Public Smoking Laws

The greatest cause of preventable death in the world smokes. And even if you're not a smoker, exposure to secondhand smoke is known to cause thousands of deaths from heart disease and lung cancer. For this reason, 32 states have passed laws prohibiting smoking in some or all public places.

This has often been a battle hard won, because restaurant and bar owners feared a downturn, if their customers can not light up. But is this what really happened?

I'll give you details on this debate in a minute. Starting with a look at the effects of secondhand smoke.

Sheet

The American Lung Association publishes a fact sheet on secondhand smoke, the smoke from burning tobacco and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. This smoke is inhaled unintentionally by nonsmokers, because it persists in the air for hours. Here are some facts:

• The current Surgeon General's report concludes that scientific evidence shows no safe level of exposure to passive smoking. Even a short exposure may increase the risk of heart attack.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, a known cause of cancer in humans.
• Secondhand smoke is blamed for more than 50,000 deaths among nonsmokers each year.
• Secondhand smoke is especially dangerous for young children, which decreases from 150.000 to 300.000 respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months (1).

Secondhand smoke is not just a nuisance - has proved to be much more damaging than expected.

Recent studies

Most people associate smoking and secondhand smoke to lung cancer, cancer, but takes years to develop. Dr. Neal Benowitz of the University of California, said: "If you have heart disease, you really need to stay away from secondhand smoke. This is an immediate danger to your life. "(2)

Within minutes of being exposed to smoke, blood vessels constrict and the blood becomes sticky and prone to clotting. Many people do not know they have heart disease until they suffer a heart attack, so there is no safe level of secondhand smoke.

As if this were not enough, it seems that the smoke interferes with the way the blood is carried to the brain. A study published in the British Medical Journal 2/13/09, a much higher incidence of dementia among people over 50 who had been around high levels of secondhand smoke. (3) This is the first large study to link exposure to tobacco smoke from dementia and other neurological problems in the elderly.

In the wake of this information, scientists at the University of California, Riverside, found that exposure to secondhand smoke may end in disease NAFLD (NAFLD) - a leading cause of liver damage in those who drink little or no alcohol. The results of this study are published in the September 2009 issue of Journal of Hepatology (4).

Advantages of the ban

This brings us to the issue of public smoking bans - some have been put in place long enough to measure the results of reduced smoking in public. What happened?

• Helena, Montana had 16% fewer hospitalizations for heart attack during the first six months after the ban came into force. neighboring areas, without a smoking ban saw heart attack instead (5).
• Pueblo, Colorado, reported a 41% drop in heart attack admissions during the three years of smoking in the workplace after having been banned (6).
• ban smoking together, cities in America, Canada and Europe that began had a 17% reduction in heart attacks in the first year. Each year after that, the decline in heart attacks was on average 26% compared to areas that still allow smoking in public. (7)

Are they beneficial to health dramatically bad for business? <.