Smoking ban is supposed to save lives
Published on May 29, 2008 7:25 AM
World Health Organization has noticed that banning smoking in public places is supposed to save lives. It encourages people to smoke less, in that way they do themselves and those around them less harm.
The way the smoking ban works may depend on how uniform is the anti-smoking legislation, because there are states where the ban was not approved by the Government yet.
Though many countries have introduced national bans, America has taken a step-by-step approach. A number of states, counties and municipalities have introduced various types of bans, and have enforced them with varying degrees of rigor.
Banning normal human behavior altogether simply does not work. Anti-smoking researchers claim that stopping people from smoking in restaurants and bars would reduce the costs of treating various diseases that smokers are prone to.
But smokers don’t smoke only in restaurants and bars, and they will abandon the habit only if they want to. For example, a study shows that smokers are driving farther to places where smoking in bars is allowed.
The researchers have analyzed data from 120 American counties, 20 of which had banned smoking. They found that a smoking ban has increased fatal alcohol-related car accidents by 13% in a typical county with a population of 680,000 people. This is the equivalent of 2.5 fatal accidents.
In areas where the ban has been imposed for longer than 18 months, the increased accident rate is 19%. The same results were observed in Boulder county where smoking was banned. Fatal accidents in Jefferson county, between Boulder county and Denver, went up by 40%.
Researchers added that smokers are driving to alternative places where they could smoke and drink. This may be because they are driving to bars with outdoor seating, or to bars which are not enforcing the smoking ban.
Scientists have observed that the more public bans are imposed against smoking the more people find another way to take a break and do something they enjoy, regardless of the long term health consequences.