Trolley 445

Another trolley from guess where in East Street.

Today's interest was a young creationist sitting in the informal smoking den which has been erected in the passage down to the main door, off snap to the left, while (needless to say) she made an important phone call. Not so important though that she was unable to pause to tell me that smoking was completely banned in the accommodation block.

Which struck me as a bit harsh. Given that rooms are presumably taken by the term if not the year, might not customers being given the smoking option? An option which included their stumping up some kind of deep cleaning fee at the end of their term. Perhaps partially offset by waiving the plague deep cleaning because the smoke would have killed all the plague bugs?

I wondered about smoking in our prisons and mental institutions, and Bing rapidly turned up a copy of reference 2 for me. It seems that smoking is banned in mental institutions and banned everywhere in prisons - except in a prisoner's own cell. I was not surprised to find that maybe 80% of prisoners smoked: it is what one does to relieve stress and to give a rather restricted life a bit of flavour. I didn't get to the bit about cells with more than one occupant - concerning which I have been told that the unsavoury habits of one occupant can be tiresome - to say the least of it - for the other. Might it not be better to allow prisoners to smoke when out of doors?

One wonders how they get on in US prisons where tobacco is completely banned - but is no doubt widely used and the subject of all kinds of unpleasant rackets, just like other recreational drugs.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/trolley-444.html.

Reference 2: Reducing Smoking in Prisons: Management of tobacco use and nicotine withdrawal - Public Health England - 2015.