Smoking Bans May Increase Drunk Driving Fatalities

The paper is called "Drunk driving after the passage of smoking bans in bars" and is forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics. The authors, Adams and Cotti, find a link between smoking bans and drunk driving fatalities that is robust to many controls. An early non-gated version is available. If you have ScienceDirect access, the article is online already, and here is the abstract:

Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans. Although an increased accident risk might seem surprising at first, two strands of literature on consumer behavior suggest potential explanations — smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars and smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating. We find evidence consistent with both explanations. The increased miles driven by drivers wishing to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home following a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents. This result proves durable, as we subject it to an extensive battery of robustness checks.

No doubt there may be follow-up studies countering the claim, but I'm sure there will also be armchair dismissals by journalists and bloggers. I'll buy a beer for the first person to spot someone claiming that the authors didn't consider the effect of people staying at home following a ban, even though they mention this fact right in the abstract. In fact, the same authors have another paper showing that smoking bans do reduce bar patronage (people stay home to drink), but this newer paper shows that the effect is weaker than the "drive to other jurisdictions" effect.