Forty hospitals in Maryland restrict smoking on their campuses, said Nancy Fiedler of the Maryland Hospital Association. Most of the smoke-free hospitals are on larger suburban campuses, she said.
Urban hospitals have a difficult time enforcing smoking bans because they control little, if any, of the land around their buildings. "You have a city street that runs in front of your front entrance that you don't have jurisdiction over," Fiedler said.
And that is the bind in which Greg Schaffer, president of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, finds himself. He's hoping to make the East Baltimore hospital smoke-free, but so many city streets cut through the property that he believes such a ban would be useless. "If those streets are designated 'no smoking,' that is a major change and a positive change," he said.
Passage of a hospital smoking ban should be easier, Curran said, than the years-long slog he led to curtail smoking in city bars and restaurants. He's got the support of City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, whose office announced yesterday that it supported the legislation. Councilman James B. Kraft, who fought against the smoking ban in bars (but abstained on final passage), is a co-sponsor on this bill. Kraft likes the hospital smoking ban because the idea came from those who would be affected by it, he said.
Mayor Sheila Dixon has not taken a formal stand, but her chief of staff, Demaune Millard, said that she's very interested in the idea.
But when the bill was discussed at yesterday's City Council lunch, some of Curran's colleagues sounded uncomfortable. Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke worried that such a rule would just push smokers across the street, possibly in front of private homes.
Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young also didn't like the idea. "What is next?" he asked. "You won't be able to breathe air? I think government is being too intrusive in peoples' lives."
