New provincial legislation has gone into effect, banning smoking on all hospital property.
Chatham-Kent Health Alliance CEO Lori Marshall says the law means patients and staff will longer be allowed to light up in the existing smoking shelters, parking lots, or exterior grounds in Chatham and Wallaceburg.
“Public health has the ability to ticket individuals, certainly it’s our hope that people will understand the reasoning why,” says Marshall. “This first little period of time I think it will be more of an information approach that we take in terms of making sure that people understand that hospital sites are now non smoking.”
Those fines start at $175 up to a maximum of $5000.
