Scotland to ban e-cigarettes from hospital grounds

E-cigarettes are to be banned from nearly all of Scotland’s hospitals, including all of their grounds, by April, in a move that has been criticised by scientists and anti-smoking campaigners as going too far.

Under the Scottish government’s anti-smoking plans, all national health service (NHS) hospitals must ensure by the end of March that all of their grounds – not just the hospital itself, or its immediate environs – are tobacco-free.

All except one of the NHS’s divisions in Scotland have interpreted the new rules as banning e-cigarettes – on foot of ministers’ decisions to leave it up to them to decide whether they should be included.

One leading anti-smoking campaign group, Ash Scotland, criticised the move, saying rules should not be so restrictive that they discourage smokers from trying “an alternative that might help them to move away from tobacco”.

Explaining the reasons for the move, NHS Dumfries and Galloway executive Julie White said her organisation had been advised that e-cigarettes should "be treated like any other nicotine product" until more is known about them.

However, Prof Peter Hajek, director of the tobacco dependence research unit at Queen Mary University of London, said the justification for the coming ban "seems to lack logic.

“Whatever the motives for the ban, it is not in the interest of patients or public health,” he said, adding that none of the health boards have decided to ban nicotine replacement patches.