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Smoking bans are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, which prohibit tobacco smoking in workplaces and/or other public spaces. Legislation may also define smoking as more generally being the carrying or possessing of any lit tobacco product.
The rationale for smoke-free laws is based on the fact that smoking is optional and breathing is not. Therefore, smoking bans exist to protect breathing people from the effects of second-hand smoke, which include an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and other diseases. Laws implementing bans on indoor smoking have been introduced by many countries in various forms over the years, with some legislators citing scientific evidence that shows tobacco smoking is harmful to the smokers themselves and to those inhaling second-hand smoke.
In addition, such laws may lower health care costs in the short term (but may actually increase them in the long term, since smokers who die sooner no longer use health care), improve work productivity, and lower the overall cost of labor in a community, thus making a community more attractive for employers. In Indiana, the state's economic development agency wrote into its 2006 plan for acceleration of economic growth an encouragement to cities and towns to adopt local smoke-free workplace laws as a means of promoting job growth in communities.
Additional rationales for smoking restrictions include reduced risk of fire in areas with explosive hazards; cleanliness in places where food, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, or precision instruments and machinery are produced; decreased legal liability; potentially reduced energy use via decreased ventilation needs; reduced quantities of litter; healthier environments; and giving smokers incentive to quit.
The World Health Organization considers smoke-free laws to have an influence to reduce demand for tobacco by creating an environment where smoking becomes increasingly more difficult and to help shift social norms away from the acceptance of smoking in everyday life. Along with tax measures, cessation measures, and education, smoking ban policy is currently viewed as an important element in lowering smoking rates and promoting public health. When correctly and strictly implemented it is seen as one important policy agenda goal to change human behavior away from unhealthy behavior and towards a healthy lifestyle.
Research has generated evidence that secondhand smoke causes the same problems as direct smoking, including lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and lung ailments such as emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma. Specifically, meta-analyses show that lifelong non-smokers with partners who smoke in the home have a 20–30% greater risk of lung cancer than non-smokers who live with non-smokers. Non-smokers exposed to cigarette smoke in the workplace have an increased lung cancer risk of 16–19%.
A study issued in 2002 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization concluded that non-smokers are exposed to the same carcinogens on account of tobacco smoke as active smokers. Sidestream smoke contains 69 known carcinogens, particularly benzopyrene and other polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and radioactive decay products, such as polonium 210. Several well-established carcinogens have been shown by the tobacco companies' own research to be present at higher concentrations in secondhand smoke than in mainstream smoke.
Scientific organizations confirming the effects of secondhand smoke include the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Surgeon General of the United States, and the World Health Organization.
One of the world's earliest smoking bans was a 1575 Mexican ecclesiastical council ban that forbade the use of tobacco in any church in Mexico and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, The Ottoman sultan Murad IV prohibited smoking in his empire in 1633. The Pope also banned smoking in the Church, Pope Urban VII in 1590 and Urban VIII in 1624. Pope Urban VII in particular threatened to excommunicate anyone who "took tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose". The earliest citywide European smoking bans were enacted shortly thereafter. Such bans were enacted in Bavaria, Kursachsen, and certain parts of Austria in the late 17th century. Smoking was banned in Berlin in 1723, in Königsberg in 1742, and in Stettin in 1744. These bans were repealed in the revolutions of 1848. The first building in the world to have a smoke-free policy was the Old Government Building in Wellington, New Zealand in 1876. This was over concerns about the threat of fire, as it is the second largest wooden building in the world.
The first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed by the Nazi Party in every German university, post office, military hospital, and Nazi Party office, under the auspices of Karl Astel's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under orders from Adolf Hitler. Major anti-tobacco campaigns were widely broadcast by the Nazis until the demise of the regime in 1945.
In the latter part of the 20th century, as research on the risks of second-hand tobacco smoke became public, the tobacco industry launched "courtesy awareness" campaigns. Fearing reduced sales, the industry created a media and legislative program that focused on "accommodation". Tolerance and courtesy were encouraged as a way to ease heightened tensions between smokers and those around them, while avoiding smoking bans. In the USA, states were encouraged to pass laws providing separate smoking sections.
In 1975, the US state of Minnesota enacted the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act, making it the first state to ban smoking in most public spaces. At first, restaurants were required to have No Smoking sections, and bars were exempt from the Act. As of 1 October 2007, Minnesota enacted a ban on smoking in all restaurants and bars statewide, called the Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007.
The resort town of Aspen, Colorado, became the first city in the country to ban smoking in restaurants, in 1985.
On April 3, 1987, the City of Beverly Hills, California, initiated an ordance to ban smoking in most restaurants, in retail stores and at public meetings. It exempted restaurants in hotels - City Council members reasoned that hotel restaurants catered to large numbers of visitors from abroad, where smoking is more acceptable than in the United States.
In 1990, the city of San Luis Obispo, California, became the first city in the world to ban indoor smoking at all public places, including bars and restaurants.
In America, the success of the ban enacted by the state of California in 1998 encouraged other states such as New York to implement bans. California's smoking ban included a controversial ban of smoking in bars, extending the statewide workplace smoking ban enacted in 1994. As of April 2009 there were 37 states with some form of smoking ban. Some areas in California began making entire cities smoke-free, which would include every place except residential homes. More than 20 cities in California enacted park and beach smoking bans.
On 3 December 2003, New Zealand passed legislation to progressively implement a smoking ban in schools, school grounds, and workplaces by December 2004. On 29 March 2004, the Republic of Ireland implemented a ban on smoking in the workplace. In Norway similar legislation was put into force on 1 June the same year. The whole of the United Kingdom became subject to a ban on smoking in enclosed public places in 2007, when England became the final region to have the legislation come into effect. The age limit for buying tobacco was also raised from 16 to 18 on 1 October 2007. On July 15, 2007, Chandigarh became the first city in India to become 'smoke-free', however, the ban on smoking was implemented in rest of the country in mid 2009.
Smoking was banned in public indoor venues in Victoria, Australia on 1 July 2007. Nepal announced a ban on smoking in public places, as well as by those under age 16 in June 2010.
Enforcement of a ban can cause resentment among smokers, with potentially serious consequences. In July 2009, a Turkish restaurant owner was murdered by a customer after attempting to enforce the recently implemented smoking ban. Resentment on the part of smokers over enforcement of a ban, or on the part of non-smokers over violation non-enforcement of a ban, is sometimes referred to as "smoke rage".
Several studies have documented health and economic benefits related to smoking bans. In the first 18 months after Pueblo, Colorado enacted a 2003 smoking ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped by 27% while admissions in neighbouring towns without smoking bans showed no change. The decline in heart attacks was attributed to the smoking ban, which reduced exposure to secondhand smoke. A similar study in Helena, Montana found a 40% reduction in heart attacks following the imposition of a smoking ban. However, a larger and more recent study found that workplace bans in the USA are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases.
Researchers at the University of Dundee found significant improvements in bar workers' lung function and inflammatory markers attributed to a smoking ban; the benefits were particularly pronounced for bar workers with asthma. The Bar Workers' Health and Environment Tobacco Smoke Exposure (BHETSE) study found the percentage of all workers reporting respiratory symptoms, such as wheezing, shortness of breath, cough and phlegm production, fell from 69% to 57%. A group of researchers from Turin, Italy found that a smoking ban had significantly reduced heart attacks in the city, and attributed most of the reduction to decreased secondhand-smoke exposure. A comprehensive smoking ban in New York was found to have prevented 3,813 hospital admissions for heart attacks in 2004, and to have saved $56 million in health-care costs for the year.
A study in England estimated a 2.4% reduction in heart attack emergency admissions to hospital (or 1,200 fewer admissions) in the 12 months following the ban.
Smoking bans are generally acknowledged to reduce rates of smoking; workplace bans reduce smoking rates among workers, and bans in public places reduce general smoking rates through a combination of stigmatization and reduction in the social cues for smoking. However, reports in the popular press after smoking bans have been enacted often present conflicting evidence for the bans' effectiveness.
One report stated that cigarette sales in Ireland and Scotland increased after a smoking ban. In contrast, another report states that in Ireland, cigarette sales fell by 16% in the six months after the ban's introduction. In the UK, cigarette sales fell by 11% during July 2007, the first month of the smoking ban in England, compared with July 2006.
Many studies have been published in the health industry literature on the economic effect of smoke-free policies. The majority of these government and academic studies have found that there is no negative economic impact associated with bans and many findings that there may be a positive effect on local businesses. A 2003 review of 97 such studies of the economic effects of a smoking ban on the hospitality industry found that the "best-designed" studies concluded that smoking bans did not harm businesses.
Studies funded by the bar and restaurant associations often find that smoking legislation has a negative effect on restaurant and bar profits. Such associations have also criticized studies which found that such legislation had no impact.
Prisons have increasingly been banning tobacco smoking. In the United States, some states with smoke-free prison policies only ban indoor smoking whereas others ban smoking on the entire prison grounds. In July 2004 the Federal Bureau of Prisons adopted a smoke-free policy for its facilities. A 1993 Supreme Court ruling acknowledged that a prisoner's exposure to second-hand smoke could be regarded as cruel and unusual punishment (which would be in violation of the Eighth Amendment). A 1997 ruling in Massachusetts established that prison smoking bans do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Many officials view prison smoking bans as a means of reducing health-care costs.
The introduction of smoking bans produced protests and predictions of widespread non-compliance, and media stories regarding the rise of clandestine smokeasies, including in New York City, Ireland, Germany, Illinois, the United Kingdom, Utah, and Washington, D.C.
In reality, however, high levels of compliance with bans (in excess of 90 per cent) have been reported in most jurisdictions including New York, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. Poor compliance was reported in Kolkata.
Critics of bans suggest ventilation is a means of reducing the harmful effects of passive smoking. A study conducted by the School of Technology of the University of Glamorgan in Wales, United Kingdom, published in the Building Services Journal found that "ventilation is effective in controlling the level of contamination", though "ventilation can only dilute or partially displace contaminants and occupational exposure limits are based on the 'as low as reasonably practicable' principle".
Many hospitality organizations claim that ventilation systems can bring venues into compliance with smoke-free restaurant ordinances. A study published by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found one establishment with lower air quality in the non-smoking section, due to improperly installed ventilation systems. They also determined that even properly functioning systems "are not substitutes for smoking bans in controlling environmental smoke exposure."
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