For two decades, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has updated public smoking policies to reflect the idea that smoking “should not occur on a hospital campus.” First with a (reasonable) ban on indoor smoking in 1989, the policy expanded to defining and enforcing designated outdoor smoking areas around the hospital. This week, those smoking areas were abolished as all outdoor smoking on hospital grounds is prohibited.

Added to the staff is a band of so-called “smoke patrol” employees who will be “vigilant” in enforcing the ban. According to Vanderbilt News Service, these patrollers will direct students, faculty, patients and visitors to smoke on the sidewalks of 21st and Blakemore Avenues.

The effort to curb smoking at the hospital is admirable, but the implications about freedom are disturbing. While the private medical center is perfectly within its right to ban smoking on its grounds, this ban is part of a nationwide trend of trading personal liberty for public health concerns.

Will the dying patient who wants to enjoy a cigarette outside his hospital have to be wheeled across the street in order to do so? Will the smoking undergraduate student or faculty member walking from Peabody to Main Campus be unfairly intimidated by the smoke patrol? Will this ban develop into a ban on talking on cell phones while crossing the street, as we have recently seen in Illinois?

Smoking is a health hazard, although some researchers believe the hazards of secondhand smoke have been vastly overstated. Nevertheless, it is an overreach for the Medical Center to deny smokers the right to smoke in the name of public health.