Smoking bans reduce heart attack admissions

This is according to a report published in Preventive Medicine, which shows that worldwide smoking bans reduce admissions by one-fifth. This meta-analysis shows that the effects are immediate - as soon as a ban on smoking in public is in place, the effect starts.

Apparently the smoke-free law in England, introduced on 1 July last year, which made virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces smokefree, has helped record numbers of people stop smoking and it is estimated that it will prevent an estimated 40 000 deaths in the next ten years.

The decline in smoking prevalence for the nine months before the ban was 1.6% compared with 5.5% in the nine months after. Based on these findings, the researchers estimate that at least 400 000 people quit smoking as a result of the ban.