Founded more than a century ago, Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital has allowed smoking on its campus through its long history. That will change in October with a new policy that bans tobacco on the campus and all of the health care district’s facilities.
Many hospitals and health care facilities ban smoking on their properties, but Hazel Hawkins in Hollister still allows it in certain areas.
San Benito Healthcare District Trustee Gordon Machado told the Free Lance in March he had been working to get a smoking ban implemented on the publicly owned hospital campus off Sunset Drive. Machado has said a former human resources official was a smoker and that it was a reason for putting off a campus ban. That employee no longer works at the hospital. Machado had been in talks with the new H.R. official about moving forward on a policy.
That new policy will take effect Oct. 17, according to a flyer posted on Facebook. It reads that starting on that date, the hospital campus and all of the health care district’s facilities will be smoke-free and tobacco-free. The new policy will ban cigarettes along with smokeless tobacco, vapor and e-cigarettes.
Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital is part of the San Benito Healthcare District, which also owns and operates four clinics and two skilled-nursing facilities.
Nationwide, at least 3,929 hospitals, healthcare systems or clinics had adopted smoke-free policies as of July 2016, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Four national health care companies have banned tobacco and include Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, Mayo Clinic and SSM Health Care, according to the organization. At least 40 municipalities, including Santa Clara County, have banned tobacco at health care facilities.
