Restaurant smoking sections in South Africa and the perceived impact of the proposed smoke-free laws: evidence from a nationally representative survey

摘要

Background In 2016 the South African Minister ofHealth announced his intention to introduce tobacco control legislation to makeall public areas completely smoke-free. As such, restaurant smoking sections, introducedin 2001, will become obsolete. This study aims to analyse current smokingpolicies of restaurants in South Africa, whether and how these policies have changed over thepast decade, and restaurateurs' attitudes towards the proposed legislativechanges.Methods From a population of nearly 12 000restaurants, derived from four websites, we sampled 2000 restaurants,stratifying by province and type (independent versus franchised) anddisproportionately sampling small strata to ensure meaningful analysis. We successfullysurveyed 741 restaurants, mostly telephonically. We also surveyed 60franchisors from a population of 82 franchisors.Results Currently 45% of restaurants in South Africa do not have smokingsections, 44% have smoking sections outside and 11% have smoking sectionsinside. Smoking areas are more common amongst independent restaurants (62%)than franchised restaurants (43%). Of the restaurants with smoking sections,33% of the smoking sections are busier than the non-smoking sections. 23% ofrestaurants have changed their smoking policies in the past ten years, mostlyremoving or reducing the size of the smoking sections. Customer requests (39%),compliance with the law (35%) and cost and revenue pressures (14%) were themain reasons for changing smoking policies. 91% of the restaurant respondentssupport the current legislation, while 63% support the proposed legislativechanges. 68% of respondents who are aware of the proposed legislation supportit, compared to 58% of respondents who are not aware of the proposedlegislation.Conclusions In contrast to the vehement opposition to the1999 legislation, which resulted in restaurants going partially smoke-free in2001, there is limited opposition from restaurants to the proposed 100%smoke-free legislative changes. Support for the proposed legislation willprobably increase as knowledge thereof grows.