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<H5 style="PADDING-TOP: 5px" class=details><A
href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/sep/23/heart-attacks-fall-after-smoking-bans/">http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/sep/23/heart-attacks-fall-after-smoking-bans/</A></H5>
<H5 style="PADDING-TOP: 5px" class=details>September 23, 2009 in
Nation/World</H5></DIV>
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<H2>Heart attacks fall after smoking bans</H2>
<H5 class=subhead>Restrictions present incentive to quit, curtail
secondhand exposure</H5>
<DIV class="details nested grid-8"><SPAN>Alan Bavley / McClatchy </SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV class="tag-details details-top"><SPAN
style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 3px">Tags:</SPAN> <SPAN><A
href="http://www.spokesman.com/tags/health">health</A></SPAN> <SPAN><A
href="http://www.spokesman.com/tags/smoking">smoking</A></SPAN> <SPAN><A
href="http://www.spokesman.com/tags/smoking-ban">smoking ban</A></SPAN>
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<P>KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Public smoking bans do more than just clear the air in
offices, bars and restaurants – they lead to quick and dramatic declines in
heart attacks.</P>
<P>Two teams of researchers came to this conclusion after independently
examining evidence from more than a dozen locales in the United States, Canada
and Europe that had enacted smoking restrictions.</P>
<P>Not only was the drop in heart attacks almost immediate, the declines tended
to be greater the longer the bans were in place, the researchers found.</P>
<P>After smoking restrictions went into effect, heart attack rates dropped an
average of 26 percent in a year, one study found. After three years, heart
attack rates were down by an average of 36 percent, according to the
other study.</P>
<P>“We’re confident that the benefit is real,” said David Meyers of the
University of Kansas Medical Center, lead author of one of the studies. “The
effect of smoke on heart attack is huge.”</P>
<P>Meyers estimated conservatively that a nationwide public smoking ban would
prevent as many as 156,400 heart attacks a year. Nonsmokers would benefit by
limiting their exposure to secondhand smoke. Smokers would have a greater
incentive to quit or cut back.</P>
<P>“I am embarrassed that the U.S. has not passed a national smoking ban, and
yet Scotland, Ireland, Italy and France did,” Meyers said. “But those countries
aren’t big tobacco producers, so it was politically easier.”</P>
<P>As of last year, 23 states and the District of Columbia had enacted
comprehensive smoking restrictions, according to the American
Lung Association.</P>
<P>Meyers’ study, which he did with colleagues John Neuberger and Jianghua He,
is in the latest issue of the Journal of the American College
of Cardiology.</P>
<P>Also newly published in Circulation, the American Heart Association’s
journal, is a study by researchers at the University of California, San
Francisco, that looked at much of the same data and came to
similar conclusions.</P>
<P>As recently as four or five years ago, claims that smoking restrictions
yielded health benefits were controversial, said James Lightwood, co-author of
the Circulation study.</P>
<P>“Now we’re getting a consistent picture,” Lightwood said. “The encouraging
thing about the Meyers study and ours is apparently if you take the same data,
the signal is so strong that people get almost the same result.”</P>
<P>Evidence linking smoking restrictions to lower rates of heart attack has been
mounting for years. One startling study in Helena for example, found that the
annual heart attack rate dropped 40 percent after the city banned public
smoking. After a court suspended the ban, the rate shot up again.</P>
<P>But doubts about the health benefits have persisted because studies of
different locales with smoking restrictions have yielded widely diverging
results, from big drops in heart attack rates to little or no change, or even a
small increase in heart attacks.</P>
<P>By analyzing trends in the data, the two research teams discovered that the
differing results were due largely to variations in time periods covered by the
studies. Some studies measured heart attack rates just a few months into a
smoking ban; others examined a period of several years.</P>
<P>Heart attack rates decline so soon after smoking restrictions are in place
because tobacco smoke’s ill effects work quickly on the heart by restricting
blood flow and the supply of oxygen and by making blood more likely
to clot.</P></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>