Smoking Ban OKd for L.A. County Hospitals

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted today to prohibit smoking at county hospitals and clinics by Jan. 1.

Patients, physicians and about 20,000 employees will be required to observe the smoking ban, Director of Health Services Robert Gates said.

Smoking will be allowed only outdoors and in rare cases under a physician’s orders, Gates said.

The new policy was approved on a 4-0 voice vote at the urging of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who won authorization last year for an experimental smoking ban at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.

‘Absolutely Idiotic’

“It is absolutely idiotic to be having a surgery for lung cancer (in a county hospital) and have the doctors and nurses smoking out in the halls,” Hahn said.

The new policy will be phased in starting this week and will be fully in effect by the end of the year.

Gates said the county received no complaints during the temporary ban at Harbor-UCLA and only minor grumbling after smoking was prohibited this summer at the Department of Health Services headquarters downtown.

Many employees have quit smoking, he said, some after attending special classes to help them break the nicotine habit.

“I haven’t run into a single person yet who doesn’t agree they should stop smoking,” Gates said.

He said UCLA Medical Center in Westwood is the only other medical facility that he knows of where indoor smoking is banned.

Los Angeles County runs six hospitals and 47 local health clinics.