A DECISION to ban smoking in the grounds of Glasgow hospitals has seen the number of people lighting up falling by more than half.
As a result, a pilot scheme which resulted in no-smoking wardens patrolling all NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde main hospitals has been extended into next year.
The health board's zero tolerance crackdown on smoking in hospital grounds was launched in May.
Hospital entrances at 11 sites were rebranded with bright red ground markings and giant posters creating highly visible no smoking zones.
The impact of the "Smoking in Hospital Grounds - We're Sick of it" campaign has resulted in a 56% reduction in the number of people smoking at hospital entrances in five months.
Before the campaign launch, the Health Board received most complaints about people smoking in hospital grounds.
But since the ban was introduced, the number of complaints has fallen by around 18%.
Public Health Minister Michael Matheson said: "I am delighted NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's campaign to discourage people smoking outside their hospitals has been a success and that the board has decided to continue using smoking wardens on some of their larger sites to discourage smokers.
"Scotland has set an ambitious target to become smoke-free by 2034.
"We are taking forward a range of measures to achieve this including bringing forward legislation on standardised packaging, investing in prevention and cessation programmes as well as looking specifically at discouraging young people from smoking and maintaining pressure on the price of tobacco.
"Each year, tobacco use is associated with 13,000 deaths and 56,000 hospital admissions in Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article