A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the number of heart attacks will speedily drop in Colorado in 2009 due to the statewide smoking ban enacted on July 2006.

The study, the largest of its kind, showed that the incidence of heart-related hospitalized cases decreased by 41 percent in less than three years after the smoking ban in Pueblo, Colorado, took effect. Researchers believe the drop is attributable to the ban since they didn’t find similar reductions in two adjacent areas.

The findings are “very dramatic,” according to Dr. Michael Thun, a researcher with the American Cancer Society. On the word of Terry Pechacek of the CDC, the study points out to the fact that secondhand smoke, known as environmental tobacco smoke, may be an under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths that occur in this country.

“This is now the ninth study, so it is clear that smoke-free laws are one of the most effective and cost-effective to reduce heart attacks,” Thun said.

Apart from their purpose of reducing smoking rates, smoking bans are also designed to cut secondhand tobacco smoke. Of the 438,000 U.S. people tobacco kills a year, 38,000 are non-smokers who just inhale tobacco smoke from the others.

Among other problems, tobacco smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema and cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization informed that smoking cigarettes killed 100 million people around the world in the previous century and cautioned that in the 21st century it could kill one billion people worldwide.