According to a new study, a statewide workplace smoking ban in Massachusetts may be responsible for a steep drop in heart-attack deaths since 2004.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which produced the study, says the biggest health gains came among those people the ban saved from regular exposure to second-hand smoke.
The rate of heart-disease-related deaths has been cut nearly in half in Massachusetts since 1999, and the downward trend began years before the workplace ban went into effect.
But there’s reason to believe that the ban accelerated the decline. For one, the cities and towns that saw health improvements earliest were the ones in which local smoking restrictions were enacted before the statewide ban. Now, two years after the statewide ban was put in place, heart-attack death rates have fallen to almost uniform levels across Massachusetts.
Tobacco companies, meanwhile, are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research on how to create a safe cigarette (likely an impossible goal).
Smoking rates in the U.S. have fallen to their lowest levels since 1920, pushed down by the accumulating weight of medical evidence showing the grave health effects of tobacco use.
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I would have to agree that the link to second hand smoke and lower rates of heart attack deaths seems tenuous (based on this study), but despite this, and despite the fact that I personally am a smoker, I am very pro smoking bans.
I grew up in Wisconsin where smoking indoors is as legal as it has ever been (with the exception of Madison), and now live in Minneapolis, where a city wide ban passed around 4 years ago, and a state wide ban passed last year. Admittedly at first I was against the ban, but having lived here for several years now I am very much for it. I think that you will be hard pressed to find a smoker over the age of 20 that doesn’t at least have some faint desire to quit smoking…eventually…someday, and the smoking ban provides a lot of great reasons not to have that extra cigarette. I find that my smoking habits have been cut in half, if not more than that, because stepping outside into that Minnesota cold for a cigarette just isn’t worth it to me. the ban has prompted many housing units to go non smoking, bars are non smoking (which was the worst location for me in terms of how much I smoked) Its really pushed me into cutting back without the stress of trying to enforce these limits on myself (every time I don’t go out, I have made a conscious decision that being warm, or staying in a conversation with someone indoors, is worth more to me than a smoke at that moment in time). Even if in the short term it doesn’t help prevent heart disease through reduced second hand smoke, I think that it could help prevent it by making it less convenient for smokers to smoke as much as they otherwise would
There seems to be quite a few studies in Europe which claim smoking bans were followed by falls in hospital admissions for heart attacks.
Italianstudies in http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080211172539.htm and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5398836.stm
Irish study in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562247/Smoking-ban-%27reduces-heart-attack-rate%27.html
Scottish study in http://www.mtbeurope.info/news/2008/807042.htm
#8 – Is that just pedantry, or are you arguing that it’s not worthwhile to give people a few extra years or decades to live, or to prevent them from one of the more painful, drawn-out deaths?
Too many bars in urban areas where real crime is an issue ignore the ban to make any studies worth while.
As noted by #10, smoking bans have been in place outside the US and there is some early mid-term data available.
Outside ‘cancer’ issues, I appreciate not having people smoking in restaurants and also in not having to clean my clothes after going to a pub.
@3, your simple market solution is just bullying and equivalent to “stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.” For many people changing employers is very expensive or impossible.
#8, what about simply dying of old age? Couldn’t more “non-deaths” be shifted to that category, without increasing death rates from other ailments?
It’s nice to see that the study in Massachusetts seems to loosely link to a higher quality of life, unfortunately I have to say there are too many other variables present. Other areas that have had bans longer should have already validated this, such as Florida, New York, California. What I found distateful is that they are trying to completely banning tobacco by over-regulation, forcing all Cigar and Hookah bars to close, under the guise of second-hand smoke, a non-smoker shouldn’t be in one, and if they are they are already aware of the health risk involved. In Florida they allow smoking in bars that serve under a certain percentage of food per income. All other places are banned.
The comedian Doug Stanhope has a great routine about second-hand smoke:
“If tobacco is supposedly the most addictive drug there is, and second-hand smoke is killing so many people, then how come no one is addicted to second-hand smoke? Do you know anyone who after sex or in a stressful situation has to run out to a Bingo hall or an AA meeting and breathe deeply?”
I’m not a smoker, and generally applaud the movement towards keeping smokers’ bad habits from adversely affecting others, but in all seriousness, to read these studies you could conclude that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than first-hand smoke. Personally, I don’t buy it.