KINGWOOD - Tuesday there were cigarette butts on top of a trash can outside Preston Memorial Hospital. But they should be gone Wednesday. That’s because the grounds of Preston Memorial Hospital are now smoke free.

Smoking had not been allowed in the building, but now Preston Memorial joins 30 other hospitals out of the 68 in West Virginia to ban smoking on their properties. “Being a health care facility, you would think that’s kind of a nobrainer,” Preston Memorial CEO Melissa Lockwood said. “We do have designated smoking areas currently for the public and employees. But of course, as of [today], that’ll all go away.”

Lockwood said a committee had been making arrangements to enact the new policy for about a year, educating employees and developing a timeline. “Some [employees] have probably been in denial until a couple weeks ago,” she said. “I think it finally hit home with a few of the people who have not chosen to quit — that is their choice. But some people have taken this as an opportunity to try to quit smoking, and they’ve been pretty successful.”

Adrienne Titus, hospital community relations and foundation director, said hospital administrators have not required employees to quit smoking — they just have to leave the grounds to do it.

And the hospital has been offering alternatives to employees who smoke, Lockwood said, such as discounted smoking cessation medication. For patients who can’t leave their beds and for pregnant women, Titus said, they already offer them a nicotine patch or, if they want to quit, smoking cessation products. "There’s nothing like coming to work in the morning and having to walk through a fog of smoke,” Lockwood said. “And also you have patients who are coming here because they are ill, they have respiratory issues or somebody’s bringing their baby in for respiratory distress.”

She said more hospitals haven’t adopted a no-smoking-anywhere policy because their grounds are too big or because they might lose a competitive edge in hiring employees. Some people just need to smoke, she said. “I just asked one employee I saw going out for a smoke break, ‘Are you ready for tomorrow?’ ” Titus said. “She said, ‘I guess I’ll just clock out for lunch, and that’ll be what I have to do.’”