Don’t stop her

New Delhi, April 1: A ban on smoking in bars may increase fatal accidents from drink- driving, two US economists have found in the first study to explore the connection between smoke-free bars and traffic accidents.

The researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the University of South Carolina have shown that smoking bans in bars increase fatal accidents by about 13 per cent, and raise the danger posed by intoxicated drivers.

The effect might be attributed to a greater prevalence of driving under intoxication, either from the biological effect of nicotine denial to heavy drinkers or from the additional driving done in search of places to smoke, the researchers have said.

“Smoking bans may still have a net positive effect on people’s health, but these findings suggest that the bans could also change people’s behaviour in unintended ways,” said Chad Cotti, a clinical assistant professor of economics at the University of South Carolina, and a co-author of the study to be published on Wednesday in the Journal of Public Economics.

Cotti and the University of Wisconsin’s Scott Adams examined how smoking bans in bars in a subset of 2452 counties — small regions within states — in the US influenced fatal traffic accidents.

They used a method to control other factors that could also influence accidents. The 13 per cent increase they observed translates into 2.5 fatal accidents per year in a typical county.

Medical studies have suggested that heavy drinkers are also more likely to be smokers. The US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that 70 per cent of alcoholics smoke more than one pack of cigarettes a day compared to 10 per cent of the general population.

Several effects may explain this increase. “But it’s hard to disentangle the precise reasons that are contributing to this observed increase,” Cotti told The Telegraph over the phone.