Miracle in Helena: smoking bans and heart attacks.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings - American Heart Association

LAST YEAR RICHARD Sargent and Robert Shepard, two physicians who had campaigned for a smoking ban in Helena, Montana, announced that their efforts had paid off more dramatically than anyone could have imagined: The ordinance had led to an astonishing 60 percent drop in heart attacks in the six months after it took effect. By the time their study, co-authored by anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, was published in the April 5, 2004, issue of the British Medical Journal, the drop they attributed to the ban had become 40 percent--not quite as impressive but still remarkable. And still preposterous, even if you accept the anti-smoking movement's claims about secondhand smoke and heart disease.

According to the American Heart Association, secondhand smoke is responsible for about percent of heart disease deaths. Even a smoking ban that completely eliminated exposure to secondhand smoke (which Helena's didn't, since it did not apply to private residences) could not achieve anything like the effect described by Sargent, Shepard, and Glantz, who in any case made no attempt to measure exposure.

Hedging their bets, Sargent et al. noted that a smoking ban not only reduces exposure to secondhand smoke but also encourages smokers to quit or cut back. But even if Helena's ordinance caused every...