Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    SHENZHEN’S smoking ban, which was put in place March 1, 2014, will be expanded to all indoor areas including bars, KTV clubs, tea houses, and massage and bath parlors starting Sunday when a more-than-two-year grace period for these entertainment and leisure venues ends.

    In the coming three months, law enforcers will conduct frequent spot checks on these newly included venues to pressure them into implementing the ban, said Zhuang Runsen, deputy head of the Shenzhen Tobacco Control Association.

    “These venues were most plagued with smoking among all types of indoor places, and that’s why we gave them a grace period,” said Zhuang. “A high proportion of visitors to these venues are smokers and we knew we’d be fighting an uphill battle.”

    Shenzhen’s smoking ban, said to be the harshest of its kind in China, stipulates fines between 50 yuan (US$7.2) and 500 yuan for individual violators and up to 30,000 yuan for operators of nonsmoking venues who fail to comply with the ban.

    The city had fined nearly 30,000 individual smokers, totaling roughly 1.5 million yuan, as well as several venue operators by the end of June. However, raids and surveys showed that the ban had been largely ineffective.

    The city’s center for chronic disease control and prevention said in May that its latest citywide investigation found a rise in public smoking, with Internet bars retaining the highest rate of smoking.

    Smoking was found in more than 75 percent of Internet bars or game centers, compared with 51 percent in late 2014. Fewer residents are satisfied with the city’s smoking ban. Only 49 percent of respondents to the center’s survey said that the smoking ban was effective, compared with 68 percent in late 2014.

    “It is the result of inadequate law enforcement,” said Zhuang. “Cooperation between different law enforcement agencies needs to be improved.”

    The city’s health commission is leading the ban’s implementation with help from other government departments, including urban management, market supervision, police and transportation.

    Roughly 23 percent of Shenzhen residents above the age of 15 smoke, compared with 18.3 percent in 2014, a latest survey by the tobacco control association showed. More than 6 million Shenzhen residents are secondhand smokers, the survey found.

    Residents can call 12345 or use WeChat to report smokers in nonsmoking places and operators who fail to implement the law.