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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Smoking Ban At Work Can Help Kill Habit

Compiled From Wire Services

Your doctor may not be able to get you to quit smoking, but your boss probably can.

A study at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that a total workplace ban on smoking may be the most effective and cheapest way to get people to give up cigarettes.

“The smoking ban does something very dramatic. It has tremendous health and economic implications,” said MU researcher Daniel Longo.

Longo’s findings, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that nearly 51 percent of employees in hospitals where a total smoking ban had been in effect for five years had quit smoking.

But in businesses where smoking policies ranged from no ban to some restrictions, only about 38 percent of the smokers had quit in the same five-year period.