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Smoking Ban Cut Heart Disease Risk!
 

There are many undesirable habits and smoking is certainly one of them. Smoking will not only put smokers at higher risk of getting heart disease, lung and other cancers, high blood pressure, stroke and respiratory disease, but also raise the health risk of people around them through secondhand smoke.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), long-term exposure to secondhand smoke can raise heart disease rates in adult nonsmokers by 25 to 30 percent. Secondhand smoke kills about 46,000 Americans every year from heart disease alone.

Lifespan of smokers is shorter too. As what a study had shown, only 42 percent of male lifelong smokers reached the age of 73 compared to 78 percent of nonsmokers. Meanwhile, about $50 billion had to be spent each year on smoking-related health costs.

A World Health Organization (WHO) treaty in 2003, ratified by more than 170 countries, recommended imposing a complete ban on advertising and promotion of tobacco products. Unfortunately, not many countries were willing to impose such a ban. Nevertheless, smoking bans in public places and workplaces have been enacted in more and more countries for the past few years.

Now the question is: Can such an action really help cut the health risk?

The answer is YES! There were at least 3 studies had shown that smoking ban in public places significantly cut the number of heart attack and related diseases.

One paper that was published on September 21, 2009 in the journal ‘Circulation’ revealed that heart attack had been reduced by 17 percent after the first year of ban in the United States, Canada and Europe and as much as 36 percent after 3 years.

Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco stressed that their findings, though were inconsistent with prior studies, showed that smoking ban had a compelling effect. Their analysis had added to the already strong evidence that secondhand smoke causes heart attack. They strongly believed that passing 100 percent smoke-free laws in all workplaces and public places is something that governments can do to protect the public.

In the second study, researchers from the University of Kansas School of Medicine estimated a nationwide ban in the United States could prevent as many as 154,000 heart attacks a year. The paper appeared on September 21, 2009 in the ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’.

After analyzing data from 10 studies on smoking bans in the United States, Canada and Europe to compare rates of heart attack before and after public smoking bans, they found that public smoking bans seemed to be tremendously effective in cutting down heart attack and theoretically might also help prevent lung cancer and emphysema.

Emphysema is a progressive disease of the lungs that primarily causes shortness of breath. It develops much more slowly than heart attack and is included in a group of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is often caused by smoking or long-term exposure to air pollution.

As indicated in the findings, women and younger people were most likely to benefit. The possible reason behind this might be they often work in or frequent bars and restaurants where smoking is fairly common.

The third study, which was published on June 9, 2010 in the ‘British Medical Journal’, suggested that anti-smoking legislation has the potential to save millions of lives in both the short and longer term by reducing the amount of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.

Researchers from the Bath University tobacco control research group found that there were 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attack than the annual average in the previous 5 years (a fall of 2.4 percent) and saved the health service 8.4 million pounds in the year after July 2007, when a law banning smoking in public places in England took effect.

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