The study cites a link between a smoking ban and smoking at home

The RCP published its report, Going Smoke-free: The Medical Case for Clean Air in the Home, at Work and in Public Places, on Tuesday.

It is the first UK-wide review of passive smoking covering medical, legal, economic and ethical factors.

A public smoking ban in Scotland will come into effect on 26 March, 2006.

The RCP report said legislation making all public places and workplaces smoke-free was the only effective means of protecting people from second-hand smoke.

Reports such as this will help to get the message across to the people of Scotland that second-hand smoke is a killer Maureen Moore Ash Scotland

It said: "A clear majority of the public supports smoke-free legislation.

"Preventing smoking at home, particularly for children, is a public health priority.

"Home exposure is prevented only by encouraging parents and carers to quit smoking completely, and/or by making homes completely smoke-free."

Professor John Britton, chair of the college's Tobacco Advisory Group, said: "The big problem with passive smoking is the number of people affected by smoking at home.

"How do we address that? The evidence shows that if you make public places smoke-free a lot of people who smoke quit and a lot of people who continue to smoke stop smoking at home."

The RCP said its report coincides with statistics released by the New York Department of Health which suggest that after two years of smoke-free public places in the city, about 200,000 people had stopped smoking.

Smoking decrease

Exposure to second-hand smoke in the home had decreased by 35% over the same period, the statistics suggested.

Anti-smoking group Ash Scotland welcomed the report and said it showed that scaremongering about smoking ban legislation was wide of the mark.

The group's chief executive, Maureen Moore, said: "The Scottish Parliament may have passed the law for smoke-free public places in Scotland, but now we have to get ready to make that law a success.

"Reports such as this from the RCP will help to get the message across to the people of Scotland that second-hand smoke is a killer and that we have nothing to fear and everything to gain from implementing the clean-air legislation effectively."

The RCP should concentrate on education based on hard evidence rather than coercion based on reckless exaggeration Simon Clark Forest

However, pro-smoking group Forest labelled the suggestion that homes be made smoke-free as "ridiculous".

Its director, Simon Clark, said: "We encourage parents to err on the side of caution but to suggest that homes should be completely smoke-free is ridiculous.

"The RCP should concentrate on education based on hard evidence rather than coercion based on reckless exaggeration.

"The report is the usual jumble of estimates, calculations and conjecture.

"It offers no new evidence and simply recycles the same old arguments about smoking which fall far short of justifying a ban in every public place."

Employers failing to enforce the ban in Scotland will face fines of up to �2,500 and those caught smoking could be hit with penalties of up to �1,000.

Smokers could be fined for lighting up in a pub, a restaurant, an office, a theatre, a bingo hall or even a public toilet.

Exemptions include prison cells and residential care centres.