Heart attacks decline after smoking ban: study
DALLAS (Reuters) - A Colorado city ban on smoking at workplaces and in public buildings may have sparked a steep decline in heart attacks, researchers reported on Monday. In the 18 months after a no-smoking ordinance took effect in Pueblo in 2003, hospital admissions for heart attacks for city residents dropped 27 percent, according to the study led by Dr. Carl Bartecchi, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.
OK, so yesterday, I managed to start yet another (albeit very minor and reasonably civil) flame war on the subject of banning smoking in public places. It’s a subject about which I have very strong feelings, which I am certainly not going to apologize for. Yes, my right to breather clean air DOES trump your right to smoke and pollute that air…and if you can’t accept that reality and you insist on lighting up, we’re going to have issues. You may not like it, and you may think me unreasonable, but I quite frankly don’t much care. You have no right to force the byporduct of your addiction on me. Period. End of story.
There isn’t much that I can truly be described as being “militant” about, but smoking is at the top of the list. Cigarette smoke does not respect boundaries, and second-hand smoke is quickly becoming widely recognized as a significant health threat. I can only wonder what might have been happening to me all those years I was forced to inhale my father’s cigarette smoke. I had no say in the matter, and yet I was essentlally forced to be a de facto smoker.
Now comes a study that lends at least a little bit of credence to the argument that second-hand smoke is not the benign, harmless byproduct of cigarette combustion that Big Tobacco and it’s apologists would have us believe.
“Heart attack hospitalizations did not change significantly for residents of surrounding Pueblo County or in the comparison city of Colorado Springs, neither of which have non-smoking ordinances,” said the American Heart Association, which published the study in its journal Circulation.
The association said this was further evidence of the damage wrought by secondhand smoke.
“The decline in the number of heart attack hospitalizations within the first year and a half after the non-smoking ban that was observed in this study is most likely due to a decrease in the effect of secondhand smoke as a triggering factor for heart attacks,” it said.
So you think that this is not a significant development? Sure, it’s a relatively small study, but not significant? Try telling that to the families and loved ones of the estimated 35,000 nonsmokers killed by second-hand smoke every year. The reality is the smoking bans work, and more and wider bans will only benefit public health. No, I’m not going to advocate an outright ban on smoking, though I certainly wouldn’t be shedding any tears over such a ban. Nonetheless, banning smoking in public places is not only a good idea, it’s an excellent way to reduce the risks associated with second-hand smoke for the greatest number of Americans.
If we care at all about public health, banning smoking in public places is a must…and it’s the right thing to do.
