from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States we found that smoke-free legislation was not associated with overall changes in alcohol consumption, but was associated with reductions in drinking frequency among heavy smokers and reductions in drinking quantity among hazardous drinkers (Kasza et al., in press). Taken together, findings are consistent with the notion that alcohol and tobacco interactions are most pronounced in heavier drinkers (McKee et al., 2007), and suggest that disaggregating drinking and smoking behavior in bars reduces drinking behavior. Alcohol and tobacco are thought to potentiate each other’s reinforcing effects (Rose et al., 2004; Shiffman and Balabanis, 1995), and smoking is predictive of frequent binge drinking (Harrison et al., 2008), which increases the risk of meeting criteria for alcohol use disorders.
