The smoking ban policy was introduced in the UK to prohibit smoking in outdoor public places,vsuch as bars and restaurants, and also in private workplaces. The aim of this smoking ban policy is twofold: firstly, to avoid the effects of passive smoking on non-smokers individuals and secondly, to reduce consumption of cigarette. Using the British Household Panel Survey, after an initial evaluation of the impact of smoking ban on active smoking in the UK, this work aims at using a casual empirical design to investigate whether the impact of the smoking ban policy changes due to the impact of parental smoking behaviour on the smoking habits of adults offspring (i.e. smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption). The findings confirm the positive and limited impact of the smoking ban policy in the UK on the smoking prevalence, with a higher probability of smoking after the policy implementation for women than for men. Furthermore, considering the cigarette consumption of young adults, the findings show that there is a relation between the intensity of smoking of the parents and that of the offspring after the policy implementation. In particular, if the parents are light/moderate smokers, the probability of their offspring being heavy smokers after the introduction of a smoking ban policy is reduced by 19%. However, our analysis has some limitations related to the availability of number of observations when considering the cigarette consumption of offspring and parents.
