Restaurant smoking bans don't just protect diners and staff from other people's smoke, they help stop young people becoming habitual smokers.
‘In 2001, Michael Siegel* and colleagues at Boston University surveyed 3834 Massachusetts youths, with follow-ups two and four years later. In towns where restaurants had no smoking bans or kept smoking areas, 9.8% had smoked over 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes, compared with 7.9% in towns with smoking bans.
Once the researchers corrected for factors such as whether their parents smoked, those in towns with bans were 35% less likely to be habitual smokers (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, vol 162, p 477).
Bans don't make teenagers less likely to try cigarettes, but seem to stop them making it a habit, perhaps due to less contact with smokers or because smoking seems less socially acceptable.’
The full article by Siegel is available free at the link. BTW Michael Siegel has a very active and interesting blogsite here. Via it I came to this interesting report on tobacco control in Canada – one of those countries most successful in encouraging less smoking.
2 comments:
China, or at least Beijing, is bringing in smoking bans soon. (in July I think) They have already changed the scope due to lobbying and have placed the onus on the individual not the person who owns the space.
So if you light up in a restaraunt (a common but decreasing occurence) it is not the owner's liability but the individual smoker. So its each smoker (who are mainly older men from what I can see) who takes the risk and a cafe owner can have 10 light up and not do much about it.
They are also striking a bit of resistance from the tobacco industry and outlets which is a state run monopoly.
"China, which consumes a third of the world's tobacco with a fifth of the population, must mediate between cutting health care costs and its financial stake in tobacco, which generated 240 billion yuan, or $31 billion, in taxes in 2005, according to a study at a Beijing University research center."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/14/business/tobacco.php
A ban on smoking in most public buildings has come into force in the Chinese capital, Beijing.
For every three cigarettes lit worldwide, one is smoked in China. Almost 25% of the Chinese smoke.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7376560.stm
I suppose that the 25% figure is that low because smoking is mainly a male activity. i think a lot more than 25% of chinese men smoke.
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