This letter pertains to the absence of smoking rights for mental health patients under the care of Interior Health facilities.
I have been a patient at the VJH psych unit a few times and have seen many others in serious distress. We are not permitted to smoke for days and sometimes weeks on end.
For most of us suffering from mental health afflictions, the only reprieve we have is being able to relax and smoke a cigarette.
I recall writing a letter once to IHA while admitted to the McNair unit in Kelowna a few years ago. I was suffering from terrible nightmares and tried to appeal to IHA, re, my need for a cigarette after waking in the night from such terrors. There was an open courtyard there that could have helped me in my distress, but they kept it locked at night and it would remain so. After I wrote my letter and put it in the empty suggestion box, nothing was done.
Since then, I have been able to regulate my smoking habit in accordance with the daily passes, but unfortunately I have also seen many other patients suffering from similar or more severe problems, and they are forced to sneak smokes in the VJH courtyard. This area could potentially provide a spacious and reasonable place for patients to smoke. You could section off an area of the courtyard, away from the building, designated for smokers.
Everyday these desperate smokers are threatened to lose their smoking passes as well as the possibility of the courtyard being shutdown completely.
I would pose a question to IHA, which is an extension of our provincial government: what is the justification, re, the forced implementation of anti-smoking in this situation? Our government commits and condones countless environmental crimes in the form of irreversible pollution, and these acts affect our citizens in a more severe way than second-hand smoke ever could.
Please reply to my questions in a way that makes common sense to me. The way I see it, misuse of your authority makes me wonder how genuine your compassion is for those of us with mental illness who may find quitting more difficult because of a range of psycho-social reasons.
Name withheld