Recent studies reveal that smoking bans in bars and restaurants correlate with a lower number of heart attacks nationwide.

A pair of studies released last week by the Journal of American Heart Association and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found smoking bans have reduced heart attacks by 36 percent, according to Publicnewsservice.org.

Smoke Free Arizona and its partners are currently conducting similar studies about the effects of Arizona’s 2007 indoor-smoking ban specifically, an official said.

“Compliance has been excellent since the law went into effect,” said Harmony Duport, acting Smoke Free Arizona program manager.

The W. P. Carey School of Business conducted a study shortly after the ban went into effect to determine the economic impacts on bars and restaurants, she said.

“The economic-impact study that took place in Arizona did not show any impact of economic downfall for businesses,” Duport said.

Hopefully, the recent findings about heart attack rates will prompt the remaining U.S. states to follow suit and institute indoor smoking bans, she said.

Smoke Free Arizona officials have received many e-mails in favor of the ban, she said, adding that people generally like working and eating in a smoke-free environment.

Nick Kelly, the general manager for Tavern on Mill, said he remembers when the indoor-smoking ban took effect in 2007.

“At first people were real skeptical about it,” he said.

However, Kelly thinks the ban was a success and said very few of his customers want to eat dinner in a smoke-infested room.

“Everyone knows that that’s just not acceptable here,” he said. “We have a few patios that we can designate for smoking.”

The voting public and proponents of the indoor ban find that the results of the recent heart-attack survey show its positive results, Kelly said.
“I think that was their ultimate goal — to lower the percentage rate of people who could be affected by second-hand smoke,” he said.

Sociology junior Alexandra Simons, however, thinks the law was a result of a comfort issue rather than health issues related to second-hand smoke.

“There’s a study that few people have heard about,” Simons said. “We’ve talked about this in a bunch of my [sociology] classes.”

Simons said she learned in her Sociology of Deviance class that a person would have to be completely immersed in a room filled with cigarette smoke for eight hours before he or she consumed enough toxins present in one-half of a cigarette.

Despite her view on second-hand smoke, Simons said she supports the indoor-smoking ban.

“I hate being surrounded by smoke when I’m eating,” she said.
People who smoke aren’t smoking as often as a result of the bans, Simons said, which she believes is a major reason for the decline in the number of heart attacks in the U.S.

“Education is obviously a really big preventative measure,” she said, adding that the bans brought about a lot of attention to the issue of smoking in general, which could have contributed to people smoking less often or not at all.

Smoke Free Arizona said it is trying to promote this education statewide to further the reduction of smoking-related illness.