St. Louis Post Dispatch lauds dubious heart attack study!

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial lauds dubious heart attack study!

But former Monsanto chemist David Kuneman has conducted the largest study so far investigating the relationship between smoking bans and heart attacks rates. Rather than focus on any small municipality, Kuneman looked at the relationship between heart attack rates and smoking bans across whole states. Kuneman's study found that smoking bans did not reduce heart attack rates where enacted. Please check this out.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9679507/bmjmanuscript

CDC scientist Dr. Michael Siegel has debunked the heart attack study the Post lauds. St. Louis lawmakers should take a close look at Siegel's objections:

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/in-my-view-why-immediate-decrease-in.html

Recent research has shown that a smoking ban would not reduce the overall exposure of non-smokers to secondhand smoke and actually increase the exposure of young children to smoke as smokers are displaced to their cars and homes.
http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications.php?publication_id=3523

Surprising research by two University of Wisconsin economists, published this month in the Journal of Public Economics, finds that communities thatimpose a ban on smoking in bars experience, on average, a 13 percent increase in drunk-driving fatalities. The researchers suggest that the increased death toll is because smokers will drive farther to find venues in which they can both smoke and drink, as well as bar patrons drinking more and being more affected by alcohol when they cannot smoke. Furthermore, the study found that the rate of drunk-driving deaths increased the longer the ban remained in place.

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/calendar/papers/CottiPaperDrunkDriving.pdf