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CDC Director Tom Frieden said that smoke-free laws save humans lives, and the research proved that they don't hurt business, "Smoke-free laws create good business conditions because they improve health of employees, save lives, increase productivity, and lower health care costs. Communities in the entire United States have made great efforts in protecting employees and the public from secondhand smoke in the past decade, but too many Americans continue to be subjected to secondhand smoke on the job and in public places. today many Americans smoke cigarettes. This research, proposed by CDC and made possible by a wonderful cooperation with grant from Pfizer Inc. to the CDC Foundation, analyzed objective economic indicators, including employment rates and taxable sales, in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. An independent component of the project resulted in videos featuring rewards from restaurant and bar operators in the first 8 of these states. Freda C. Lewis-Hall, MD, FAPA, executive vice president and chief medical officer, Pfizer, said that their company is proud to collaborate with the CDC Foundation and CDC on this important research initiative and are encouraged by the results. "They provide new proof that business owners can provide healthier environments to their workers and patrons without impacting their balance of income and expenditure. We hope the results will advance efforts to lower secondhand smoke in some of the areas of the country that need it most -- and reduce the serious health risks it poses to nonsmokers." In eight of the nine states included in the analysis, smoke-free laws had no great effect on restaurant or bar employment or revenues. These eight states included North Carolina, the only state in the research with an existing statewide smoke-free restaurant and bar law. In the ninth state, West Virginia, the analysis revealed that smoke-free laws were connected to a small increase in restaurant employment, and were not associated with a change in bar employment. Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation also said that it ios very importsnt to know about the economic effects of smoke-free policies, which have the potential to positively impact the health of millions of Americans who work in the restaurants and bars. Secondhand smoke may lead to heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and several health problems in kids, including more frequent and severe asthma attacks, ear infections, and sudden infant death syndrome. Secondhand smoke causes 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths in adult U.S. nonsmokers every year. Despite recent reductions in secondhand smoke exposure, 88 million Americans continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke each year.
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