Attitudes Toward Nonsmoking Policies and Tobacco Tax Increases

Abstract

Following the 2009 update of the 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Vietnam issued a new policy to ban smoking at workplaces and public places. This cross-sectional survey explored public attitudes toward this new regulation and provides evidence to inform future laws. Using stratified cluster sampling, 10 383 Vietnamese people older than 15 years were drawn from 11 142 selected households. Policies mandating "no smoking at workplaces" were supported by 88.7% of Vietnamese adults, whereas "no smoking in public places" and "increasing the tobacco tax" received less support. Educational level, knowledge of health effects, access to information on quitting and smoking health risks, smoking status, ethnicity, and region had significant associations with positive attitudes toward all 3 tobacco control policies. Adults belonging to the non-Kinh ethnic group, those who do not live in the Red river delta, people with lower educational levels, and current smokers should be targeted in tobacco control communication programs.

Smoke-free environment policy in Vietnam: What did people see and how did they react when they visited various public places?

“…This finding suggests a gap between attitude and practice of the poor against the violation of smoke-free regulations. On the contrary to the study finding by An et al [ 30 ], the poorer were less likely to support smoke-free policy. This difference could be explained by some hidden factors such as social norms as many scientists defined as “unwritten rules about behaviors” [ 5 , 33-36 ].…”

“…Interestingly, we found that people with lower economic status such as in the second and middle quintile were more likely to request smokers to stop smoking than those in the fourth and richest quintile. This result is not in concert with the study by An et al [ 30 ] showing that people with higher income demonstrated more positive attitudes towards “no smoking at workplaces” and at “public places”.…”

Inadequate Knowledge, Attitude and Practices about Second-Hand Smoke among Non-Smoking Pregnant Women in Urban Vietnam: The Need for Health Literacy Reinforcement

“…Another explanation could be that women may feel more comfortable taking action in their own home and other familiar places, as opposed to public areas where they may not know the smoker. This result aligns with a previous study in Vietnam that found that only 69.8% of the population supported the ban on smoking in public places [44]. The law No.…”

Tobacco cessation in Vietnam: Exploring the role of village health workers

“…Relatively few VHWs in this study were aware of the smoke-free policy; but awareness of this policy was associated with asking about tobacco use and advising smokers to quit. Suboptimal enforcement has led to inconsistent implementation of smoke free policy in CHCs (Dao et al, 2015), however, our findings suggest that raising awareness of this policy, alone, could have a positive impact on the provision of smoking cessation services.…”