Smoking bans kill

According to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, counties that have instituted bans on smoking indoors have experienced dramatic increases in the levels of drunk driving and drunk driving deaths. Apparently drunk smokers are hopping into their cars to drink in outdoor bars or to adjacent counties without smoking bans. The bottle opener/lighter combination that the dealer for my first car gave me must be catching on.

The researchers analysed data from 120 American counties, 20 of which had banned smoking. They found a smoking ban increased fatal alcohol-related car accidents by 13% in a typical county containing 680,000 people. This is the equivalent of 2.5 fatal accidents (equivalent to approximately six deaths). Furthermore, drunk-driving smokers have not changed their ways over time. In areas where the ban has been in place for longer than 18 months, the increased accident rate is 19%.

I'm curios as to what percentage of accidents are being caused by drunk drivers dropping their car cigarette lighters in their laps? But let's look on the bright side! Smokers are now doing more to improve the costs of healthcare for everyone else, by killing people off before they get sick.

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