What's a smart public health policy? Smoking bans.

The American Heart Association asserts that smoking bans in workplaces and in public buildings (here) and says it has more support from a study done in Pueblo, Colorado, where bans have “sparked a steep decline in heart attacks,” as reported in this AP article.

In the 18 months after a no-smoking ordinance took effect in Pueblo in 2003, hospital admissions for heart attacks for city residents dropped 27 percent, according to the study led by Dr. Carl Bartecchi, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.

"Heart attack hospitalizations did not change significantly for residents of surrounding Pueblo County or in the comparison city of Colorado Springs, neither of which have non-smoking ordinances…"

…

The association said this was further evidence of the damage wrought by secondhand smoke.

"The decline in the number of heart attack hospitalizations within the first year and a half after the non-smoking ban that was observed in this study is most likely due to a decrease in the effect of secondhand smoke as a triggering factor for heart attacks," it said.

And I thought the biggest benefit of the smoking bans was that my clothes wouldn’t stink of cigarette butts when coming home from a night out.

(This reminds me of a student who won a prize in my history of medicine class last year who, after reviewing Roman public health measures like aqueducts, concluded that public health measures does more to improve the quality of human life and on a broader scale than medical measures.)