Darryl Melvin likes to smoke a cigarette on the sidewalk in front of Mercy Medical Center after he sees his cardiologist - an appointment he keeps every three months.
"It eases my nerves," Melvin, 45, said yesterday as he enjoyed his smoke amid butts littering the grounds around the hospital. "I have bad nerves. I have twin 15-year-old boys."
But if the Baltimore City Council adopts a bill introduced last night, Melvin would have to cross the street before lighting up. The initiative would create smoke-free zones on sidewalks adjacent to the city's 17 hospitals. Violators would face a $50 fine.
Secondhand smoke wafting around hospitals creates an environment that is unfair and unhealthy to patients, said Councilman Robert W. Curran, who introduced the bill and who last year successfully pushed a ban on smoking in city bars and restaurants.
"People have to go through a cloud" in order to walk into a hospital, Curran said.
The idea for the legislation, he said, came from several city hospital executives who approached council members seeking the ability to regulate land around their buildings. It is modeled after a similar law in Denver.
Some City Council members are uncomfortable with the idea, saying it infringes on freedoms guaranteed to people in public spaces. Others worried that a ban could push smokers into residential neighborhoods.
Smokers are already bristling at the idea of more restrictions.
"They are taking away all of our rights," said Dorothy Conway, 66, lighting up her cigarette a few feet away from Melvin.
She grew testy as the legislation was described: "You can't smoke in buildings, you can't smoke in bars. We pay taxes just like [nonsmokers] do."
But nationally, hospital executives view a smoke-free campus as an objective worthy of emulating, said city Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein. "It seems pretty straightforward," he said.
Some smokers seemed to agree. Melvin said he'd be happy to light up elsewhere. One woman who was approached yesterday on the sidewalk near Mercy immediately extinguished her cigarette, even though the legislation had not been introduced at that point. She declined to give her name.
Curran said he envisions the law being enforced by Health Department officials, not city police. Complaints could be registered with a call to the city's 311 nonemergency help line, but already time-pressed code enforcement officers "won't come out by the end of the cigarette, that is for sure," he said.
