South China Morning Post
For the sake of the health of smokers and non-smokers alike, it is a good thing to extend the range of public areas where smoking is now banned.
That is all very well, but no law can be effective unless it is enforced.
The large pedestrian squares in Tsim Sha Tsui East, outside the East Ocean Centre, have recently been designated no-smoking areas.
However, few people seem to realise that. A handful of rather small notices about this are affixed to lamp-posts, and I noticed only one larger banner in the square itself.
Bearing in mind that this pedestrian area is generally full with many hundreds of people, such very limited signage is totally ineffective.
Many of the visitors to that area are mainland tourists, who go shopping there.
When alighting from their coaches, few would even be aware of this theoretical smoking ban, not having seen one of the, very few, small notices about it.
As a result, the so-called ban is widely ignored.
Within a five- minute period there the other day, I counted no fewer than 68 people smoking. Clearly, the Tobacco Control Office needs to erect much larger and more prominent signs about this.
They could additionally usefully tackle the many local bars and coffee shops, at which scores of people sit around outside, smoking.
The office also needs to have inspectors patrolling these squares, otherwise nobody will pay the slightest attention to this supposed ban on smoking there.
Paul Surtees, Mid-Levels