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Daily Liberal: Owners of NSW eateries happy with smoking ban

from Kim Bartley, reporting for the Australian Daily Liberal:

With barely a huff or a puff, customers of salad run in Dubbo’s Macquarie Street have accepted owner Sharon Campbell’s decision to ban smoking at outside tables.

The business is among eateries across the Western NSW Local Health District being encouraged to get ahead of new legislation banning smoking in alfresco dining areas from July 6, 2015.

Health promotion officers are reported to be working with businesses and communities to “serve up fresh air in the interests of good taste and healthier lives”.

“Taking smoke off the menu is another positive step in the success story of tobacco regulation in Australia, creating healthier environments, healthier people and a less stretched hospital system,” health district promotion manager Lyndal O’Leary said.

Miss Campbell did not need nudging by the health district.

She came to Dubbo from Melbourne, thinking NSW had already followed Victoria in stubbing out smoking in outdoor dining areas.

When the doors of salad run opened she began dissuading customers from lighting up outside.

“I have only had one person say to me ‘How can you have coffee without a cigarette?’, ” she said.

“My customers can now enjoy their lunch break without having to inhale secondhand tobacco smoke and put up with unsightly cigarette ash and/or butts.”

Miss Campbell said she was “definitely not losing customers” because of the stand.

Owner of salad run in Dubbo, Sharon Campbell, enjoys sitting in the business's smoke-free alfresco dining area. (Louise Donges/Daily Liberal)

The health district reports that businesses “expect to see improvements as a result of this change, as they are catering to an increasing majority of the public who don’t smoke or are in the process of quitting”.

More than 80 per cent of the population do not smoke.

The ban effective from the middle of 2015 represents the “last stage” of amendments to the Smoke-Free Environment Act 2000.

This year the act was amended to stop smoking within 10 metres of children’s play equipment in an outdoor public place; in open areas of swimming pool complexes, and spectator areas of sports grounds or other recreational areas during sporting events.

Smoking is also prohibited at public transport stops and stations, including rail, tram, ferry and taxi, and within four metres of a pedestrian entrance to a public building, such as a shopping centre.

5 Dec 2013

Smoking on restaurant patios now illegal in SF

Last updated: November 4, 2010

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

Smokers in San Francisco can no longer light up in a restaurant’s outdoor seating area.

The law—approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors in March—went into effect this week.

Restaurants must not post signs advising customers they can only smoke at the curb or in a spot that is at least 15 feet from exits, entrances, windows and vents.

Failure to comply could cost restaurants a $500 fine.

Golden Gate Restaurant Association director Kevin Westlye tells the San Francisco Chronicle the group supported the legislation once a requirement that restaurant owners police people smoking in front of their establishments was removed.

Westlye says restaurant owners want to protect their employees and customers from second hand smoke.

Clear the Air says: Tommy Cheung

So what does Legco member Tommy Cheung have to say ? after all he predicted doom and gloom for the catering industry after the smoking ban in workplaces came into being.

Has he printed a retraction to say he was wrong – by about HK$ 18 billion only whilst meanwhile demanding an hourly minimum wage of HK$ 20 ?

Can we trust what the Liberal Party or its non elected Functional Constituency members say or vested interests tell them what to say ?

You decide.

Total Restaurant Receipts

Year

Quarter

Value

Volume

HK$Mn

Index (Average of quarterly indices from Oct 2004 to Sep 2005 = 100)

Year-on-year % change

Index (Average of quarterly indices from Oct 2004 to Sep 2005 = 100)

Year-on-year % change

2004

N.A.

N.A.

N.A.

N.A.

N.A.

2005

56,507.2

101.8

N.A.

101.5

N.A.

2006 no smoking ban

61,907.1

111.5

+9.6

109.8

+8.2

2007 Jan -partial smoking ban commences

70,202.0

126.4

+13.4

121.3

+10.6

2008

79,390.9

143.0

+13.1

129.6

+6.8

2009 – July full smoking ban in place

79,879.5

143.8

+0.6

128.4

-0.9

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The restaurants sector’s total receipts was $20.8 billion in value in the first quarter, up 4.8% on the same period last year, the Census & Statistics Department says. Restaurants’ total purchases increased 4.2% in value, to $7.2 billion.

After discounting the effect of price changes, total restaurant receipts rose 3.9% in volume.

Analysed by type of restaurant, Chinese restaurants’ total receipts rose 6.3% in value, or 5.3% in volume. Fast food shops‘ total receipts grew 5.3% in value or 4.6% in volume, while bars’ total receipts of bars rose 5% in value or 4.9% in volume.

Non-Chinese restaurants’ total receipts rose 2.4% in value or 1.9% in volume, while the figure for miscellaneous eating and drinking places grew 2% in value or 1.1% in volume.

On a seasonally adjusted quarter-to-quarter comparison, the volume of total restaurant receipts increased 1.2%.

Restaurateur loses license over smoking ban

swiss-smoking-ban-posterFirst published: March 15, 2010

Source: World Radio Switzerland

A restaurant owner in St Gallen has had his license taken away after repeatedly not obeying the smoking ban there.

Police have caught people smoking in the St Gallen establishment on five occasions since October 2008 when the smoking ban came into force in the canton.

(more…)

High time for the nation to enforce the law

chinese woman smokingLast updated: March 11, 2010

Source: China Daily

My friends and I celebrated International Women’s Day on Monday by going to dinner at a restaurant near our office. While we were still looking at the menu, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by cigarette smoke. More than a dozen men had just taken their seats at nearby tables and immediately lit up.

We abandoned our table by the window for another, but were soon assaulted by smoke from a nearby table. Looking around, I didn’t see a single “No Smoking” sign in the restaurant, nor was there any division between smoking and non-smoking areas.

I knew there was no point in raising the matter with the restaurant’s owner. I remember having lunch in the non-smoking section of another restaurant, where several customers were nonetheless smoking. The smokers refused to put out their cigarettes even when an attendant asked them to.

(more…)

Bars ignoring smoking ban taking our business, other pubs complain

smoking in bar

Patrons of bars in Tsim Sha Tsui can ignore the smoking ban as long as no one complains to the Tobacco Control Office - a loophole some bar owners say costs them business.

Updated: February 28, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

Popular bars on Hong Kong Island are sick of abiding by the smoking ban while competitors in other parts of the city ignore it, and are demanding the government step in.

The owners claim that because they follow the law they are losing customers – while most others ignore the ban and are escaping with their profits intact.

Smoking legislation in Hong Kong, unlike jurisdictions elsewhere in the world, punishes smokers, not bars, for breaches. Rather than bar-owners facing losing their licences for failing to stop patrons from smoking, it is the individual smoker who faces prosecution. This means hundreds of bars are allowing smoking to continue as normal.

(more…)

Big Tobacco still on the march, WHO warns

Big TobaccoFirst published: February 26, 2010

Source: Reuters

GENEVA (Reuters) – Governments must do more to protect workers in bars, restaurants and the entertainment sector from harmful smoke, and curb tobacco advertising and sponsorship, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Developing countries are the new frontier for tobacco companies, which often target women and girls, and smoking rates remain high among poor people in affluent countries, it said.

Tobacco kills more than 5 million people a year from cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and other chronic illnesses, including about 600,000 from second-hand smoke, according to the United Nations agency.

“Most alarming of all, tobacco use is actually increasing in many developing countries. If Big Tobacco is in retreat in some parts of the world, it is on the march in others,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, told a meeting to review implementation of a landmark tobacco treaty five years after it came into force.

(more…)

Public consultation (MLX 364): The regulation of nicotine containing products (NCPs)

tobacco productsSource: MHRA

This consultation seeks your views on whether to bring all nicotine containing products (NCPs) – with the exception of tobacco and tobacco products – within the medicines licensing regime. This would require all currently unlicensed NCPs on the market, such as electronic cigarettes containing nicotine and nicotine gels, to apply to the MHRA for a medicines Marketing Authorisation (MA).

The deadline for comments is 4 May 2010

(more…)

Explosive quotes from the “tobacco wars”

explosive!

Source: various; links in text

— Narrated by Walter Cronkite, three-part mini-series makes its North American premiere October 21-22, 1999 —
http://www.tobacco.org/News/9910tobaccowars.html

“It has been a shameful track record. I think it’s been one of deception, cover-up, misleading, intentionally misleading the public. And all in the name of profit.”
— Joseph Bumgarner
Former biochemist, RJ Reynolds Tobacco

“There’s no question what the objective of the other side of this debate is … trying to do. Their objective is to put us out of business.”
— Charles Blixt
Vice President and General Counsel,
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co.

“These are adults. They’ve made a choice and they want to smoke — increasingly, actually. You know, you see people, they just want to smoke.”
— Bob Bexon
Marketing Director, Brown & Williamson Tobacco

(more…)

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