Study says smoking ban can yield £4 billion in savings annually |
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Wed, 13 Jul 2005 14:35
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LONDON: A Royal College of Physicians study has estimated that a ban on smoking in public places could create savings of as much as 4 billion pounds to the British economy annually. The savings will come from higher productivity as workers take fewer smoke breaks and from lower NHS costs and insurance, cleaning and fire-related bills.
The British government is carrying out a study on a plan to ban smoking in all public enclosed places, except pubs and bars that do not serve food.
The college report, named Going Smoke-free: The Medical Case for Clean Air in the Home, at Work and in Public Places, comes as a boost to the government's plan. The report says there is no substance in the argument that an outright ban on smoking at work would increase smoking in home. It revealed that of the 12,000 deaths caused each year by passive smoking, just 500 are due to smoking at work.
Professor John Britton, chairman of the college's tobacco advisory group, said the major problem with passive smoking is the number of people affected by it at home. He adds that there is evidence to indicate that if public places are made smoking-free, more number of people will quit smoking, while lot of people who continue to smoke stop smoking at home. "You become used to the idea that smoking is not normal and you don't do it in front of other people. To have loop-holes or exceptions is illogical and counter-productive," Prof Britton said.
The college had taken into account smoking ban in Ireland and other countries and found that smoke-free policies have been popular and successful wherever introduced, in spite of not having any policing or compliance issues. It quoted statistics compiled by the New York Department of Health suggesting that after two years of smoke-free public places in the city, about 200,000 people had stopped smoking.
The report said a law to make all public places and work places smoke-free is the only effective means of protecting people from second-hand smoke.
Scotland is to officially ban smoking in public places from 26 March, 2006. Employers failing to implement the ban can be fined up to 2,500 pounds and those caught smoking can be made to pay fines up to 1,000 pounds. Smoking will be banned in pubs, restaurants, offices, theatres and even in public toilets.
Anti-smoking group Ash Scotland welcomed the report and said it showed that scaremongering about smoking ban legislation was wide of the mark.
The report had its detractors. A pro-smoking group, Forest, described the suggestion to make homes smoke-free as ridiculous. The group's director, Simon Clark, said: "The RCP should concentrate on education based on hard evidence rather than coercion based on reckless exaggeration."
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