A new study published in the journal “Nicotine and Tobaco”, affiliated with the University of Oxford, reported that the ban on smoking in public housing imposed by the US government in 2018 led to a noticeable decrease in hospitals entry due to cardiovascular disease.
Smoking, in addition to being negative smoking, is one of the most prominent causes of death in the United States, as it leads to the lives of 480,000 people annually.
Although the percentage of negative smokers decreased from 87.5% in 1988 to 25.2% in 2014, 58 million non -smoked in the United States are still being subjected to passive smoking, especially in homes.
Since the beginning of the millennium, local and state governments began imposing a smoking ban in public places. Previous studies have shown that these policies contributed to reducing systolic blood pressure, and reduced hospitalization cases associated with heart disease.
In July 2018, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a decision prohibiting smoking within all public housing buildings, which includes more than two million people in the United States.
The New York City Housing Authority is the largest public housing institution in the country, with more than 400,000 residents.
Reduced heart attacks
The researchers analyzed the effect of the smoking prevention policy on hospitalization cases, due to heart attacks and strokes among adults over the age of fifty, by comparing the data of the public housing residents in New York, with a group compared to the city’s residents who are not subject to this ban.
The results showed a noticeable decrease in the rate of heart attacks from 1.7% to 1.1%, and a decrease in the rate of strokes from 1.9% to 1.3%, with the continuation of the descending trend in hospitalization cases within 54 months after the application of the embargo, which confirms the effectiveness of this policy in improving public health.
This study shows that the ban on smoking in public housing is not only an effective policy to improve the quality of internal air, but also an important means of reducing cardiovascular diseases.
Researchers say the results can be an impetus to adopt similar policies in other countries to enhance public health.
