Smoking Ban Takes Effect 1/1/09: Oregon can look forward to more positive health outcomes
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NWHF Staff
| Posted on: December 31st, 2008
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As Oregon embarks on its new era of smoke-free workplaces everywhere, including bars and nightclubs, residents can look forward to overall improvements in health indicators. A recent news story from the city of Pueblo, Colorado shows a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations within three years of its smoking ban, government researchers announced recently. The study was the longest-running of its kind, and showed the rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent in the three years after the ban of workplace smoking took effect in Pueblo. Two neighboring areas did not see similar drops, and researchers believe that the ban was clearly responsible for theis discrepancy.
Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country.
According to the CDC, at least eight additional studies have linked smoking bans to decreased heart attacks.
The new study looked at heart attack hospitalizations for three years following the July 1, 2003 enactment of Pueblo’s ban, and found declines as great or greater than those in earlier research.
While Dr. Michael Thun, a researcher with the American Cancer Society wrote that this is now the ninth study, so it is clear that smoke-free laws are one of the most effective and cost-effective to reduce heart attacks,” Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, argued that the decline could have had more to do with a general decline in smoking in Pueblo County, the Associated Press reported.
“I don’t think it’s as clear as they’re making it out to be,” Siegel said
California, and Washington have already banned smoking in bars. However, Oregon is ranked 7th in the nation for percentage of state revenue coming from lottery dollars, much of it coming from lottery machines played by smokers.
Perhaps it’s time we question the way the state depends on gambling revenues for important services. What does it say about the value Oregon places on the health of its residents?
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I think that this is a great thing because by doing so will improve our health and reduce the population of second hand smoking. I agree with Hailey by doing so people will smoke less and to some extend some people could quit smoking because of the inconvenience. I am really glad that this law has pass, it would not only improve our society but our lives as well.