Reducing Secondhand Smoke Exposure: Smoking Bans and Restrictions

Task Force Finding*

Smoking bans and restrictions are policies and regulations that ban or limit the consumption of tobacco products in designated areas. These include private business and employer policies, organization regulations, and government laws and ordinances. Laws and ordinances can establish minimum standards to protect workers in private-sector workplaces, as well as ban or restrict smoking in public areas and workplaces.

Smoking bans and restrictions are strongly recommended on the basis of strong scientific evidence that they reduce exposure to ETS (1) in a wide range of workplace settings and adult populations; (2) when applied at different levels of scale, from individual businesses to entire communities; and (3) whether used alone or as part of a multicomponent community or workplace intervention. A detailed description of the evidence is provided in Hopkins et al.

In addition to evidence of effectiveness in reducing workplace exposure to ETS, several qualifying studies observed a significant reduction in daily consumption of cigarettes by workers subject to a smoking ban or restriction. Some of the qualifying studies that evaluated smoking bans observed increases in tobacco use cessation and/or reductions in tobacco use prevalence in their study populations.

*From the following publication:

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations regarding interventions to reduce tobacco use and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. [PDF - 1.46KB] Am J Prev Med 2001;20(2S):10-5.

Review completed: February 2000