Title: Public-place smoking laws and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in public places
Description: "The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.  A recent IOM report suggests that laws restricting smoking in public places reduce acute myocardial infarction, presumably by reducing exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).  We study adoption of these laws in Canada using data that include questions about respondents' ETS exposure in bars, restaurants, and other places.  In fixed-effects models we find that these laws had no effects on smoking but induced extremely large and statistically significant reductions in exposure to ETS in bars and restaurants for both non-smokers and smokers.  Our results indicate wide latitude for health improvements in the US if smoking were banned in public places"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.