Smoking ban 'will save 500,000 lives a year' in England

At least half a million deaths a year are likely to be prevented by England’s smoking ban, one of the world’s leading experts on the deadly effects of tobacco said today.

Professor Richard Peto made the forecast based on the experience of Ireland, which introduced a similar ban in March 2004. Cigarette sales have fallen by around 17% since the ban took effect in Ireland.

Peto said if England followed a similar trend it could lead to around 1.5 million people quitting smoking.

He added: “Half of all smokers are going to be killed by tobacco. If a million people stop smoking who wouldn’t otherwise have done so then maybe you’ll prevent half a million deaths.”

The estimate of how many people might give up smoking as a result of the ban was a conservative one, he said.

“It’s consistent with the idea that it does hit sales, and a lot of people are saying anecdotally that they want to use the ban to stop smoking,” he told a news conference in London.

England’s smoking ban will come into force at 6am on Sunday and will make the traditional smoke-filled pub a thing of the past. Under the ban it will be against the law to smoke in virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces.

Buses and other forms of public transport, and work vehicles used by more than one person, will also be affected. Staff smoking rooms and indoor smoking areas will no longer be allowed.

Owners and managers of pubs, clubs and cafes face fines of up to £2,500 (€3,700) if they allow customers to smoke on their premises.

Fixed penalties of £50 (€75), reduced to £30 (€44.50) if paid in 15 days, will be handed out to individuals caught smoking illegally.

Prof. Peto, professor of medical statistics at Oxford University, has studied the population effects of smoking for 40 years.

He worked closely with the late professor Richard Doll, who in the 1950s uncovered the first indisputable evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.

Since 1950, around seven million people in the UK and 100 million in other countries have died because of smoking, said Prof. Peto.

He estimated “several million” lives had been saved in Britain as a result of Doll’s findings.

Exactly 50 years ago today the UK Medical Research Council issued the first official statement by any scientific organisation in the world that a causal link existed between lung cancer and smoking.

Subsequent research showed smoking was also linked to heart disease and a host of other cancers and respiratory disorders.

Since the 1950s, the number of smokers in the UK has halved from 20 to 10 million and the number of smoking-related deaths is continuing to fall. Today about a quarter of deaths in middle age are caused by smoking, compared with a half in 1970.