HUNDREDS of Evening Times readers voted overwhelmingly against the Glasgow-wide hospital smoking ban to be introduced within days.

An online poll by the Evening Times found 80.7% - a total of 922 readers - opposed to new rules that will banish smokers from the grounds of every city hospital and health centre.

Only 19.1% - 218 people - backed the new blanket ban by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde due to be launched on March 26. The response is by far the most votes ever polled in our daily online poll.

It came after we revealed on Tuesday how the ban was unpopular with staff and patients at the Western Infirmary.

Staff complained they often have to work 12-hour shifts and will now be expected to leave the hospital grounds to have a smoke.

Some patients said a fag was one of the few comforts they had left.

But hospital bosses say patients will be offered stop-smoking advice and nicotine replacement therapy.

As well as the big response to our online poll, readers have also bombarded us with comments on the issue.

One reader said: "The little trumped-up Hitlers put the smokers outside in the first place.

"No-one owns the air, not even the paranoids."

Another reader said: "Who is going to enforce this ban in hospital grounds? Certainly not hospital security who are usually ex-porters.

"Perhaps management would like the job of policing the grounds."

But one reader, speaking in support of the new regulations, said: "Smokers are pathetic, selfish and ungrateful and they stink. Society should show them no mercy."

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "We carried out a full consultation with staff on the no-smoking policy.

"The proposal is in common with many other NHS boards."

As the debate over the ban raged, Dr Jeff Wigand, who inspired the Hollywood movie The Insider where he was portrayed by Russell Crowe, addressed delegates at a Glasgow health conference yesterday.

Dr Wigand took on a giant tobacco company and won, exposing the conspiracy of the tobacco industry.

He told delegates at the Cigarettes, Smoking and Domestic Fires in Scotland conference of the need to lobby cigarette firms to get them to make self-extinguishing cigarettes.

Dr Wigand is pushing for legislation that would force tobacco firms to make self-extinguishing cigarettes more readily available in the UK.