Macau’s Legislative Assembly on Friday approved a revised bill on tobacco smoking that will require the ‘very-important-people’ areas of the city’s more than 30 gambling establishments to set up smoking lounges, according to a story in World Casino News quoting the GGRAsia news agency.
The background to the story is that, in October 2014, the government of Macau banned smoking on ‘mass-market’ casino floors as part of regulations that provided for the establishment of fully-enclosed and games-free smoking lounges.
These smoking restrictions did not apply to those parts of gambling establishments that were reserved for so-called ‘very important people’.
But Macau’s newly amended Regime on Tobacco Prevention and Control, which, it was reported, is due to come into effect on January 1, is said to give the city’s casinos one year to install smoking lounges, absent of gaming facilities, in their very-important-people areas.
Under the regulations, all the smoking lounges in the city’s casinos will be required to conform to enhanced technical standards, which will be determined by the government in a separate executive order.
The news agency reported Macau Health Bureau data as having indicated that, in the first half of 2017, 328 people had been fined for smoking in unauthorized areas inside Macau’s casinos.
Of those fined, 83.5 percent were reportedly tourists.