Newspapers!

A report in The Times today.

"The ban on smoking in public places in Scotland is already beginning to have an impact on the nation’s health, a conference in Edinburgh heard yesterday.
The number of nonsmokers admitted to hospital after heart attacks fell by 20 per cent in the ten months after the ban came into force in March 2006, compared with the same ten months in the year before, Jill Pell, of Glasgow University, said."

So, after just a year fewer non-smokers are admitted? I suspect someone is jumping the gun to get media coverage for his unpublished paper. Lazy journalists, as always, are copying and pasting press releases without checking the facts.

I detest smoking as much as the next sane person. I suspect correlation and causation have become mixed up here. Yes, fewer people have been admitted, but is their smoking status necessarily the reason? I suspect it's something even more simple- the weather not being as cold this year as it was in 2006. We will see when the paper is published.