ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[SammyOES2]

While I've never have a nicotine addiction it seems like it's not the kind of thing that you can give up easily, for the day, week, even month, you might be in the hospital---even with nicotine addiction aids.  Worse, visiting a hospital is usually a very stressful experience, something which I understand is generally a trigger for people who are addicted to smoking.

Fair points, but I think its fair to leave it to health professionals if the stress / distress of being prohibited from smoking is better/worse for the patient (in a very wholistic sense) then allowing smoking.

There are other reasons for the prohibition against booze which don't apply to cigarettes as well.

As for patients not being allowed coffee, usually that's for a medical reason.

Patients aren't being allowed to smoke for medical reasons. There is no condition that smoking helps. And I might go as far to say there is no condition that smoking doesn't actively hurt in terms of your bodies ability to heal. Again though, its not something that we can judge as non-medical people. I assume there's a lot of research into this.

Again, please don't use the term "enable", it's an accommodation for people with an addiction, you can't just stop doing something when you're addicted, no matter how much you may want to.  The fact is some will have a physiological need to smoke (this is what a chemical addiction is) and just trying to stop them is unlikely to be successful.  Much better to accommodate them in a way which prevents harm to other people through second hand smoke.  Providing a tiny glass box outside seems to be a reasonable measure to achieve this.

For some it probably is an accommodation. But for others it is definitely enabling. Again though, we're not qualified to actually judge what the health trade offs are, and they're definitely not obvious.

As for enforcement being a "money-grab"....doubtful, enforcement of this form often barely covers it's costs, and again, keep in mind who you're "grabbing" money from.

Definitely a fair point.