Impact on Your Health
All Albertans need and deserve to be protected from second-hand smoke. Eliminating exposure to second-hand smoke in public places and workplaces will reduce the current disparity in protection in Alberta. Important to provide protection to pregnant, all socio-economic levels, institutionalized mentally ill, young adults, many who work and frequent venues currently not covered by existing legislation. Numbers of smokers and numbers of cigarettes consumed decrease relative to jurisdictions without such (smoke-free) laws and in jurisdictions which introduce smoke-free laws, fewer children take up smoking (World Health Organization, 1999).
One study found that smoke-free environments also make it easier for smokers to quit successfully by removing many of the triggers that cause relapse, such as seeing someone else smoking. Thirty-six percent of former smokers in an Ontario study state smoke-free bylaws as a prime motivator in their quitting smoking (Canadian Journal of Public Health 2004: 95[3]:201-4). The study also found that smokers who tried to quit were three times more successful when there was a ban in place, and found it far easier to remain abstinent.
