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There is a very strong link between diabetes and death by heart failure with abundant etiological evidence; there is a strong statistical link between heart attacks and active smoking with weak etiological evidence; there is virtually no strong link between ETS and heart attacks or heart failure (despite the noise) and no etiological evidence at all.

Further, heart attacks are seasonal: extremes in temperature bring on bodily stress such as heat waves and poor body-temperature regulation in summer and cold weather and snow (which leads to over-exertion) in winter.

The best advice is to not smoke and stay away from those who do.

It is absurd to think that a six-month slowdown in the exposure to ETS would result in a statistically significant reduction in hospital admissions.

The ban only applied to public places and could have had no direct effect on residential exposure which is assumedly higher than that found publically; therefor, if the "study" was not adjusted for relatives and guests of smokers in their homes the results are meaningless unless we were to assume that the already-weakened victims more regularly frequented establishments where smoking was allowed prior to the ban.