Background:

To know the support of tobacco regulation is a very important issue to advance in the tobacco control policies and reduce the passive exposure to tobacco. The aim of this study was to describe the attitudes towards forbidding smoking in private vehicles and public outdoor spaces.

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional study of a representative sample (n=736) of the adult population (24+ years old) from Barcelona, Spain in 2013-2014. We calculated the percentages of individuals who had a favourable attitude towards smoking regulation in private vehicles and public outdoor spaces, their adjusted Odds ratios (aOR) and their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) according to sex, age, educational level and smoking status through logistic regression. We used weighted data for all analyses in order to keep the representativeness of the population of Barcelona in 2013-2014.

Results:

61.7% of participants supported forbidding smoking in private vehicles and 89.5% supported forbidding it only in the presence of minors. The support to smoking regulation in public outdoor spaces varied from 42.5% to 84.7% in different settings. Smokers showed a less favourable attitude towards an extension of the smoking regulation to other settings: outdoor areas of university centres, outdoor areas of shopping centres and beaches and outdoor pools.

Conclusions:

A wide support exists to extend the smoking regulation to private vehicles, especially in the presence of children, and public outdoor spaces. This wide support could favour the extension of smoking regulation to these places to improve the population’s health and to contribute to denormalise tobacco use among the population.

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