Abstract
Objective: Because approximately four thousand chemicals were found in tobacco smoke, smoking is considered as a risk factor for many diseases and thus, the “smoking cessation” has been listed as a major issue. Smoking cessation support for the pharmacist to reduce medical expenses and is an important work in order to support the health of the Japanese people. Here, we conducted a survey of pharmacists about smoking and smoking cessation. In this study, we tried to reveal the problems that we need to support smoking cessation was considered something.
Methods: In 201X years and 201X + 1 years, certain pharmacists Association, held a smoking cessation support pharmacist training workshop as a “smoking cessation support program that utilize coaching”. At that time, we carried out a questionnaire survey about smoking and smoking cessation, designated in 5-point scale and free-form question. We primarily analyzed the 5-point scale answers with a simple tabulation process, subsequently subjected to a factor analysis and cluster analysis.
Results: 97.5% of answers were responded from 415 pharmacists. In a simple tabulation analyses, the “anxiety for non smoking” and “pain of smoking cessation failure” accounted for a 40% of consultation content in smoking cessation patients. Also, the analyses indicated that a coaching technique for listening and encouragement is useful for pharmacists. By using factor analysis, five factors was found, (1) smoking cessation, (2) health effects, (3) health hazards of tobacco, (4) smoke education, and (5) “should be non smoking”. Subsequent cluster analysis revealed that the respondents were categorized into three groups, (1) aggressive pharmacists for smoking cessation support, (2) pharmacists who exude a negative attitude for smoking cessation, and (3) interested but passive pharmacists for smoking cessation support.
Conclusion: In this study, the authors clarify the problems of smoking cessation pharmacists with a simple tabulation analyses, factor analysis and cluster analysis. According to these findings, we concluded that it is necessary for smoking cessation pharmacists to get an instruction for the tailor-made counseling to each patient.

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Objective: This study investigates consciousness of the health dangers caused by passive smoking and attitudes to no-smoking policies in Japan compared with the situation overseas. Previous reports have indicated that (1）No smoking in restaurants is common in the U.S. whereas separate smoking areas are common in Japan; and (2）the Japanese have less knowledge of the health dangers of passive smoking than the Americans, but interest in it is higher in Japan than in the U.S. This study further analyzes data on individual smoking status and investigates whether there are any differences in consciousness of the health dangers of passive smoking and attitudes to no-smoking policies according to smoking status.
Methods: A survey was conducted from February 3, 2015 to February 12, 2015, targeting 1,000 Japanese and 1,000 Americans.
Results: Japanese non-smokers had less knowledge of the dangers of passive smoking than Japanese smokers. Japanese non-smokers also had less knowledge than American non-smokers, indicating that Japanese non-smokers had remarkably poor knowledge of the hazards of passive smoking. In addition, although Japanese smokers had more knowledge than Japanese non-smokers, they had less knowledge than American ex-smokers. Further, we found that Japanese smokers rated the lowest score for the question, “Do you want the Olympic host city in 2020, Tokyo, to develop measures or ordinances of legally binding passive smoking prevention, as done by past Olympic host cities?”
Conclusion: Japanese non-smokers had remarkably poor knowledge of the dangers of passive smoking but had a high interest in it. Japanese smokers showed a tendency to have less knowledge and less interest than American smokers. From the aspect of individual smoking status, sufficient information on passive smoking is not provided in Japan, indicating that information on the health dangers of passive smoking needs to be provided through a knowledge- or interest-based approach, depending on smoking status.

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Backgrounds: Cigarette smoking causes the variety of chronic diseases and its cessation benefits for treating their illnesses and preventing new comorbidities. However, in the clinical situation, there are some patients who continue their smoking after the diagnosis. Recently, the effectiveness of measuring and telling “lung age” on promoting smoking cessation have been reported. Then, we assessed whether it would be also effective for patients with chronic diseases as promoting smoking cessation.
Methods: We enrolled 123 patients who were diagnosed as having chronic diseases (diabetes, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases or gastrointestinal diseases) in Saitama Kyodo Hospital and smoking had been continued after the diagnosis. In those patients, we classified into two groups; one was promoted smoking cessation only (control group; n = 52) and the other was that not only promoted smoking cessation but also measured and explained their “lung age” (lung age group; n = 58); and evaluated the changes of their minds for smoking cessation using questionnaires.
Results: Age, smoking history and minds for smoking cessation were not different between lung age and control groups. Of 52 patients in control group, five (10%) improved their minds for smoking cessation, whereas 14 patients (24%) in lung age group improved. Although it did not reach the statistically significant difference (p = 0.078), patients with respiratory diseases significantly improved their minds of smoking cessation.
Conclusions: As promoting smoking cessation, our data suggested that measuring and telling “lung age” was effective for smoking-continued patients with respiratory diseases.

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