Has the smoking ban reduced heart attacks?

It’s four months since the smoking ban was imposed in England, and most smokers I’ve met in that time seem to be quietly adapting. A friend wants to buy Suck UK’s unisex Smoking Mittens. If you have not come across them before, they are gloves that have a metal hole in them for your cigarette so you can keep warm when smoking outside in the winter. They cost £15 and, as my friend says cheerfully, ‘You never know, if it gets really cold, Silk Cut may sponsor white and purple balaclavas with silver puff holes.’

But if many smokers seem to be adapting to the ban, there is still plenty of strong opposition. Groups like Forest continue to campaign for the right to smoke. In August a crowd of people including pub entertainers marched through Glastonbury in protest against the ban. Dave West, owner of the HeyJo nightclub in St James’s, London, wants to ‘eyeball the authorities’ by taking the government to court over it.

It is not just the ban itself that angers smokers, however, nor the assumption by the government that it is a better guardian of our health than we are; the real fag end of all this is the way science has been misused by policy-makers, in the first place to impose the ban, and then to justify it.

Few would deny that smoking can be harmful to the health of smokers. After decades of research, scientists have shown that smoking causes most lung cancers. Smoking is also a risk factor in heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma.