Quit Smoking by Banning Tobacco Use in the Home, Study Suggests

Some smokers only light up in the kitchen or on the porch, but new research suggests that if a person is serious about quitting, smoking in the home should be abandoned altogether.

Without an easily accessible designated smoking area, it is more likely that smokers will cut back on their tobacco consumption or make moves to quit smoking entirely, according to a report published in the journal Preventative Medicine.

"When there's a total smoking ban in the home, we found that smokers are more likely to reduce tobacco consumption and attempt to quit than when they're allowed to smoke in some parts of the house," said Dr. Wael K. Al-Delaimy, chief of the Division of Global Health in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

UCSD faculty led by Al-Delaimy report that by forbidding smoking in homes, it achieves results similar to when cities enforce smoking bans.

"Having both home and city bans on smoking appears to be even more effective" in triggering smokers to cut back or quit, Al-Delaimy said.

The doctor said his team's findings highlight the public health importance of smoking bans as a way to change smoking behaviors and reduce tobacco consumption along individual and societal levels.

"California was the first state in the world to ban smoking in public places in 1994 and we are still finding the positive impact of that ban by changing the social norm and having more homes and cities banning smoking," he said. "These results provide quantitative evidence that smoking bans that are mainly for the protection of nonsmokers from risks of secondhand smoke actually encourage quitting behaviors among smokers in California. They highlight the potential value of increasing city-level smoking bans and creating a win-win outcome."

For their study, Al-Delaimy and his colleagues surveyed more than 1,700 Californian smokers identified as a representative sample of the state's adult population.

They found the home smoking bans were "significantly associated with reduced consumption and successful quitting" but that partial smoking bans in the home did not carry the same association.

Smokers who lived in cities that enforced smoking bans in public places were found to be more likely to attempt to quit than smokers who lived in cities where no smoking bans were in effect.

Other results of their survey revealed that in-home smoking bans were most effective in reducing tobacco consumption by women smokers aged 65 and older, but not males. City smoking bans, however, were significantly associated with male smokers trying to quit.

Total home smoking bans were found to be most effective in households with children.

The researchers controlled for both race and income when analyzing the study results, finding that neither played a significant role in total home smoking bans and the likelihood of reducing tobacco consumption.