Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    OPERATORS of more than 200 entertainment and leisure businesses joined hundreds of Shenzhen’s tobacco control workers at a ceremony Saturday to vow they will implement the city’s smoking ban that was extended to all indoor public areas yesterday.

    “On behalf of Shenzhen’s 2,000-odd entertainment and leisure businesses, I’m here to pledge that we will actively stop smoking in our places to keep them free of smoking,” Yang Junzhong, chief of Shenzhen’s association of entertainment and leisure businesses, announced at the ceremony overseen by officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the city.

    “We have seen all around the world that strong enforcement of a [tobacco control] law is extremely important,” Bernhard Schwartlander, WHO’s China representative, told reporters after the ceremony. “I’m very happy to see that the association of the industry of bars and restaurants was here to clearly pledge they will adhere strictly to this law.”

    Schwartlander, on behalf of WHO, wrote a public letter of congratulations to Shenzhen on Friday, saying Shenzhen’s smoke-free law is a model law, fully compliant with international standards.

    “Shenzhen has given the people of the city the most precious New Year gift it could possibly give — the gift of clean indoor air, of health, and of life,” said Schwartlander. “I cannot think of a better way to start the new year of 2017.”

    Law enforcers will conduct frequent spot checks on the newly included venues over the next three months, resorting mainly to education during the initial month and to punishment during the following two months, the city’s health commission said.

    Anticipating difficulties in implementing the ban, the association’s Yang said that he estimates it will take at least five years for all the bars, KTV clubs and massage parlors in the city to become totally smoke-free.

    “A large proportion of the visitors to these venues are smokers and even the owners themselves are smokers,” he said. “The ban will certainly bite into the businesses’ revenues.”

    But Yang, once a heavy smoker of 18 years, said that it’s a fight they will win sooner or later. “We’ve talked to all of the owners of the more than 2,000 entertainment businesses and the enforcement will be strict and fair,” he said. “My experience of quitting smoking told me it’s a battle worth the fight.”

    Since the partial smoking ban took effect March 1, 2014, Shenzhen had fined 36,700 individual smokers, totaling roughly 1.84 million yuan (US$265,015), as well as eight venues totaling 210,000 yuan as of Nov. 30, according to figures released by the city’s tobacco control association Saturday.