News & Comment
Mental patients banned from smoking outdoors win right to challenge ruling
Friday 6th May 2011, posted by forest
Patients banned from smoking at a mental hospital in Milton Keynes have won the right to launch a unique High Court test case.
People being treated there are forbidden from smoking outside in the grounds and even on supervised visits into the community.
But lawyers for the patients argue that stopping them smoking in the grounds of Chadwick Lodge Hospital amounts to disability discrimination.
They say patients detained due to their mental illness are being treated "less favourably" than the general population, who can smoke out of doors.
Today a judge granted permission for two current inmates, and one man who has now been moved to another hospital where outdoor smoking is permitted, to mount a full judicial review challenge to the ban.
Source: BBC Essex (6 May 2011)
Comments:
Posted on May 10th, 2011
When was it inacted in law that smoking in the open was an offence? And what can the hospital staff do if one of the patients decides to light-up on a trip to the park - beat them up & clap them in irons?
There are some very cruel people out there!
Posted on May 12th, 2011
It was the smoking ban that tipped me over the edge and into deep depression. With help from a brilliant psychiatrist, despite the lack of resources to provide the best and most appropriate treatment for me, I am now reducing my medication.
Thankfully I was never an inpatient as this would not have been beneficial due to the anti smoking legislation.
Even prisoners are allowed to smoke in prison and they are there due to their own acts which were their own choices!
People with mental health issues are ILL, not criminals, yet they are treated worse than criminals.
Just goes to show what a perverse and corrupt society we live in today.
Thank you again for supporting the plight of those who are mentally ill.
Posted on May 20th, 2011
See, I am a Christian and I feel that "what goes around, comes around" and what sort of wierd sinister people think "hey, let's stop the very people who are most troubled and haunted from having a cigarette". God help us all, where is the compassion in this world? I have watched the brain-washing over the past 20 years of people towards smoking. See, I am quite intelligent, and I have literally OBSERVED it. Sly, insidious, creepy - rather like smoke actually (sic). Wont be long before its the drinkers, then the fatties, then the sick. In fact perhaps we will end up with a blonde haired blue-eyed Aryan race and no need for the NHS whatsoever eh? Perhaps then the WHO - remember the W stands for WORLD will finally move on the 3rd World countries where they are DESPERATE for help on illnesses they have no control over whatsoever. But then, how boring would that be for them, no money to be made doing that sort of thing eh? Big Pharma's the place to be lads!!! Loadsa money to be made! Pathetic. God help us all.
