Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2011, 8 1530 environments, while Wuhan had fewer government initiatives. Consistent with a review on public attitudes towards smoke-free policies by International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), this study found that smokers were less supportive of prohibiting or restricting smoking in restaurants and bars and the support for smoke-free bars was lower than for smoke-free restaurants [15]. There were several misunderstandings among hospitality owners and managers concerning smoking in restaurants and bars. First, many overestimated the impact of restricting smoking to designated sections on preventing exposure to SHS. This may partially explain the higher support for smoking restriction than for prohibition. Second, they believed that indoor air quality depended on ventilation more than prohibiting smoking. In fact, ventilation and any other engineering approaches cannot eliminate adverse health effects from exposure to SHS [22]. Lastly, most of them worried that smoking bans would reduce their revenues, a common belief that has been demonstrated to be false in a systematic review of the economic impacts of smoke-free laws in North America, Australia, and other Western countries [23]. To facilitate smoking bans in restaurants and bars, we should replace common misunderstanding with empirical evidence from China as well experiences from international practices. The study found that owners who were unwilling to prohibit or restrict smoking in their own venues thought it was not their duty and it would decrease their revenues, and that owners from Chinese food restaurants and bars were least likely to voluntarily prohibit or restrict smoking in their own venues. All these indicate big challenges to depend on voluntary smoking restriction to reduce or eliminate SHS exposure in restaurants and bars in China. Without governmental regulations, which would set consistent smoking policies for all the hospitality venues and impact their revenues indifferently, owners were less likely to prohibit or restrict smoking voluntarily due to the concern that self-imposed smoking prohibition or restriction would bring negative impact on their revenues under the existing social context, that is, more than half (53%) of men smoking [10], and sharing cigarettes, “among men in particular” “is used as a way to break down social barriers, foster friendship, and promote bonding” [24]. 5. Study Limitations and Strengths The response rate of this study was 100%, probably because subjects were invited to the study through local CDCs or health institutes. As discussed previously, this might lead to over-reporting of existing smoking restrictions and support for banning smoking in restaurants and bars. It would be better to use an independent third party to conduct all the interviews to decrease these potential over-reports, however, this approach is often very expensive, and it cannot always be accommodated in a broad scale public health research like this study in China, and using the existing public health system is necessary. Furthermore, all subjects were assured that information obtained from interviews would not be linked with any hygiene inspection, and we would more like to regard this high response rate as strength rather than a limitation of the study. The study focused specifically on restaurant and bar owners’ knowledge and attitudes regarding banning smoking in their own venues across different cities in the country, and it is able to provide key information for tobacco control initiatives in restaurants and bars in China and in other international countries. However, the five cities included in this study are not representative of all cities in China, and subjects interviewed were not from a random sample of hospitality venues. We are unable to