Prohibiting smoking in public places and working areas has led to the significant reduction of negative health harms caused by passive smoking in different parts of the world.

 A non-profit group of 14,000 academics known as the Cochane collaboration reviewed 77 studies from 21 countries with smoking bans and discovered that hospital admissions for heart disease has been greatly lowered.

In fact, evidence suggests that the smoking ban has cut heart attack rates in the United Kingdom by 42 percent within the first five years of implementation.

Another report revealed that hospital admissions for acute coronary smokers among people who had quit smoking was reduced by 19 percent. For non-smokers, the admission rates were lowered by 21 percent, while there was a 14 percent reduction for current smokers.

These were all recorded in the first year that the Scottish legislation banning smoking in public places took effect. Scotland's smoking ban was introduced in 2006, one year before England did the same.

Professor Cecily Kelleher of the University of Dublin, author of the Cochrane review, said their findings provide more robust support for previous conclusions that national smoking bans indeed result to positive outcomes in lowering people's exposure to second-hand smoke.

"We now need research on the continued longer-term impact of smoking bans on the health outcomes of specific sub-groups of the population, such as young children, disadvantaged and minority groups," said Kelleher.

Meanwhile, Professor Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation said the review strengthens the fact that smoking bans result to fewer heart disease-related deaths.

"In public health terms, this has been a successful piece of legislation," said Weissberg. "Smoking is bad for smokers and for those around them."

Cigarette smoking is considered as one of the greatest public health disasters of the 20th century, in which over 20 million deaths had been attributed to it.

Tobacco is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Statistics shows that one in every 10 adults die because of smoking.

According to the World Health Organization, six million people die annually because of smoking-related diseases. About 600,000 of these are from the effects of passive smoking.

WHO has recommended nations to control the demand and supply for tobacco products, and to protect public health.

The full Cochrane review is featured in the journal Cochrane Library.

Photo : Elliott Brown | Flickr