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Effects of venue‐specific state clean indoor air laws on smoking‐related outcomes
Author(s) -
Bitler Marianne P.,
Carpenter Christopher S.,
Zavodny Madeline
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.1559
Subject(s) - current population survey , government (linguistics) , environmental health , smoke , population , indoor air , state government , state (computer science) , smoking ban , business , law , demographic economics , local government , economics , political science , medicine , engineering , environmental engineering , mathematics , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , waste management
A large literature has documented relationships between state clean indoor air laws (SCIALs) and smoking‐related outcomes in the United States. These laws vary within states over time and across venues such as schools, government buildings, and bars. Few studies, however, have evaluated whether the effects of SCIALs are plausibly concentrated among workers who should have been directly affected because they worked at locations covered by the venue‐specific restrictions. We fill this gap in the literature using data on private sector workers, government employees, school workers, eating and drinking place workers, and bartenders from the 1992–2007 Tobacco Use Supplements to the Current Population Survey. Our quasi‐experimental models indicate robust effects of SCIALs restricting smoking in bars: these laws significantly increased the presence of workplace smoking restrictions as reported by bartenders and reduced the fraction of bartenders who smoke. We do not, however, find that SCIALs in private workplaces, government workplaces, schools, or restaurants increased the presence of workplace smoking restrictions among groups of workers working in venues covered by these laws. This suggests that the smoking reductions associated with SCIALs in previous research are unlikely to have been directly caused by effects of workplace smoking restrictions on workers. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.