Smoke-free policies are reducing heart disease related to smoke exposure, the prevalence of smoking in adults and the exposure of both adults and children to second-hand smoke.
These and other findings are published in a special report of this month's the Lancet Oncology.
The report, by the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), also showed that smoke-free policies do not decrease the business activity of the restaurant and bar industry.
"A reduction in the lung cancer burden is plausible, but relevant evidence will only become available in the future," the authors said.
Dr John Pierce of the University of California and Dr Mari?a Lean from IARC's Tobacco and Cancer Team prepared the Special Report in collaboration with scientists from around the world.
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They assessed 11 proposals relating to causal effects of smoke-free policies and graded them into three categories.
Sufficient evidence meant that the association was judged to be causal; a lesser classification of strong suggested that the association is consistent but evidence of causality is limited; while the third category applied to proposals where there was insufficient data to come to a conclusion.
The working group comprehensively assessed peer-reviewed published work and accessible governmental reports on the effect of smoke-free policies to come to their conclusions.
The group found sufficient evidence that implementation of smoke-free policies substantially decrease second-hand smoke exposure; that smoke-free workplaces decrease cigarette consumption in continuing smokers; that smoke-free policies do not decrease the business activity of the restaurant and bar industry; that introduction of smoke-free policies decreases respiratory symptoms in workers; that voluntary smoke-free home policies decrease children's second hand smoke-exposure; and that smoke-free home policies decrease adult smoking.
Strong evidence was found that smoke-free workplaces decrease the prevalence of adult smoking; that smoke-free policies decrease tobacco use in youths; that the introduction of smoke-free legislation decreases heart disease morbidity; and that smoke-free home policies decrease smoking in youths.
But, because the lead time for lung cancer to be diagnosed after exposure to a carcinogen such as cigarette smoke can be 20 or more years, the group concluded that "data are not yet available regarding the expected decline in lung cancer after implementation of smoke-free policies".
The working group recommended that governments implement smoke-free policies that conform to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
"Implementation of such policies can have a broader population effect of increasing smoke-free environments.
"Not only do these policies achieve their aim of protecting the health of non-smokers by decreasing exposure to second-hand smoke, they also have many effects on smoking behaviour. The authors pointed out that up to now, most research has been done in high resource countries."
They recommended the establishment of a multinational surveillance system to allow assessment of the effect of these policies in low-and medium-resource countries - health-e-news service
- This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Times on July 02, 2008
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