Heart attacks fall in Calgary

The rate of cardiac arrests in the Canadian city of Calgary fell following the introduction of public-places tobacco smoking bans a decade ago, according to a story in the Calgary Sun citing provincial health care data.

But opinions differ on whether it can be said that this fall was caused by the bans.

A prohibition on smoking in public places went into effect in the city on January 1 2007, and was extended province-wide the following year.

Emergency department visits due to heart attacks in the city of Calgary went from 154.8 per 100,000 people in 2006 to 79 in 2007, a 49 percent drop. And the number of such visits fell to 44.4 by 2015, a total drop of 71 percent in nine years.

In the province of Alberta, the number of heart attacks per 100,000 dropped 11 percent from 222.3 in 2006 to 198.6 the following year, and then to 142.6 in 2015, an overall drop of 36 percent.

Alberta Health and Wellness said it was not clear what could be credited with the fall in  emergency department visits due to heart attacks. Exercise and diet patterns might have played a hand, as could the shrinking number of smokers.

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, smoking rates in Alberta fell from 23 percent in 2003 to 18 percent in 2015. “We cannot be sure whether decreases since 2008 are caused by the introduction of smoking bans in public places,” the society said.

But anti-smoking activist Les Hagen, who was said to be with the group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said there was little doubt the smoking bans had played a role bigger than that of any other lifestyle changes.