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Outdoor smoking

Proposal to ban smoking on Seoul streets

Last updated: March 24,090510_p13_photo 2010

Source: Tobacco Reporter

Seoul Metropolitan Council has proposed an ordinance that would prohibit smoking on streets and in parks and plazas within the capital, except in separate, designated smoking areas, according to a story in The Korea Times.

At the same time, the bill would provide tax incentives to companies participating in non-smoking campaigns.

If passed, the bill, which is due to be discussed during an extraordinary session of the municipal council in June, would take effect from January next year.

Letters to the Editor: Officials must crack down on smokers

police-crackdown-415x275Last updated: March 21, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

It is always a pleasure to visit Hong Kong and I felt things would be even better thanks to the smoking ban in pubs and public open spaces. However, I see the law being flouted and it is getting worse. In November there were some incidents, in January a few more, and this month I saw people smoking in so many establishments.

The government seems to be willing to let Hong Kong return to the bad old days. What a shame it will not enforce the law.

There are now several establishments I will not go to because the smoking problem is worse than ever, so at least I’m saving money.

I hope for Hong Kong’s sake the government wakes up before it is too late and the bad old days are back forever.

John Preston, Hawksburn, Victoria, Australia

Reply to Vines – Letters to the Editor, SCMP

antique typewriter

From: James Middleton [mailto:dynamco@netvigator.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 5:07 AM
To: ‘Letters to the Editor'; ‘john.lee@scmp.com
Subject: Reply to Vines

Your correspondent Stephen Vines (SCMP March 5) states ‘Business is booming in bars where a blind eye is turned to smoking. The crackdown has also led to an enormous increase in sales of counterfeit cigarettes and smuggled tobacco.’

Hong Kong laws need changing to fall in line with first world countries where the onus is on premises’ managers to enforce no smoking laws within or lose their licences ; the current legislation is deliberately flawed and has no such requirement. After the 50% tobacco tax increase last year the sale of duty paid cigarettes here dropped by more than 30% (3.79 billion in 2008 – 2.88 billion in 2009) whilst revenue from excise tax increased 2% above 2008.

Meanwhile the stepped up enforcement by Customs Department  against illicit tobacco increased arrests by 91% in 2009 above 2008 but found less seizures since the syndicates reduced volumes (109 million sticks 2007, 79 million in 2008 versus 59 million in 2009) for fear of being caught. Your correspondent should as a prudent journalist do some research before he continues to bitch and moan based on flawed facts and his stated ‘enormous increase’ is actually a significant decrease.

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GE plans new American export: outdoor smoking ban

GE smoking ban

First published: March 4, 2010

Source: Reuters

General Electric Co is known for exporting American products like washing machines and jet engines, and the biggest U.S. conglomerate is getting ready to ship out another American trend – the outdoor smoking ban.

The world’s largest maker of jet engines this week told employees that it plans to ban smoking on all GE property – both indoors and out – worldwide starting in March 2011.

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Clear The Air successful in persuading HKG Government to change litter bins in non smoking areas

Ashtrays in rubbish bins encourage smoking.

Ashtrays in rubbish bins encourage smoking.

29/11/2009

Dear FHB,

Can you please explain why, in an indoor pedestrian overpass, it is the official policy of the FHB to put out rubbish bins with ashtrays in them ?  It is illegal to carry a lighted tobacco product here, so anyone using the ashtrays is breaking the law – assisted by the FHB policy that mandates ashtrays on rubbish bins.

These ashtrays encourage smokers to smoke in places where it is illegal.  You may contact your own FEHD Tobacco Control office and the Council On Smoking and Health, who will each tell you that ashtrays in rubbish bins encourage smoking (legal and illegal) – and send the wrong message to the public.  When you put out ashtrays the message you are sending is “We want you to smoke here !!!  We will even clean up your butts for you !!! “

Also, most smokers do not extinguish their butts before tossing them in ashtrays, so they cigarette continues to “smoke” and pollute the air long after the smoker has left.

Can the FHB please instruct the FEHD to remove the tops of all rubbish bins in all covered locations where smoking is illegal – or replace them with rounded tops (not flat tops, which are used as ashtrays).  You will notice that the MTR does not put ashtrays or lids on their rubbish bins anymore.  They have learned that it just encourages smoking.

You may contact Tobacco Control who have many reports from me of illegal smoking in places that have ashtrays on rubbish bins, but very few where there are no ashtrays.

Please set the correct rubbish bin policy for health, while de-normalizing smoking, and do not reward illegal smoking by providing ashtrays or flat topped rubbish bin covers.

Finally, can you please wait to reply to this email until after you have contacted both Tobacco Control and COSH and come up with an integrated plan to eliminate government provided ashtrays completely and flat top rubbish bins from all statutory non-smoking areas

I am happy to give a tour to anyone at the FHB to show how putting out ashtrays – and flat top rubbish bins, actually rewards people who smoke illegally.

Thank you.

Regards,

Annelise Connell


FHB had replied the e-mail. Hit the jump and see the reply letter.

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Tobacco tax increase is best way to curb smoking

A smoking shelter in United Kingdom.

A smoking shelter in United Kingdom.

It took years to extend anti-smoking laws to restaurants and bars, a ban which came into effect last July. It has taken only a few months for activists to take their campaign to curb smoking outdoors. The Council on Smoking and Health is considering recommending that the government should introduce measures to corral smokers into designated outdoor smoking areas. Because more smokers have been driven onto the streets, it argues that second-hand smoke is now an outdoor health hazard, especially in crowded pedestrian areas, and that this justifies further action. A street ban would be difficult to police, but council chairwoman Lisa Lau Man-man cites the example of Tokyo, another densely populated area, where smoking in the streets has been banned in some areas.

Designated non-smoking outdoor areas are already to be found, for example along the promenade outside the Central ferry piers. Smokers generally respect them and Lau believes they would also discipline themselves if the balance were reversed and smoking areas were designated instead.

So long as tobacco use remains lawful, however addictive and unhealthy it may be, these ideas raise the question of balance between personal freedoms and community interest. Bans respect non-smokers’ right to breathe clean air. But there is room for more effective enforcement of the recently introduced indoor bans and the HK$1,500 on-the-spot fines for breaches. That would reinforce the educational message to the slowly shrinking minority who smoke that theirs is an anti-social and risky habit.

Lau rightly concedes that the most effective way of curbing smoking remains rises in tobacco tax. Having raised it by 50 per cent last year – the first increase for eight years – the government should not shrink from imposing a smaller incremental rise in this year’s budget. Unfortunately this would hit the poor hardest. But given that smoking is addictive, and taxpayers at large fund the earlier, more frequent and extra health care that smokers are prone to need, this is one tax increase for which there is an argument in social equity.

Source: SCMP

Top court to rule on definition of ‘indoor’ in no-smoking law

What is mean by "indoor area" in somking ban?

What is mean by "indoor area" in somking ban?

The city’s highest court will hear an appeal from the government over a ruling on the definition of an indoor area under the smoking-ban legislation.

The government is seeking an interpretation from the Court of Final Appeal on the question of what constitutes an indoor area under the Smoking (Public Health) Ordinance.

Giving his judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Louis Tong Po-sun of the Court of First Instance certified that the question arising from his earlier judgment could be argued in the top court.

Last month, Tong held in the case of Ho Yau-yin that the smoking restriction only applied to an area that was completely enclosed, thereby defining the meaning of “indoor”.

However, his ruling has upset the prosecution of 178 cases. Ho, a hawker-control officer, was convicted by a magistrate of holding a lit cigarette in a designated no-smoking area – the extension of Fu Kee cafeteria in Sham Tseng, an area that was enclosed by plastic curtaining but outside the main body of the business.

Quashing the conviction on the grounds of insufficient evidence, Tong made his controversial ruling regarding the definition of an indoor area, saying that such an area should be enclosed on all sides.

Applying to take the case to the Court of Final Appeal, senior assistant director of public prosecutions Patrick Cheung Wai-sun contended that an indoor area could be a space not enclosed on all sides but one with more than half of its total area enclosed.

He had told the court that the legislative intent was that a premises enclosed on three sides should be covered in the definition of “indoor” in the ordinance, and the different interpretation used by Tong in his earlier judgment would affect the prosecution of many similar cases.

Cheung said the issue was of great importance, noting that he would not seek to overturn the result of the appeal.

According to the ordinance, an indoor area is one that is “enclosed, whether temporarily or permanently, at least up to 50 per cent of the total area on all sides, except for any window or door, or any closeable opening that functions as a window or door”.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health has indicated that tobacco-control officers would continue to prosecute offenders under the law but would take into account Tong’s ruling.

Source: SCMP, by Yvonne Tsui

Some articles of interest

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Blitz operations against smoking offence in FEHD venues

Source: http://7thspace.com/headlines/321687/blitz_operations_against_smoking_offence_in_fehd_venues.html

Hong Kong (HKSAR) – The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) and the Tobacco Control Office (TCO) of Department of Health jointly carried out a blitz operation at the Cooked Food Centre of (1)Shek Wu Hui Market tonight (September 28). Joint blitz operations were mounted at the Cooked Food Centres of (2)Lockhart Road Market and (3)Pei Ho Street Market and (4)Woosung Street Temporary Cooked Food Hawker Bazaar last week. A total of five Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) were issued during the operations.

Indoor areas of public markets and hawker bazaars under FEHD have been designated as no smoking areas and authorised public officers of FEHD, in addition to officers of the TCO, are empowered to issue FPNs to smoking offenders under the Fixed Penalty (Smoking Offences) Ordinance which took effect on September 1 this year. “Apart from monitoring the situation of no smoking areas in markets and hawker bazaars and taking enforcement action on a daily basis, we would also mount joint blitz operations with the TCO to enhance the deterrent effect as and when necessary,” a spokesman for the FEHD added.

Source: HKSAR Government – 

CLEAR THE AIR SAYS:

If 5 FPN smoking tickets issued in 4 different sites is a ‘Blitz’ then proper enforcement should be termed ‘Selective Enforcement by the Hypocritically sensory affected non willing trouble avoiders’

IT IS HIGH TIME HK GOVERNMENT FOLLOWED OVERSEAS JURISDICTIONS AND MADE LICENSEES AND MANAGERS RESPONSIBLE FOR ENFORCING BANS IN THEIR PREMISES, OR FACE LOSING THEIR PREMISES’ LICENCES IF THEY DO NOT.

THIS WILL IMMEDIATELY ADD MORE THAN 11,000 ENFORCERS TO THE TOBACCO CONTROL OFFICE SUPPORT.

New York leads the charge in America’s anti-smoking laws

UNITED STATES, Paul Harris – SCMP

Once, America was in thrall to the Marlboro Man. The hard-smoking cowboy, staring moodily from his horse at a far-off horizon, symbolised a certain kind of freedom and – not coincidentally – helped sell millions of cigarettes.

But now America’s smokers are groaning – or maybe that should be wheezing – under a flood of new measures designed to make them give up. Or, at the very least, to drive their habits from public view to something furtively done in private.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced plans to try to ban smoking in the city’s public parks, adding to the 2002 ban on smoking in offices, restaurants and bars. That would see the Big Apple take on one of the most ambitious urban anti-smoking bans in the world, forbidding its citizens from lighting up in hundreds of city parks and 22 kilometres of beaches.

But the New York move is just the tip of an iceberg of anti-smoking policies spreading across the country in a variety of arenas, ranging from rental cars to the army and people’s homes.

From next month, Avis and Budget will be the first major American car rental companies to ban smokers from puffing away in their vehicles, charging cleaning fees of up to US$250 for those who flout the rules.

Chicago has already taken its ban outside by forbidding smoking on beaches and in playgrounds. In California, the small city of Belmont, just outside San Francisco, has even banned it in apartment buildings, marking the first real advance of anti-smoking laws into personal homes.

Perhaps the biggest recent shock has been a study commissioned by the Pentagon that said smoking should be banned in the military. Though few changes are expected soon in the army, the idea of stopping American soldiers lighting up in a combat zone after a firefight triggered a wave of headlines.

Yet it is still New York that is on the frontline of America’s anti-smoking wars. The city celebrates its global reputation for hard partying, tolerance of different lifestyles and rabid individualism, yet Bloomberg has successfully made the Big Apple’s smokers one of the few social groups it is considered acceptable to ostracise.

On Monday, Bloomberg – a former smoker himself – admitted that when he sees smokers hunkered together outside buildings he gives them “a not particularly nice look” as he walks past.

His comments appeared to be aimed at encouraging other New Yorkers to do likewise. “Social pressure really does work,” he said. It certainly seems to have made New York smokers into a fairly subdued bunch as they faced yet further constraints.

Hurrying across New York’s Madison Square park – one of the areas where a ban would come into place – Janaria Kelly shrugged off the news as he clutched a lighted cigarette.

“They have already banned it in so many other places, that it won’t make much difference,” said the 43-year-old salesman. Kelly added that he understood, and even sympathised with, the reasons for the ban. “Smoking is my choice, but I know it is bad for me, so I get why they are doing it,” he said.

That is music to the ears of the anti-smoking movement. Some reports have shown that smoking-related health care costs are almost US$100 billion a year, and this is against a background of rising health care costs for the government.

Bloomberg, and many others, have made it clear that they see smoking as expensive to wider society, not just as a private habit for the individual, and have not shied away from draconian measures that would be hard to impose on other products.

But smoking rights groups have made no secret of their horror at the latest moves, equating it with a loss of individual freedom being imposed on the public from above.

“The American public is not asking for this. It is coming from government and non-government groups, and it is attacking basic rights of freedom,” said Maryetta Ables, president of Forces International, a conservative group that campaigns on issues of personal freedom in smoking, eating and other consumer choices. But Ables admitted that the climate in the US seemed to indicate that her group was fighting a losing battle at the moment. “There is going to be more of this sort of thing to come,” she said.

That did not seem to bother Paul Collins, 39, another smoker lighting up in Madison Square park as he recovered from the stresses of his morning commute into the city.

“If they do it, they do it,” he said with an air of resignation. “The smoking ban in bars was actually good for me. I cut down a bit. So I don’t really mind.”

That is not the fighting spirit among smokers that the Marlboro Man was meant to encourage.

But then the Marlboro Man is perhaps not the best smoking symbol any more. Several of the cowboys used as models in the campaign contracted lung cancer and became anti-smoking campaigners.

New York banned smoking in most restaurants in 1995, followed by workplaces and indoor public places in 2003, three years before such bans in Scotland and four years before England and Wales.

However, the Department of Health in England said that it had no plans to extend smoke-free areas, saying such moves were up to local authorities.

In Australia, smoking was banned on Sydney’s Bondi beach in 2004, after similar prohibitions on dogs, ball games and frisbees. Soon after, the local council restricted alcohol consumption on the beach.

In Holland, Amsterdam’s coffee shops were not exempted from a ban on smoking in public places. There, pure cannabis or cannabis resin can be legally smoked – as long as it is not mixed with tobacco.

The Guardian