Smoking fines yet to be handed out

• Source: Global Times
• [09:20 May 19 2010]
• Comments

A "No Smoking" sign hangs from above at a restaurant in Shanghai on March 1, the day the citywide smoking ban started. Photo: IC

By Zhang Cao

Not one individual or organization has been fined two months after a citywide ban on smoking in public places has been set in place.

But officials say the city ban on smoking that began March 1 at restaurants, coffee shops, schools, government offices, hospitals, shopping malls, li-braries, theaters and museums was not implemented to help the city profit from smokers.

"Financial punishment isn't the main purpose of the ban so no one has been fined so far," a woman surnamed Jiang who declined to disclose her full name from the Shanghai Health Promotion Committee, the main body regulating the smoking ban, told the Global Times Tuesday. "Our goal is to raise awareness amongst smokers that their habit is harmful to the people around them."

Though the city has yet to collect from smokers, the bylaw allows them to penalize individuals caught breaking the rules with a fine of up to 200 yuan ($29). Establishments that fail to comply can be charged up to 30,000 yuan ($4,392).

"We look at the past two months as a transitional period that will be followed by further adjustment," said Jiang, admitted there are challenges to enforcing the regulation in the future as smokers can leave the scene quickly if caught in the act and collecting evidence against those who disobey is not likely to become a working practice.

"We have already realized this problem and have already submitted it to the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, which created the ban," said Jiang. "We hope they will develop some plan so that violators will be punished in the future."

Currently, there are 40,000 smoking ban volunteers in the city who supervise the implementation of the ban. Their job is to encourage smokers to ad-here the ban, but they are not authorized to fine people.

They do, however, call law enforcement departments such as the Shanghai Health Inspection Bureau, whose officers are allowed to fine smokers.

But even though no one has been financially punished the ban has helped to clear the air at some public places such as Internet cafés, according to No Smoking Shanghai, an organized research group of tobacco industry experts from Fudan University.

Studies conducted over the past couple of months said that the passive smoke concentration at local cafés, which were randomly selected, have decreased by some 30 percent since the ban started.