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Public bans mean smokers also light up less at home

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Reuters, London :

Smoking bans in offices, restaurants and other public places don't drive smokers to light up more at home, but in fact prompt them to impose their own extra restrictions on the habit, according to a European study published Tuesday.
The research, carried out in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, found that a significant proportion of smokers also decided to ban smoking in their own homes after national public smoke-free laws were introduced.
Some opponents of workplace or public smoking bans have argued that smoke-free laws might lead to a displacement of the habit into smokers' homes, possibly increasing the exposure of non-smokers, particularly children, to second hand smoke.
But Ute Mons of the German Cancer Research Center and the Unit of Cancer Prevention at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Tobacco Control in Heidelberg, whose work was published in the journal Tobacco Control, said her findings suggested just the opposite.
"On the contrary, our findings demonstrate that smoke-free legislation may stimulate smokers to establish total smoking bans in their homes," she wrote in the study. Smoking is known to cause lung cancer, which is often fatal, and other chronic respiratory diseases.