Do Smoking Bans Improve Health?
No. This is a 2010 NBER paper that I previously overlooked:
U.S. state and local governments have increasingly adopted restrictions on smoking in public places. This paper analyzes nationally representative databases, including the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, to compare short-term changes in mortality and hospitalization rates in smoking-restricted regions with control regions. In contrast with smaller regional studies, we find that smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a smoking ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature.
More on the study on cigarettes and lifetime risks by HT: John Dunn.
I wonder what the 400,000 people who die each year from smoking will think about this.
Note the key clause: “smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines”. In other words, the jury is still out.
Smoking bans may not work; but what about banning smokers?