The smoking ban shows state intervention works

Professor Linda Bauld led the research on the health outcomes of the smoking ban in public places in Scotland, introduced six years ago, ahead of the ban in England. She surveyed families’ smoking habits and also looked at more than 21,000 Scottish emergency hospital admissions for childhood asthma over the past decade – about 2,000 a year.

The evidence is that people really are smoking less and not, as was feared, simply smoking more in the home. There does seem to have been a genuine social shift – in the same way that most people simply don’t drive out in their car for a drinking session in a pub thanks to drink driving becoming an offence. Before the ban, asthma admissions for young children had been rising steadily, and for older children they had been stable. After the ban, there was a sharp and sustained fall in admissions of about one-fifth for all children. The research report is careful not to claim a causal link, but I need not be so cautious.

Across the UK, there are more than 30,000 emergency admissions of children with asthma according to Asthma UK. From the one-fifth drop in admissions in Scotland, we can extrapolate that the smoking ban can be linked to around 6,000 children not having to be admitted every single year. Having had two children who suffered seriously and distressingly from early asthma (not, as it happens, exacerbated by smoking at home), this is an outstanding health improvement outcome for a simple piece of legislation that was easy to implement, even though it was contentious beforehand. Social attitudes can change, although it takes sustained effort. This study shows that state intervention can work.

Now we must push cigarettes under the counter, not just in large supermarkets. Lung cancer is a much bigger killer than asthma, and if we can help young people to stop taking up smoking, we will make a huge difference to their lives.

John Freeman CBE is a former director of children’s services and is now a freelance consultant  

Read his blog at cypnow.co.uk/freemansthinking