“Hospitals Wage a Losing Battle to Curtail Smoking”
Front-page article
The New York Times
February 28, 1977
“A doctor holding an unlit cigarette in a fifth-floor corridor of Southern Baptist Hospital in New Orleans was asked by a visitor if smoking was permitted in the corridors. The doctor cupped his hand over the cigarette and said, ‘I’m the wrong one to ask.’
“Smoking in the nation’s hospitals institutions that treat patients with lung cancer. emphysema, and heart ailments, appears to be inevitable among addicted staff members, patients and visitors.
“Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago once had its cigarette vending machines removed in an attempt to discourage smoking, but replaced them after finding that bedridden patients were paying up to 50 cents for a cigarette on a black market run by some of the staff members.
“Officials at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville, where seven cigarette machines produce $25,000 a year in sales, decided eight years ago against banning sales because of the potential financial loss.
“The medical staff at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Hartford recently voted to outlaw smoking at all staff meetings, but also provided a five-minute break for smokers. The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Harper Hospital in Detroit and Arlington Hospital in Virginia have offered matchbook covers with the names of the hospital printed on them.
“Interviews with administrators, doctors and other personnel—many of them smokers—at more than 30 of the nation’s hospitals indicate that pressure for tighter restrictions is being exerted, with varying degrees of success. Doctors who have kicked the habit are considered among the leading proponents of change.
“New York City’s Sloan‐Kettering Institute for Cancer Research for example, has banned smoking on its entire 15th floor.
“We have completely cut out smoking in the halls, lounges, offices and wards on that floor,” said Gerald Delaney, spokesman, “but although patients will not smoke on the 15th floor, they sometimes go to another floor where smoking is allowed, and do it there.”
“A spot check of five hospitals in the New York metropolitan area disclosed disparate policies on cigarette sales. Sloan‐Kettering and the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York have discontinued such sales, while Roosevelt, Bellevue and Nassau Hospital in Mineola permit them…”