MUHC aims for 'smoke- and vape-free environment'

Smoking and vaping will be banned at all four McGill University Health Centre hospitals under a new policy announced Wednesday.

The MUHC ban goes further than the province's anti-tobacco legislation, which only bans smoking inside buildings and at least nine metres from hospital entrances.

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"Creating a smoke- and vape-free environment is congruent with our mission as a leading academic health centre," Normand Rinfret, the McGill University Health Centre's president and executive director, said in a statement Wednesday.

The MUHC said it plans to phase in its smoke and vape-free policy at all of its hospital sites, starting Nov. 1.

"Having smokers on the ground is not a good message to the city or to the patients who are there," Sean Gilman, director of the MUHC's smoking cessation clinic, told CBC's Homerun later in the day.

Temporary smoking shelters will be installed at each site for at least six months as a transition measure. For patients with severe addictions, nicotine replacement therapy will be offered to relieve withdrawal symptoms, Gilman said.

"As long as we offer this, patients will be comfortable," Gilman said. "And hospitalization is a great time to approach these smokers."

Vaping out, but could help smokers quit

Although the new policy also forbids vaping on hospital grounds, Gilman said it could eventually be an "excellent tool" to help people stop smoking, at least in the cessation clinic.

"But as an institutional policy, we're not promoting it," he said. The hospital will wait until the World Health Organization releases a study on vaping before taking an official position on the practice.

The health network is spread out over four hospitals in Montreal:

• The Glen Site, which is made up of five centres, including the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Montreal Children's Hospital, the Montreal Chest Institute, the Cedars Cancer Centre and the Research Institute of the MUHC. 
• The Montreal Neurological Hospital.
• The Lachine Hospital.
• The Montreal General Hospital.