A study has suggested that the smoking ban has prevented a large number of heart attacks.

Nevertheless pro cigarette smoking groups have referred to as the study, which was carried out by a team at the University of Bath and published online by the British Medical Journal, “fanciful.”

The research, the first of its type, looked at routinely collected hospital statistics information. Scientists analyzed admissions of all patients more than 18, admitted with a primary diagnosis of myocardial infarction, from July 2002 to September 2008. This gave them five years’ info from prior to the legislation and 15 months’ data from following.

It found that there “was a little but important reduction inside amount of emergency admissions for myocardial infarction after the implementation of smoke-free legislation.”

1st author from the paper Dr Michelle Sims mentioned: “After the implementation of smoke free legislation there was a statistically important drop of 2.4 percent inside the amount of emergency admissions for myocardial infarction. This implies that just around 1200 emergency admissions for myocardial infarction were prevented above a 12 month period.”

Although this research has gone down well with the British Heart Foundation, which described it as “brilliant”, pro-smoking groups are less than convinced.

Simon Clark, director from the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said:

“It’s far too soon to draw definitive conclusions about the public health benefits from the smoking ban, especially when they are depending on evidence for instance this.

“Heart attacks are multifactorial. To suggest that reduced exposure to secondhand smoke could be the reason for a reduction from the variety of hospital admissions for a heart attack is, at best, fanciful.

“The variety of emergency heart attack admissions had been falling for several years, even previous to the smoke free legislation, so what we are seeing is part of a trend that is unlikely to be linked towards the cigarette smoking ban.

“This study is created to demonstrate the positive aspects of prohibition. What is doesn’t demonstrate may be the misery that has been heaped on to hundreds of thousands of persons by an unnecessarily harsh and divisive piece of legislation.”

Perfect, where did we put that ashtray?