A COMEDIAN once said, “I’d give up smoking but I'm not a quitter.” Droll... but rather sad.

With so much educational information on the health risks of smoking it’s puzzling why so many young people start plodding down the grim tobacco road.

The dried-out fruits of long-term smoking are easy to behold, especially in hospitals which, you'd think, would be the last places where anyone would want to light up.

Having a total no-smoking ban at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals made sense but if it isn’t working then what’s the point? Providing places, instead, where people can damage their lungs etc may contradict sensible health care but smoking is horribly addictive. While some kick the habit easily, others find giving up a nightmare. And if providing outdoor shelters for smokers at hospitals cuts down the risk of a desperate puffer starting a fire or triggering a hospital fire alarm and avoids the risk of the sadly inevitable angry confrontations, then so be it.

You only hope that if the hospitals trust rethinks the ban, it will also pump out even more of the oxygen of information on how dangerous the foul, phlegmy habit is… and what help is at hand to help addicts to quit.

So let the smokers huddle in their outside shelters at hospitals, defying sun, wind and rain, to indulge in their costly self-destruction.

At least there their passive smoke won’t turn the rest of us into cold kippers.