Drug Education News

The New Scientist:

Restaurant smoking bans don’t just protect diners and staff from other people’s smoke, they help stop young people becoming habitual smokers.

In 2001, Michael Siegel and colleagues at Boston University surveyed 3834 Massachusetts youths, with follow-ups two and four years later. In towns where restaurants had no smoking bans or kept smoking areas, 9.8 per cent had smoked over 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes, compared with 7.9 per cent in towns with smoking bans.

I wonder whether the smoking bans in the UK will have similar effects.

Elsewhere, and closer to home, I see that there’s been some attempt to work out how much smokers spend on tobacco over the course of a lifetime:

Smokers will spend a massive £102,895 on cigarettes in their lifetimes, a study found.

An average smoker will light up 17 cigarettes a day - 6,205 a year or nearly 400,000 from 16 until death.

And the average outlay is £31.66 a week - or £1,646 every year.