Indianapolis

In Indianapolis, the smoking ban enacted in 2006 has unexpectedly caused an increase in heart attack deaths:

The ban, which affected all workplaces, including restaurants but excluding bars, went into effect on March 1, 2006. Had the smoking ban resulted in an immediate decline in heart attacks, as claimed by a number of anti-smoking groups and researchers and by a special Institute of Medicine committee, one would have expected the heart disease death rate in Marion County to have decreased in 2006, compared to 2005.

Data from the Marion County Health Department, however, show that the age-adjusted heart disease death rate for Marion County actually increased by 16% from 2005 to 2006, going from 171.0 to 197.6 deaths per 100,000 population.

This reversed a trend of declining heart disease death rates prior to the smoking ban. The rate had declined by 4.4% from 2002 to 2003, by 6.0% from 2003 to 2004, and by 5.8% from 2004 to 2005. Thus, the increase of 16% observed from 2005 to 2006 was a striking increase that coincided precisely with the implementation of the workplace and restaurant smoking ban.

Of course the ban didn’t actually cause the increase any more than bans in other cities caused the decreases so often hyped by anti-smoking advocates. And if the death rate can fluctuate this much in Indianapolis, a city of nearly 800,000, then the odds of getting meaningful data out of towns like Starkville, MS, Pueblo, CO, and Helena, MT are pretty damn low.* The fact that ban advocates cling so tightly to those success stories is an indication of just how the weak the association between bans and decreases in AMI really is.

*Those studies used overall rates of AMI rather than the rate of AMI deaths, but the two rates should move in tandem.

Previously:
What really happened in Starkville?
Lazy reporting and the Pueblo ban study

Permalink - Share/Save - Comments (6)