Beijing’s Smoking Ban, One Year On
By staff reporter GONG HAN【期刊名称】今日中国：英文版【年(卷),期】2016(000)011【总页数】3
【关键词】英语;阅读;理解;吸烟禁令
HUGE “No Smoking” signs were put up on the Bird’s Nest, the National Stadium of Beijing, on June 1, 2015, marking the start of the city’s toughest ever smoking ban in public places, including all indoor public areas and workplaces, public transport, and a number of outdoor areas. The fne for individuals is up to RMB 200 and for owners of establishments that allow indoor smoking, up to RMB 10,000.
Despite its early joining of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), so far China has still not issued any national smoking control regulations. Therefore, as the city that introduced the strictest smoking ban in the country, one year after the rule was put in place, Beijing has drawn lots of attention on the results of its smoking controls.Big Progress
“With a tobacco history of more than 400 years, China has over 300 million smokers, which has not helped promote the notion that smoking is harmful to health. So, to totally rule out indoor smoking in light of the regulation demands a process,” said Wu Yiqun, a founder of the ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development, an antismoking group in Beijing.
So far, 18 Chinese cities have formulated local anti-smoking regulations, and the ban in Beijing is the toughest, but also the closest to the requirements set by the WHO FCTC.“Because of the regulations, whenever you come across someone smoking in a
restaurant, you have a basis to claim your right to a smoke-free environment,” remarked Wu, who went on to explain that both workers and patrons of the restaurant would be restricted by the rule. “This is a change. If there were no regulation at all, change would not have occurred automatically,” Wu said.
Official data showed that in 2015 there were 4.19 million smokers in Beijing, accounting for
Beijing's Smoking Ban,One Year On
