Smoking bans can protect the public against the hazards of second-hand smoke, but they might not do much to coax puffers to kick the habit.
British researchers, in a a study published in the journal Addiction, reported that the attention generated by the United Kingdom’s 2007 ban on smoking inside public places apparently spurred more smokers to try to quit initially. Those gains, however, soon faded away.
Reuters reports that the researchers concluded that smoking bans are most likely to influence smokers who already want to kick tobacco and just need some additional urging.
For other smokers, access to outdoor smoking areas and contact with other people who smoke may trump the influence of the bans, said Lisa Szatkowski, lead author of the study and a tobacco researcher at the University of Nottingham.
To gauge how many people were trying to kick the habit, the researchers compared the number of prescriptions doctors wrote for medications to help smokers quit before and after the law was enacted on July 1, 2007, focusing on 350 medical practices.
The medications included nicotine replacement therapy, the antidepressant bupropion and the anti-smoking drug varenicline, known as Chantix in the U.S.
Prescriptions for all the drugs rose 6.4 percent in the nine months preceding the ban — presumably spurred by publicity about the restriction — but the numbers dropped by 6.4 percent nine months after the ban, the study said.
“It’s frankly a little disappointing, but not surprising,” said David Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder National Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He said once the ban was in place, “maybe you’ve already skimmed the cream off the top of those who were already motivated to quit.”
But both Abrams, who was not involved in the study, and Szatkowski said the results did not mean that smoking bans are ineffective, noting that they have been shown to reduce the effects of second-hand smoke on nonsmokers.
A previous report found that in the year following the 2007 smoking ban, hospitalizations for heart attacks dropped 2.4 percent, which the researchers attributed to the legislation.
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The qualifier “[but it] did not mean that smoking bans are ineffective” screams that the primary reason for bans are a means to deprive adults of their free will to enjoy an otherwise legal product by way of social engineering. And that contrary to what the anti-smokers would like us to believe, “protection from smoke” is secondary AND, really, just an excuse for the former. They have to lie because if they framed smoking bans as they really mean it — to make it as hard as possible to light up — no one would have let them get away with such a tyranny.
But let’s not fool ourselves. This study also screams a design to push bans further in order to “rectify” the obstacle in forcing more smokers to quit in frustration. It’s found in this sentence: “…access to outdoor smoking areas and contact with other people who smoke may trump the influence of the bans.” The underlying aim of this study is to push for outdoor bans and further stigmatization.
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (C.L.A.S.H.)