Wales: Smoking ban sees fall in heart attacks

New figures this week are expected to reveal how the first full year of the public smoking ban in Wales heralded a steep decline in heart attacks.
The findings will be contained in the Chief Medical Officer for Wales annual report showing hospital admissions have fallen since the ban came into force.
Health minister Edwina Hart will today announce 650,000 new funding for smoking prevention.
A total of 155,000 over the next two years will go into the Assist programme, where health promotion experts train pupils to persuade their friends not to start smoking or to give up, and more than 500,000 will be allocated for wider smoking prevention activity.
More than 50 schools have already benefited from the Assist programme, with another eight completing this term.
The new funding will allow a further 20 schools to benefit from the programme over the next two years.
Mrs Hart said: Smoking prevention for young people is a high priority as the majority of smokers take up the habit in their teenage years."
The Chief Medical Officers annual report to be published later this week will show that hospital admissions for heart attacks were reduced last year."
My announcement today builds on this good news and aims to prevent children from taking up smoking in the first place.
Mrs Hart also announced new funding worth 519,000 for wider smoking prevention, including 143,000 a year for ASH Wales over the next three years to enable the charity to continue raising awareness of the effects of smoking.
A further 30,000 a year will also be provided to Ash Wales over the next three years to fund No Smoking Day activities and campaigns.
ASH Wales chief executive Tanya Buchanan said: The ban on smoking in public enclosed spaces was a positive step because it reduced peoples exposure to second hand smoke."
Bans on smoking in enclosed public places have been demonstrated to effectively reduce heart attack rates so it is not surprising to see Wales following this positive trend."
Smoking is an addiction of childhood In Wales the average age at which we see young people starting to smoke is just 11 years of age."
Most people start smoking as children but 70% of adult smokers say they want to quit. Unfortunately because smoking is so addictive, many adult smokers find it very hard to quit without support. We need to do much more to prevent young people from starting to smoke.
Figures show that after two years of the smoking ban, about a quarter of adults still smoke: anti-smoking campaigners have raised concerns that large numbers of teenage girls are taking up the habit.
One-in-four adults in Wales is now an ex-smoker.
There was a 12.5% fall in the number of patients admitted to hospital with a heart attack between October and December last year, compared to the same period in 2006, before the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces was introduced in Wales: some NHS trusts have seen the number of heart attacks fall by up to 40% in the same period.

Source:Daily Post North Wales, 07 December 2009