Uh oh. Anothere Blog on Smoking

Tyler Cowen points us to an interesting article on "uncommon knowledge" gleaned from the social sciences, including this about the smoking ban:

SMOKING BANS CAN be hazardous to some people's health. A rigorous statistical examination has found that smoking bans increase drunken-driving fatalities. One might expect that a ban on smoking in bars would deter some people from showing up, thereby reducing the number of people driving home drunk. But jurisdictions with smoking bans often border jurisdictions without bans, and some bars may skirt the ban, so that smokers can bypass the ban with extra driving. There is also a large overlap between the smoker and alcoholic populations, which would exacerbate the danger from extra driving. The authors estimate that smoking bans increase fatal drunken-driving accidents by about 13 percent, or about 2.5 such accidents per year for a typical county.

Does this mean "score 1" for the critics of the ban? Not exactly. The article continues by advocating increasing regulation, either by employing a nationwide smoking ban or by coming down harder on drunk driving laws.

I disagree with that assertion, but then again I'm not sure how much credence I put into the study to begin with. It's just something to think about.