. It is a cultic framework where participants convince themselves that much is permitted in the interests of a eugenics-defined “good cause”, i.e., the end justifies the means. Because nothing other than biology registers on their perverse definition of “health”, they do not recognize, or couldn’t care less about, or may even delight in, their destructive influence on psychological, social, moral, and ideo-political health. And like early last century, there are many – essentially the “educated”/wealthy classes - that have jumped on the bandwagon, giving it considerable momentum. There are now groups around America and the world stumbling over each other to be the first to institute the most draconian, widespread smoking bans for a eugenics-defined “healthier” society. There is nothing healthy about this circumstance.

It should be noted that many neo-eugenics thinkers wouldn’t even be aware that they are so. Most wouldn’t know what eugenics refers to or that antismoking has a history, and a sordid one at that. They simply do what they are trained to do (e.g., in Public Health courses relying on the medical model) with little or no questioning. This makes them particularly dangerous to society because they’ll simply be repeating disastrous, painful errors of the past, as they are already demonstrating in the current antismoking circumstance. They should be referred to as eugenicists because that is the mentality they are demonstrating and it is a quick historical reference/reminder of the catastrophe they can produce.

The progressively more draconian, multi-faceted measures directed at smokers have considerable, compounding, detrimental consequences such as economic hardship, isolation, baseless guilt, antagonism, frustration, confrontation, etc. This incessant coercion and bullying is benignly referred to by the perpetrators as “help” to quit which motivates them to provide even more “help” to quit. Note, too, that this healthist fascism, demanding conformity through punitive measures, is occurring in one-time relatively-free societies; the ideo-politics of these countries has been warped.

Gadphli,
Here is a link to that study on outdoor tobacco smoke measurements for you to look at.
http://exposurescience.org/pub/preprints/Klepeis_OTS_Preprint.pdf
I may have misrepresented the finding in saying "no tobacco smoke was detectable at 2.7m". In fact they could still detect tiny amounts of smoke under certain conditions, (downwind, multiple smokers) but these were barely above background levels and so highly unlikely to pose any meaningful risk. It clearly shows that it is not impossible to create a smokers area that poses little risk to non-smoking staff.
Remember that occupational health and safety is not about absolute elimination of every risk. If it was then there would be no mental hospitals at all due to the risk of assault on staff and other patients. One must weigh the risks and benefits of all policies. With this one, the risks of inflicting unnecessary suffering on patients, unnecessary aggression toward staff and severe disruption of the therapeutic relationship, far outweigh any possible risk from tiny amounts of environmental tobacco smoke in an outdoor area.
As one of the people who have been required to enforce this policy, I am well placed to give a first hand account of the effect on patients, and I can tell you, it is not good.

Thanks Rhys,

After a skim of the article it would appear that you have only negligibly misrepresented the findings. Unfortunately in a lot of modern mental health facilities the court yards are very small and staff are expected to be within arm’s reach of clients when on the highest level of observation.

You stated that “there have been studies done which measure the amount of environmental smoke in outdoor areas and provided you are 2.7m away from the smoker, there are no detectable amounts in the air.” This implies that there was number of studies supporting your statement.

In regards to your claims of “the risks of inflicting unnecessary suffering on patients, unnecessary aggression toward staff and severe disruption of the therapeutic relationship, far outweigh any possible risk from tiny amounts of environmental tobacco smoke in an outdoor area.”

I am yet to read any quality studies that support this. There is certainly a lot of anecdotal conjecture amongst staff that this is the case. But not much evidence to support this. The results of one study actually stated “There was no increase in aggression, use of seclusion, discharge against medical advice or increased use of as-needed medication following the ban”.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1614.2005.01697.x/full

I can’t access the full article from my home computer, but I am confident you could access it through your CIAP (clinical information access portal) or your states equivalent.

If it is possible to find a way for people to smoke on a mental health unit that adheres to the following, I guess I could reluctantly concede.

1. Staff and other patients are not exposed to any smoke on hospital grounds.

2. Health professionals are not responsible for the supply and/or control of cigarettes.

3. Government funding is not used that could be better spent on other more important health priorities.

Unless a very wealthy philanthropist can be convinced that this is a health priority. I can’t see it happening.

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the world.

Smoking is inextricably linked to poverty.

How can any mental health facility justify smoking?

The point is not only mute at the W.A. Bentley facility, but also at the Alma Street facility in Fremantle.

..

So it raises the issue of the legal basis for denial does it not? In fact, it may not be a direct issue of the denial of the right to smoke at all. But rather what is being denied is the right to smoke within the confines of certain guvment facilities.

So, as interesting as some of the arguments that are being made are, they may not have any relationship to the legal basis of the denial as it is currently being practiced, but rather just a possible basis for how the law would be preferred to be by certain people.

Thus, what the real issue is is the nature of the locked ward itself. Now, I have already referred to 2 facilities which at least in the past had grounds sufficient for smokers to be accommodated without concurrently generating a health issue for other persons.

I expect that there are more, notwithstanding *GadPhli's* biased assertions to the contrary.

..

Of course, the nature of the economic rationalism may well be leading to a situation where there are no longer sufficient open areas for smokers to be accommodated.

Of course, in such facilities it is unlikely that the residents are getting appropriate amounts of exercise and levels of natural light too though.

..

*Rhys* seems to represent, for want of a better term, "Old World Medicine" with compassion and a fundamental respect for the rights of others.

*GadPhli* on the other hand appears to be the wanton instrument of whose who are obsessed with getting their own way, irrespective of whose rights they have to trample on.

Essentially, smoking is lawful, though counterpoised to this is the fact that Australia is in reality a discriminatory society, which constitutionally retains the race power, amongst other foul mechanisms.

DreamOn
Loved your post.
Gadphli,
That paper you referenced was a review of the literature. I have read the study that reported no increase in violence, aggression or discharge agaisnt medical advice. It was an American study.
Of the sample of 176 patients in the study only 5.6 percent of them had schizophrenia.
That is a pretty major contrast to a locked ward environment in Australia where upwards of 60% of the patients have schizophrenia (my estimate and probabaly on the low side).
Depressed people who are forced to stop smoking, while they may be distressed, they are unlikely to be aggressive. It is entirely different for people suffering schizophrenia.
You make three points
1 government money should not be used to buy cigarettes. I do not know of any hospital that still supplies cigarettes to patients. That must have finished at least 20 years ago. Patients must pay for them themselves and usually get relatives or friends to bring them in.
2 Staff and others should not be exposed to second hand smoke. The policy now in place appears to have increased the amount of smoke others are exposed to, as smokers simply smoke in front of the buildings and in access ways rather than isolated smoking areas.
3 Staff are not responsible for providing tobacco. They do not provide tobacco as I have already stated. Friends and family bring it in for them.

Rhys,
The Klepeis study you refer to only indicates that there is evidence of smoking (e.g., particulates) where smoking occurs (an expensive study just to indicate that!). The study does not assess hazard, although it makes quite a number of wild, agenda-driven speculations about “potential” hazard.

Klepeis’ study is referred to in an article indicating a California city’s intent to institute outdoor smoking bans.
http://wehonews.com/z/wehonews/archive/page.php?articleID=5304

Klepeis admits that his study does not indicate harm from outdoor smoke exposure. When it was apparent that there is no health basis for outdoor bans – bearing in mind that there have been only two studies conducted that do not address hazard, the emphasis was then shifted to a moralistic (ideological) basis, which is what antismoking has actually been about from the outset:
“Face with that evidence, or rather, lack of evidence that brief exposure to outdoor second-hand created a "significant" health risk, smoking ban advocates responded that rather than prevent deaths that may or may not result, they sought to use the legislation to keep smoking from kids' view, out of fear that seeing it done in public influences children to try it.”

California has led the way in antismoking post-WWII. There is now a frenzy – a madness - to institute outdoor bans (e.g., parks, beaches) and even apartment complexes.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/smoking-238203-city-parks.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41896121/ns/health-health_care/
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_16094607
http://www.ocregister.com/news/smoking-284833-park-ban.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16567116?nclick_check=1

It must be understood that this is all ideologically-driven. It has nothing to do with protecting nonsmokers from SHS “danger”, and never has. This is not surprising in that California was a eugenics epi-centre pre-WWII. It conducted more, by far, sterilizations than any other American state. California recently formally and publicly apologized for its eugenics past.
http://www.fredonia.edu/prweb/releases/eugenics.htm
http://hnn.us/comments/9561.html

Although it may have apologized for sterilizations, California has simply continued eugenics along the behavioral dimension, specifically anti-tobacco.