Impact of a comprehensive law on the prevalence of tobacco consumption in Spain: evaluation of different scenarios

Abstract Objectives Since 2011, smoking legislation was hardened in Spain, banning tobacco consumption in all hospitality venues. Law 42/2010 was the first comprehensive tobacco control policy enacted in Spain. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect that this intervention has had in reducing the prevalence of tobacco consumption, setting up three scenarios on the basis of different theoretical levels of effect of the law. Methods A predictive model based on Markov Chains was developed to distinguish the effect of tobacco control policies in different scenarios. Study design The model developed uses population, smoking rates and smoking characteristics from a non-transmissible disease surveillance system developed in Galicia (namely SICRI). Results Results show that tobacco control policies hardly affect the predicted trend in a temporal frame of 10 years, with relative reduction in the predicted male smoking prevalence of 20.4% with no intervention, reaching a reduction of 26.1% under the maximum effect of the policies. Conclusions In the global population the effects of the law in the predicted prevalence have been barely perceived. For people under 25 years of age, interventions have had an important and positive effect, which proves that policies affecting this age group should be hardened.