Personal health practices and attitudes toward nonsmokers' legal rights in Japan

To evaluate a role of education to acquire a healthy lifestyle (health education) in achieving a smokeless society, the relationship between attitudes toward the legal right to be free from involuntary smoking in public places, based on human rights, and personal health practices was determined using answers to a questionnaire from 887 randomly-selected citizens of Osaka. The answers were analyzed within four subgroups of respondents divided by smoking status and sex. Among the respondents, three significant relationships of attitude scores to health practices were identified. Within subgroups of female subjects, questionnaire attitude scores decreased as health practice scores increased. Among male non-smokers, those who had high health practice scores also had high attitude scores. Among male smokers, there was no statistical association between health practice scores and attitude scores. Our results demonstrated that attitudes toward the legal right to be free from involuntary smoking among male-nonsmokers were closely related to personal health practices, and implied the effectiveness of health education among this subgroup for the advancement of their legal right to be free from involuntary smoking.