Report: Smoking Bans Reduce Heart Attacks

Institute of Medicine Says Bans Prevent Heart Attacks in Nonsmokers and Don't Hurt Business

(AP)  A major report confirms what health officials have long believed: Bans on smoking in restaurants, bars and other gathering spots reduce the risk of heart attacks among nonsmokers.

More than 126 million nonsmoking Americans are regularly exposed to someone else's tobacco smoke. The surgeon general in 2006 cited "overwhelming scientific evidence" that tens of thousands die each year as a result, from heart disease, lung cancer and a list of other illnesses.

Yet smoking bans have remained a hard sell in Ohio and elsewhere, as lawmakers and business owners debate whether such prohibitions are worth the anger of smoking customers or employees.

Thursday's hard-hitting report from the Institute of Medicine promises to influence that debate here and abroad.

"The evidence is clear," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which requested the study. "Smoke-free laws don't hurt business ... but they prevent heart attacks in nonsmokers."

Among the IOM report's conclusions: While heavier exposure to secondhand smoke is worse, there's no safe level. And it cited "compelling" if circumstantial evidence that even less than an hour's exposure might be enough to push someone already at risk of a heart attack over the edge — as the smoke's pollution-like small particles and other substances can quickly affect blood vessels.

"There is no question that smoking bans have a positive health effect," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins University who chaired the IOM committee.

Since New York led the way in 2003, 21 states plus the District of Columbia now have what the CDC calls comprehensive statewide laws banning smoking in both public and private workplaces, restaurants and bars — with no exception for ventilated smoking areas. Some other states have less restrictive laws.

That means 41 percent of Americans are as protected in public from secondhand smoke as possible, Frieden said. The IOM report found just 5 percent of the world's population was covered by comprehensive smoke-free laws.

In Ohio, a workplace smoking ban approved by voters took effect in May 2007 and has faced several legal challenges since.

While the public mostly connects smoking with lung cancer, heart disease is a more immediate consequence. About a third of all heart attacks in the U.S. are related to smoking, Frieden said. Both actively smoking and breathing others' smoke can damage blood vessels and increase heart attack-causing blood clots.

How much do bans help? That depends on how existing bans were studied and how much secondhand smoke exposure different populations have. Some heavily exposed nonsmokers have the same risk of heart damage as people who smoke up to nine cigarettes a day, Goldman said.

Her committee reviewed 11 key studies of smoking bans in parts of the U.S., Canada, Italy and Scotland, and found drops in the number of heart attacks that ranged from 6 percent to 47 percent.

The impact can be quick: Helena, Mont., for example, recorded 16 percent fewer heart attack hospitalizations in the six months after its ban went into effect than in the same months during previous years, while nearby areas that had no smoking ban saw heart attacks rise. More dramatically, heart attack hospitalizations dropped 41 percent in the three years after Pueblo, Col., banned workplace smoking.

The Institute of Medicine is part of the National Academies, an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters.

[snowbird1]

Smoking bans and the Heart Attack Fraud

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/

[Youvebeenhad]

I am correcting the links from my previous post with permission from Mr. McFadden.

Smoking bans are based on lies, and if people take just a few minutes to honestly read some of the studies and the criticisms of the studies that the ban proposal is based on it might make a big difference. To see just how these nonsense statistics supporting bans get made up and WHY they get made up just check these three links:

http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/2210.html

shows how researchers promise the "right" kind of answers for grants before even doing the research and how they juggle the numbers to create the promised "right answers." Be sure to read the "aftercomments" to the Grier article: that is where the strongest documented criticisms are. And:

http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/wagner_on_pell.php

shows how the nonsense heart attack drop meta-study also juggled numbers and scientific terminology while

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/bmj.38055.715683.55v1#67440

dissects the grandfather of these studies, the "Helena Heart Miracle." Read "100 Days," and way down near the bottom "Independently Confirmed??" where you'll see how the "evidence" of what they did was almost wiped from the Internet. If the "little studies" are trash, then the "big combining study" is also trash.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

[Youvebeenhad]

I am correcting the links from my previous post with permission from Mr. McFadden.

Smoking bans are based on lies, and if people take just a few minutes to honestly read some of the studies and the criticisms of the studies that the ban proposal is based on it might make a big difference. To see just how these nonsense statistics supporting bans get made up and WHY they get made up just check these three links:

http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/2210.html

shows how researchers promise the "right" kind of answers for grants before even doing the research and how they juggle the numbers to create the promised "right answers." Be sure to read the "aftercomments" to the Grier article: that is where the strongest documented criticisms are. And:

http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/wagner_on_pell.php

shows how the nonsense heart attack drop meta-study also juggled numbers and scientific terminology while

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/bmj.38055.715683.55v1#67440

dissects the grandfather of these studies, the "Helena Heart Miracle." Read "100 Days," and way down near the bottom "Independently Confirmed??" where you'll see how the "evidence" of what they did was almost wiped from the Internet. If the "little studies" are trash, then the "big combining study" is also trash.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

[dragon8me]

Propaganda pure and simple. It proves nothing. It's too short a time to compare for one and there are many factors to consider. There just trying to ban tobacco altogether. Prohibition of ANY substance is anti-American. I have no problem with banning it in closed spaces that don't have adaquate ventalation but if a bussiness has a desiginated place that is well vented there shouldn't be a problem. No one who don't want to breath smoke should have to but at the same time an all our ban is not the best way to do things. They just want the easy way out, instead of using science to find options.

[delfmast]

WastingtonDC: Millions of people, like my mother, were killed by tobacco addiction and in Mom's case, working with asbestos brake shoes. We must now, just go ahead and outlaw the production and sale of tobacco, as we did with asbestos, that absolutely will kill the consumer, if used as the advertisements illustrate. Of course, death from the dreaded mesothelioma is far quicker, if smoking and asbestos exposure are combined, but both products will kill, if used long enough, alone, or together. Like all smokers who are lucky enough to quit successfully, I am waiting to find out if I also earned a death sentence, from smoking dozens of cartons of Lucky Strikes purchased from USS Saratoga, CVA 60 ships store, et al, at $1.00 per carton, the usual price for US military smokers in those days. Note that chemical giants simply stopped producing asbestos, with catastrophic effects to their business model, and ongoing costs to humanity, such as expense for asbestos removal and control, taken with the costs of litigation and medical care, and human suffering, that may last for generations. Never the less, America has continued to progress, with many fewer of our citizens dying from the product, because, in that case, our well paid lawyers forced our elected representatives to do the difficult job that they swore to do, with the result that asbestos producer campaign contributions were denied some politicians early on, and will end eventually, if they have not already, dwindling toward zero, as the victims of asbestos die out, and their champions quiet down. While there is substantial merit to the argument that outlawing possession and consumption of addictive drugs, like marijuana, tobacco and other illegal substances will simply move their production to rogue states, eliminate billions in GDP, and state and local taxation opportunities, and result in more deaths from producer/transporter criminals, that argument applies far more accurately to marijuana than to tobacco. While marijuana is touted as never causing death from untoward health effects, we say the same for tobacco. We kill hundreds of thousands to millions of citizens, in every nation that we sell the deadly tobacco products in. We can agree that there are certainly folks that die, due to operator error, by operators misusing marijuana and other illegal substances, in addition to those killed by the war on drugs, which many consider to be a war on our children, but the numbers of those deaths pale to insignificance compared to the murders that tobacco producers certainly commit. Our elected representatives, cozened as they are, by really big tobacco interests, and billions in campaign contributions, considered by many to be bribes, have killed 400,000 Americans yearly, for many years, and will, without a doubt, kill enough humans, to dwarf the numbers killed by Hitler, and one day, by Stalin, and finally by any of those bogeymen that history tells us are the most evil monsters in history. Even the present 400,000 annual tobacco deaths in America, will cause medical care expense, and loss of productive labor from those killed and disabled, that will harm the GDP and economy at levels that are unsupportable, for as long as the production of the noxious weed continues. Wake up America! Demand the end of commercial production and sale of tobacco products now. The private use, including private growing, curing and consumption of tobacco, by hopeless addicts, should perhaps be allowed, to avoid killing any humans in a war on tobacco use, and to prevent the 17,000 percent profit that the war on drugs has created, and will continue to guarantee, for South American drug producers, transporters, and their wholly owned politicians, no different from ours, who are paid by the producers of deadly drugs, to allow and facilitate their drug industry regardless of the number of citizens killed.

[Youvebeenhad]

Posted with permission from Michael McFadden:

Anyone who'd like to get a taste of just how nonsense statistics like this get made up and WHY they get made up should check out these three links:
http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/2210....
shows how researchers promise the "right" kind of answers to the smoke-ban funders before they even carry out the research and then shows how they juggle the numbers to give those "right" answers even when they don't exist.
http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php...
shows how the nonsense 14% number was produced for Scotland and is a good example of what's been done in all these "instant heart attack cure" studies.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/bmj.38055.715...
offers similar criticism for the grandfather of these studies: the "Helena Heart Miracle." Read the Responses titled "100 Days," "1,000 Days," and down near the bottom "Independently Confirmed?" where you'll see how the "evidence" of what they did was almost wiped from the Internet.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

[jennifer-marie]

I really want to know exactly how they can attribute a reduction in heart attacks specifically to smoking bans. Heart attacks and heart disease are linked to and caused by MULTIPLE factors. Perhaps a part of it was the smokers who stopped eating out so much, or going to the bars so much, thereby causing better eating at home and less drinking? This is such a biased and one-sided study. What other factors did they take into consideration at the time the smoking bans went into effects? Or did they take any other factors into consideration at all?

I'm not saying I'm against smoking bans, but I am saying I'm against fraudulent studies and reports designed to make the American public nod their heads and "Baaaah!" because politicians and special interest groups wants us to.

[skyk-2009]

jennifer-marie, that's why specialist go to school and EDUCATE themselves! They do those things so they can TELL what is causing Illness and HOW we can prevent it. Smoking is no different than any other poison in the environment, it can and IS isolated by these studies.