Research articles
Personal space smoking restrictions among African Americans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2004.09.025Get rights and content

Objectives

This paper investigates the association between implementing a personal space smoking restriction for the home or automobile, and various sociodemographic, social, behavioral, and attitudinal variables.

Methods

Approximately 1000 African-American adults (aged >18 years) residing in non-institutionalized settings were randomly selected using a cross-sectional stratified cluster sample of ten U.S. congressional districts represented by African Americans.

Results

A 62.0% and 70.4% ban was found, respectively, on smoking in homes and cars. Multivariate analysis revealed that region, marital status, number of friends who smoked, beliefs about environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), and smoking status predicted home smoking bans, while age, number of children in household, number of friends who smoked, and beliefs about ETS and smoking status predicted car smoking bans.

Conclusions

Results suggest that a substantial segment of African Americans have accepted and translated public policy concerns about ETS into practice and reveal other variables that could be targeted in future interventions to increase implementation of personal space smoking restrictions.

Introduction

The effect of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) on public health has been well documented. Approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths annually are caused by ETS,1 and according to one source ETS is the third leading cause of premature death and disability.2 A recent review of ETS exposure and children estimated that between 20% and 50% of children reside in “homes with at least one adult smoker,”3 and the proportion may be higher in lower-income households.3, 4 Childhood illnesses resulting from ETS exposure include lower respiratory tract infections, sudden infant death syndrome, reduced fetal growth, and exacerbation of asthma.1, 3 Early exposure to ETS during childhood and adolescence may lead to other health problems and risks as adults.3, 4, 5

In view of the significant health risks posed by ETS, legislation over the past 10 to 15 years has restricted smoking in public places and work settings, making legislation one of the more efficacious, widely implemented, and accepted social policies.1, 6 Adopting personal space smoking restrictions depends primarily on accepting beliefs about the adverse health effects of secondary smoke exposure and the voluntary efforts of individuals and families to establish and enforce social norms promoting smoke-free environments.7, 8

The few studies that examine voluntary smoking restrictions among African Americans focus mainly on home smoking bans, and find that between 21% and 38% of African Americans adopt such personal policies. In the late 1980s, Koepke et al.9 reported that a lower proportion of African-American parents in Los Angeles and San Diego did not allow smoking in the home (21.5%), compared to 39.4% of Asians, 41.3% of Hispanics, and 37.2% of Caucasians. Using data from the California Tobacco Survey (CTS), Gilpin et al.10 concluded that 38% of African Americans indicated they maintained a home smoking ban. Brownson et al.11 conducted a study in St. Louis and Kansas City on beliefs about the effects of smoking, and found a higher likelihood that African Americans, compared to Caucasians, believed that passive smoking was harmful to the health of young children and found passive smoking more bothersome. Recently, a predominately African-American study of inner-city smokers in Kansas City, Kansas revealed that 38.2% maintained a home smoking ban, and that home smoking bans were significantly related to the number of children in the household and a nonsmoking adult partner.4 In one of the few studies on car smoking bans based on the CTS, Norman et al.12 found that 54.8% of African Americans maintained a complete ban on smoking in their automobiles.

Notwithstanding the important contributions of these studies, they have not represented the broad social and geographic diversity of African Americans, as they have been either limited to a particular state (i.e., California), an urban location, or have consisted of smokers only. The present study extends previous research by examining the associations between household, social, and attitudinal characteristics of a nationally dispersed probability sample of African Americans, and two ETS reduction behaviors: adopting home and car smoking bans. This research can be useful in understanding the prevalence of and motivation to adopt home and car smoking prohibitions. These results may also offer insight into ways to increase the practice of personal space smoking restrictions among African Americans.

Section snippets

Methods

A cross-sectional sample of 37 U.S. congressional districts represented by African Americans was selected. The design consisted of a stratified cluster sample in which the four U.S. Census geographic regions that represented major strata and African-American congressional districts were purposefully chosen (n =4) or selected at random (n =6) from the number of qualified districts in a given region. Each of the ten districts constituted a cluster wherein a simple random sample of approximately

Descriptive statistics

As shown in Table 1 under “weighted percent,” 38.1% of respondents were aged ≥45 years, and 54.5% were female. Proportions with 12 years of education and some college were similar (30%); 45.2% were single/never married. Residents of the tobacco South (29.8%) constituted the largest group of respondents; the smallest proportion (9.3%) was in the West. A majority of respondents (53.7%) reported owning their homes, and 51.9% had no children aged <18 years living in the household. About 44% of

Discussion

We believe that this is the first published study based on a nationally dispersed random sample, of the opinions and practices of African Americans regarding both home and car smoking bans. It was found that the prevalence of a complete (never allowing) smoking ban was 62.0% and 70.4% for homes and cars, respectively. Differences between these findings and those of previous studies may be partly the result of changes that have taken place in the attitudes and practices of African Americans

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