Strange statistics on smoking ban

The Spanish government has presented the parliament with a report on the success of the smoking ban introduced four years ago and which is due to be intensified this year. The leftist daily Público expresses surprise at the statistics: "Health Minister Trinidad Jiménez sent the Spanish Congress of Deputies a report on how healthy the impact of banning smoking was at workplaces, on public transport and in public places on January 23, when the deputies were already on holidays. The report says that the number of people hospitalised because of heart attacks went down by 10 percent. … It adds that more than a million people (a reduction of 8 percent) quit smoking in the first two years after the law went into effect four years ago. However tobacco sales decreased by only 2.8 percent in 2006, which in addition to being disproportionate is also wondrous indeed."

» full article (external link, Spanish)
More from the press review on the subject » Health Policy, » Health and Medicine, » Spain
All available articles from » Luis Díez

» To the complete press review of Wednesday, January 6, 2010