Smoke-free legislation in Barbados: Compliance among hospitality venues

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the level of compliance with the smoke-free legislation among hospitality venues (bars and restaurants) in Barbados. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 67 venues using purposive sampling. Venues were recruited from two coastal areas patronized by tourists and one rural area patronized by Barbadians. Compliance status was determined using an observation checklist containing five indicators. Univariate analysis provided proportions with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) using Epi Info 7. Fisher¡¯s exact test examined the association between location and compliance with p ¡Ü 0.05accepted as significant. RESULTS: Overall compliance status of venues was full compliance 6% (95% CI 1.7, 14.6), partial compliance 63% (95% CI 50.1, 74.2), non-compliance 31% (95% CI20.6, 43.8). Indicators showed that more than half (55%) of the venues displayed ¡® no smoking ¡¯ signage, 7% signage compliance, 40% smoking indoors and 36% having ashtrays/ashbins present. When viewed by location, more venues in the tourist area were non-compliant (57%; 95%CI 19.6, 49.6) compared to the non-tourist area (28%; 95%CI 12.1, 49.4), provided significantly more ashtrays/ashbins (p = 0.03752) and were plagued with challenges of active smoking nearly twice as many times as venues within the non-tourist area (50% vs 28%). CONCLUSIONS: Full compliance with the smoke-free legislation is very low in Barbados among hospitality venues. Training programmes targeting operators and night-time surveillance are critical to raising the level of conformity to the legislation.