Specialists welcome smoking ban

Specialists at BUPA North Cheshire Hospital welcome the ban on smoking in public places and hope to see a drop in the patients they see with smoking-related diseases in the future.

Steve Owen, consultant chest physician, said: "Every day of my professional life as a chest physician I witness the ongoing damage that cigarettes cause to human health, principally through Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and lung cancer. Smoke free England is a great initiative to help people stop smoking to improve their health and to protect those at work from the effects of passive smoking. I am pleased to see that hospitals are at the forefront of this endeavour."