Heart attack rates drop following Calgary’s smoking ban

Alberta Health says heart attack related visits to emergency departments fell dramatically in Calgary in the year following the city’s smoking ban.

On Jan. 1, 2007, a city bylaw made all public spaces smoke-free. A province-wide ban followed the next year.

According to the province, 154.8 per 100,000 emergency department visits were due to heart attack in 2006. The next year, there were 79 per 100,000, a decline of 49 per cent.

The rate continued to fall in the years that followed, and by 2015, only 44.4 people per 100,000 visited emergency departments with heart attacks.

“Smoking in public places and workplaces was banned in Alberta in 2008,” a spokesperson from Alberta Health said in an e-mail to Global News. “Between 2008 and 2015, rates of heart attacks have decreased in Alberta as a whole and Calgary specifically. New cases of heart disease and rates of emergency department visits for heart attack have also decreased in this time period.”

“Although this data shows that rates are decreasing, it does not explain the cause for this decrease, and we cannot know for sure whether decreases since 2008 are caused by the introduction of a smoking ban in public places.  Diet and exercise could also be factors in heart attack rates.”

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Rates of self-identified smokers in Alberta have also fallen. In 2001, 20.7 Calgarians per 100,000 identified as a smoker. By 2014, only 11.7 people did.