Re: smoking and the pub
 

If they are definitely able to state that someone died of a heart attack from passive smoking, then the statistics show you're less likely to have a heart attack by actually smoking than you would by passive smoking.

Unless of course its due to something unrelated to the smoking ban...

Re: smoking and the pub
 

well you can contest the stats and ill agree but you can not contest the risks to non smokers from passive smoking ;)

Re: smoking and the pub
 

It may even be something as simple as non-smokers not building up a certain level of resistance to the effects of the chemicals in cigarette smoke.

All I can say is a 17% drop is a hell of a lot less people clogging up the hospital wards and the smoking ban is the most radical change in the day to day health of Scots (until a ban on deep-fried pizza comes in) recently I'd be amazed if the two weren't linked.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out how I think they may have done it.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

Indeed, as a passive smoker myself, I hate it.
I've chosen to never smoke a cigarette directly, I wish others would respect that and not smoke around me.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

What? It doesn't mean anything of the sort, you're reading the statistics backwards.

There has been a 17% reduction in post-heart attack hospital admissions amongst smokers in the 18 months since the smoking ban in Scotland. There has been a 20% reduction in post-heart attack hospital admissions amongst non-smokers.

This means that for every 100 smokers who might have been expected to be admitted to hospital after a heart attack before the ban, only 83 are now being admitted. And for every 100 non-smokers, only 80 are now being admitted.

The benefit is greater for non smokers. This is entirely what you would expect to find, considering that non smokers are exposed to less smoke than smokers are.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

Meaning that if the ban hadn't been introduced 20 extra non smokers would have been brought in with smoking related heart attacks, and only 17 extra smokers would have been brought in with smoking related heart attacks.

Take 200 people, lable half of them smokers, and the other half nonsmokers.
That's how many of those people who would have had smoking related heart attacks if the ban hadn't been brought in.
Now, introducing the ban prevented some of them having having heart attacks.
Take 17 away from the smokers, and 20 away from the non-smokers.
You now have the people from this group who would have had smoke related heart attacks had the ban not been brought in.
Only 17 of those who'd carried on smoking directly, and 20 of those who had only passively smoked.
So a greater proportion of passive smokers would have suffered smoke related heart attacks had the ban not been brought in than the proportion of smokers.
Unless of course the science behind the statistics is actually wrong in order to make it look like the ban was a good thing (duh like dodgy statistics are required for that).

Re: smoking and the pub
 

The only thing that's dodgy here is your extremely mangled mistreatment of the statistics. ;)

Re: smoking and the pub
 

Personally like i said this sort of statistic was to be expected if they wanted to surprise me one showing it had made sod all difference would have worked.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

I'll be interested to see if the results for England match up bearing in mind that statistically Scotland has had a worse rate of death from heart disease in the past.:erm:

Re: smoking and the pub
 

I would have thought they ought to, seeing as we are dealing with rates of decline rather than absolute numbers - unless of course Scotland's relatively high starting point makes for a steeper initial fall.

As you say, it will be interesting to find out - presumably someone, somewhere is preparing to look into it, 12 or 18 months from now.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

I guess there is not a huge reduction because they are probably eating packets of pork scratching instead of smoking fags.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

You yourself said that for every hundred of each, they expected only 17 more smokers to have heart attacks compared with 20 more non-smokers to have smoking related heart attacks.

Re: smoking and the pub
 

Oh you are doing my head in..why not leave it at that?

Frankly it's only been a year and I'd like a longer period of time to allow the stats to level out more...Or to continue to drop.I'd like a look in say in another 4 years to get the average or mean or mode or whatever they use these days.:)

Re: smoking and the pub
 

In the last ten years any faith i had in statistics is gone and i no longer believe a single set of them as they all seem to backup the current favourite mind set.