Well yes, smokers are addicts. The very thought of not being able to smoke, even for relatively short periods, is highly stressful and to actually be prevented from smoking when you need a fag is horrible - you can't think of much else than wanting to smoke, you're irritable/angry and on edge and you make bad decisions because of it. That's addiction for you, it's not a lifestyle choice.
As an ex-smoker that gave up due to cancer of the throat and tongue (HPV, not smoking related, get your kids vaccinated - both boys and girls!) I absolutely hate being around smoke. Sometimes because it's close to nauseating, sometimes because it smells so good! I didn't stop immediately on diagnosis - I was far too stressed, I'd just been told I had cancer and needed a fag to try and calm down a bit. I knew I would stop, but it was going to be a little more gradual. The hospital gave me all sorts of nicotine replacements to help, but essentially the fact that I wasn't allowed to smoke pre radiotherapy sessions (5x per week for 6 weeks) or with an hour or so of finishing them (can't remember exact length) meant that I didn't smoke in the mornings (previously a very heavy smoking part of the day - coffee and fags for breakfast) and ended up stretching out when my first cigarette of the day was (e.g. I've made it to 3pm, can I make it to 4?). That cut my intake down from around 30 a day to maybe 5. Not long after that my throat was a complete mess from the radiotherapy (think really bad sunburn) and smoking just wasn't an option or in any way desirable. A couple of weeks later I was eating through a tube up my nose.
So yeah, the relationship between smoking and health in hospitals is far from straightforward, and kicking away peoples crutches - no matter how unhealthy they are - isn't necessarily a good idea.
As for how it's gonne, I'm still smoke (and cancer) free nearly three years later, but there's a coda.
Stopping smoking may well have played a part in my colitis flaring up again - it had been in remission for 15 years. People find it difficult to believe, but there is a clear link between stopping smoking and onset of colitis, and many colitis sufferers have used smoking to control the disease. This is genuine, and the docs will talk to you about it, though for obvious reasons they don't recommend smoking to deal with it. Mine first flared up at an earlier attempt to stop smoking, and was only under control again when I re-started. No treatments for my colitis worked (there were a few I couldn't use due to the previous cancer) and earlier this year I had to have a colectomy to cure it. There was a point there where I definitely considered starting again.
Apologies for the essay, just remember, sometimes something that irritates you is fairly trivial but may mean a lot more to someone else. As an aside, getting overly annoyed by very trivial things is probably why so many drivers seem to want to kill us. Wound up about some meaningless thing they take it out on the cyclist that has impeded their clear run to the red light ahead. We should all just chill out a bit more, life's too short for that shoot.
