According to the ban, health institutions, pharmacies, drug stores, grocery stores or businesses located on the property of educational institutions won’t be allowed to sell tobacco products, including cigarettes, blunt wraps used to roll marijuana, cigars and chewing tobacco.

 

Moreover, smoking will no longer be allowed in hotels, inns, lodging houses, motels and bed and breakfast establishments in Boston.

 

“We hope that these extraordinary steps taken by our Board of Health to restrict the sale of tobacco products greatly reduce exposure to tobacco and its harmful effects. The evidence is overwhelming: Strict tobacco control regulations are effective in saving lives and discouraging people who don’t smoke from picking up the habit,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the commission’s executive director.

 

The ban was approved in December by the Board of Healthy in a unanimous vote and institutions were given 60 days to comply. Starting today, these institutions will no longer sell tobacco products. Furthermore, they are also required to post signs warning people of the hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke.

 

The ban follows a similar move in San Francisco and the Berkeley-based Americans for Non-Smokers Rights foundation hopes there will be more bans all over the United States.

 

“We’re bound to see other cities follow suit. You shouldn’t be able to buy tobacco products from your health service provider. Once you get started, quitting is very hard. We still have a half a million deaths a year in the country every year that are attributable to the use of tobacco,” foundation’s executive director, Cynthia Hallet said.

 

Among the 500,000 people tobacco kills a year, 38,000 are non-smokers who just inhale tobacco smoke from the others. If the governments fail to adopt more aggressive measures to combat the smoking addiction, this century, tobacco will kill one billion people worldwide.

 

Apart from lung and bronchial cancers, smokers are also susceptible of developing cancers of the stomach, larynx, mouth and pharynx, esophagus, pancreas, bladder and kidney and early cardiovascular disease. About half of all long-term smokers, particularly those who began smoking as teens, die prematurely, many in middle age.

 

Studies have shown that smoking bans really improve people’s health. According to a report by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released at the beginning of this year, smoking ban implemented in Pueblo, Colorado in 2003 helped decrease the number of people being hospitalized for heart attacks. More exactly, in the 18 months prior to the ban, there were 400 heart attacks; after the ban the number dropped to 237.

 

A similar study has shown that after a smoking ban in enclosed public place was introduced in Scotland in March 2006, there was a 17 percent reduction in hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome. There was a 14 percent reduction in admissions among smokers, a 19 percent reduction among former smokers, and a 21 percent reduction among people who’d never smoked.