Restrictions on Smoking in the Workplace

One of the most dramatic social changes over the past 30 years has been the change in attitudes about public smoking and the resultant governmental restrictions on where smoking is allowed. Beginning in 1970, with then Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld’s warning that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure was likely to cause problems for nonsmokers, concern about ETS exposure led to 25 years of scientific inquiry. This inquiry culminated in a series of comprehensive reviews concluding that ETS exposure is a cause of cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, and a host of other problems.
Early reaction to this evidence included efforts to provide separate sections for smokers and nonsmokers in restaurants and workplaces (NCI, 1993). But with accumulating evidence that ETS exposure was a cause of cancer and other serious diseases, complete bans on smoking in workplaces and public places became more common. In 1986, only 3 percent of workers nationally reported working in a smoke-free workplace.
By the 1992/93 Current Population Survey (CPS), the fraction of indoor workers reporting a smoke-free workplace had risen to 46.7 percent. Table 3-1 presents data from the 1995/96 CPS and demonstrates that the fraction of workers covered by a 100 percent smoking ban in the workplace has risen to 64.3 percent, including more than half (54.1 percent) of all current smokers.
Males and those who were between ages 18 and 24 were less likely to work in a smoke-free workplace, as were Hispanic and Native American indoor workers. The likelihood of working in a smoke-free environment increases dramatically with increasing level of education and family income. The fraction of workers who work in a smoke-free workplace varies across states, from a high of 84 percent in Utah and Maryland to a low of 40 percent in Nevada, but only three states (Nevada, Arkansas, and Kentucky) have less than 50 percent of their employees working in smokefree areas.
The increasing proportion of indoor workers who are employed in smoke-free workplaces has a direct health benefit for nonsmokers due to
the decreased exposure to ETS. However, restrictions on where smokers can smoke may also influence the behavior of smokers outside of the workplace.

Smokers may quit smoking altogether when a policy restricting smoking in the workplace is implemented (as opposed to refraining from their habit only at work). They may reduce the number of cigarettes that they smoke per day or may shift from smoking daily to smoking occasionally, and smokers who work in smoke-free evvironments may make more quit attempts or may be more successful in those quit attempts. Improvement in cessation may be an indirect benefit of the current trend toward smoke-free workplaces.