Smoking ban in prisons might go a long way in preventing deaths due to heart ailments and cancers among inmates, a new research shows.
Researchers surveyed inmates from state correctional facilities for the study. The team gathered information about prison smoking policies and deaths. Researchers concentrated on calculating years of life lost due to smoking; they also determined the effects of smoking bans on the mortality rate.
The team noted that in 2011, 1.4 millions were in state facilities and around 50 to 83 percent of them smoked.
The analysis showed that 360 per 100,000 prisoners died due to smoking. It was also associated with 5,159 years of potential life lost per 100,000 years. The U.S. rates for these two factors are 248 and 3,501 per 100,000 respectively, researchers explained in a press release.
However, there was a change in this trend after more states imposed smoking bans. The number increased from 25 to 48 by 2011. Researchers found that the death rate tied to smoking for prisoners prior to these bans was 129 per 100,000. Following the ban, the mortality came down to 110 per 100,000.
According to the researchers, short-term smoking bans were associated to 9 percent fall in the death rates. Long-term smoking bans led to even larger reductions. These bans reduced the death rate by up to 11 percent, the cancer death rates by up to 19 percent and the pulmonary death rate by up to 34 percent when compared to prisons that did not have any bans enforced.
Researchers said that the common causes related to smoking deaths were lung cancer, chronic lung disease, heart disease and stroke.
"These findings suggest that smoking bans have health benefits for people in prison, although bans impose limits on individual autonomy and many people resume smoking after release," the researchers wrote in the study.
The study, 'Prison tobacco control policies and deaths from smoking in United States prisons,' was published in the BMJ.
