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Impact of banning smoking in cars with children on exposure to second-hand smoke: a natural experiment in England and Scotland
  1. Anthony A Laverty1,
  2. Thomas Hone1,
  3. Eszter P Vamos1,
  4. Philip E Anyanwu2,
  5. David Taylor-Robinson3,
  6. Frank de Vocht4,
  7. Christopher Millett1,
  8. Nicholas S Hopkinson5
  1. 1 Public Health Policy Evaluation Unit, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK
  2. 2 Global Digital Health Unit, Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK
  3. 3 Department of Public Health and Policy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
  4. 4 Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
  5. 5 National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Anthony A Laverty, Dept Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College, London W6 8RP, UK; a.laverty{at}imperial.ac.uk

Abstract

England banned smoking in cars carrying children in 2015 and Scotland in 2016. We used survey data from 3 years for both countries (NEngland=3483–6920, NScotland=232–319) to assess effects of the English ban using logistic regression within a difference-in-differences framework. Among children aged 13–15 years, self-reported levels of regular exposure to smoke in cars for Scotland were 3.4% in 2012, 2.2% in 2014 and 1.3% in 2016 and for England 6.3%, 5.9% and 1.6%. The ban in England was associated with a −4.1% (95% CI −4.9% to −3.3%) absolute reduction (72% relative reduction) in exposure to tobacco smoke among children.

  • smoking cessation
  • tobacco and the lung
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2019-213998

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @COPDdoc

    • Contributors AAL, CM and NSH conceived the study idea. Analyses were by AAL with TH. All authors provided intellectual input to the interpretation of results and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding This study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Public Health Research (grant reference number PD-SPH-2015). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The funder had no input in the writing of the manuscript or decision to submit for publication. The NIHR School for Public Health Research is a partnership between the Universities of Sheffield; Bristol; Cambridge; Imperial; and University College London; The London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM); LiLaC – a collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool and Lancaster; and Fuse - The Centre for Translational Research in Public Health a collaboration between Newcastle, Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities. DT-R is funded by the MRC on a clinician scientist fellowship (MR/P008577/1).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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