Total Home Smoking Ban Can Help Smokers Quit

Totally banning smoking in the home can help smokers quit, a new study finds. Banning smoking in parts of the house is not as effective.

The study, by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, also found smokers who live in cities with total smoking bans in public places are more likely to try quitting, and to succeed, than smokers who live in places where smoking is not banned, UPI reports.

“When there’s a total smoking ban in the home, we found that smokers are more likely to reduce tobacco consumption and attempt to quit than when they’re allowed to smoke in some parts of the house,” lead researcher Dr. Wael K. Al-Delaimy said in a news release.

The study included 1,718 current smokers in California. “California was the first state in the world to ban smoking in public places in 1994 and we are still finding the positive impact of that ban by changing the social norm and having more homes and cities banning smoking,” Al-Delaimy said. “These results provide quantitative evidence that smoking bans that are mainly for the protection of non-smokers from risks of secondhand smoke actually encourage quitting behaviors among smokers in California. They highlight the potential value of increasing city-level smoking bans and creating a win-win outcome.”

The findings appear in the journal Preventive Medicine.