Tag: macau

  • Macau Mulls More E-Cig Restrictions

    Macau Mulls More E-Cig Restrictions

    Photo: javarman

    Macau’s executive council wants to ban the production, sale, distribution, import, export and transport of vapor products in the special administrative region (SAR), reports Macau Business. 

    Under changes proposed to the tobacco control law, violators would risk fines of MOP4,000 ($500).

    The current law defines an e-cigarette as any product, or component thereof, that can be used to inhale vapor, with or without nicotine, by means of a mouthpiece, including a cartridge, a reservoir, as well as the device without a cartridge or reservoir. 

    The sale of electronic cigarettes in the city has been restricted since 2017; the recently proposed amendment expands the scope of the restrictions. 

    Still, Health Bureau Director Alvis Lo said the measure was intended to protect public health. “The use of electronic cigarettes is harmful to health, namely, it causes harmful effects to pregnant women, children and adolescents, and also exposing non-smokers to nicotine and other harmful chemicals,” Lo said.

    Following years of antismoking campaigns, consumption of traditional cigarettes among people over the age of 15 in Macau dropped to 10.7 percent in 2019.

  • New rules of street-cred

    New rules of street-cred

    A Macau lawmaker Ella Lei has urged the Government to ban smoking in the city’s main streets, according to a story in The Macau Daily Times.

    In a written question to the Government, Lei asked the whether it ‘will consider, in the future, to expand the smoking ban to densely populated outdoor spaces’.

    Lei asked if streets near schools, kindergartens and public parks could be made into non-smoking areas.

    She asked also whether the government would establish non-smoking streets in some areas.

    ‘It has become a global trend to expand smoking bans to outdoor public places, especially where children are present,’ Lei wrote.

  • Targeting tourists

    Targeting tourists

    Macau lawmaker Lam Lon Wai has asked the Government to ensure the safety of tobacco control officers following an incident last week in which a police officer fired a warning gunshot when assaulted by allegedly unruly smokers outside the Galaxy Macau casino resort, according to a story in The Macau Daily Times.

    As part of his request, Lam noted that tobacco control officers had to deal with attacks and insults during their law enforcement duties.

    But the Galaxy Macau incident reflected an increased challenge for tobacco control officers and police officers who are responsible for enforcing the law.

    Lam said the police authority, the Health Bureau (SSM) the Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau (DICJ) and gaming operators needed to set up additional support to guarantee the safety of tobacco control officers working on the frontline.

    He asked the Government what measures were employed by the police authority, the SSM, and the DICJ to ensure the officers’ safety.

    Citing SSM statistics on the number of prosecutions for illegal smoking, Lam said that about 70 percent of illicit smokers were tourists.

    This meant, according to Lam, that tourists should be the main target of tobacco control campaigns; so he asked the Government to reveal the details of the new tobacco control law’s promotional campaign to tourists.

  • Healthy gambling

    Healthy gambling

    Under a revised law that came into effect on Tuesday, all smoking lounges in Macau casinos must conform to enhanced technical standards and be approved by the authorities, according to a story in GGRAsia, a website and newsletter about the Asian sector of the casino industry.

    The city’s Health Bureau said that, as of yesterday, it had received 498 requests for installing the new higher-standard lounges, which are said to have better air extraction equipment than was required under the previous regulatory regime.

    And it said that, as of Monday, it had given permission for the installation of 378 of the new-style smoking lounges.

    Also as of Monday, 13 gaming venues had made no request for new-style smoking lounges.

    Meanwhile, a December report on the casino sector outlook for Macau by brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein said the new smoking rules, which include a ban on tableside smoking in VIP gambling rooms, were ‘likely a headwind for the industry’. But the report’s authors added that any negative impact from the smoking ban would ‘likely be temporary’.

    Macau’s Legislative Assembly passed on July 14, 2017, a revised bill on smoking that banned tableside tobacco use in VIP rooms, which, up till then were the only places in Macau casinos where smoking was still allowed at gaming tables.

    Although the new rules came into force on January 1, 2018, tableside smoking at VIP rooms was in effect permitted until January 1, 2019, because casinos had been given a year’s grace in which to set up smoking lounges for VIP players.

    On the first two days of the new law being in effect, Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau and the city’s Health Bureau jointly announced that 14 charges had been filed in relation to people smoking outside authorized areas in the city’s casinos. Nine charges related to visitors and five charges were against locals.

    The Tobacco Prevention and Control Office additionally received 23 complaints about smoking in casinos, via the city’s anti-smoking hotline.

  • Gambling on smoking

    Gambling on smoking

    A Macau Health Bureau (MHB) investigation conducted between 2015 and 2017 has revealed that tobacco consumption in the city decreased by 12.2 percent among those aged over 15, according to a story in The Macau Business.
    There was no indication of the consumption levels in 2015 and 2017, but the story indicated that the current incidences of tobacco consumption among males and females stood at 23.2 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.
    The MHB indicated that the government intended to strengthen the promotion of non-smoking through ‘timely increases in tobacco taxes’ to bring them closer to those recommended by the World Health Organization.
    In 2015, the Macau government increased cigarette taxes to MOP1.5 per unit, which meant that taxes increased from 33 percent to 70 percent of the retail price.
    At the same time, it reduced the number of cigarettes that a person could bring into Macau from 100 to 19.
    Meanwhile, from the beginning of January, the city has enforced a revised version of legislation brought in in 2011. The revised rules ban advertising and tobacco promotions, and prohibit smoking in enclosed public spaces and within 10 meters of bus stop signs and taxi stands. Fines for smoking in the banned areas have been increased from MOP600 to MOP1,500.
    The MHB said that the number of fines handed out for smoking infractions during January, at 510, were down by 20.4 percent on those handed out during January 2017. Almost 64 percent of the fines were handed to tourists.
    Some 71 inspections conducted in casinos by the MHB and the Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau resulted in 108 infractions being discovered in January, 284 percent more than in the same month of last year.

  • Macau creates gray area

    Macau creates gray area

    Starting from January, tobacco smoking is to be banned within 10 meters of Macau’s bus stops, according to a story in The Macau Daily Times.

    The Health Bureau (SSM) director, Lei Chin Ion, said the SSM would co-ordinate with the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) to delineate the boundaries of non-smoking areas.

    According to Lei, the border will be marked with a gray line to make it easy for the public and law enforcement officers to identify the tobacco-free areas.

    ‘Related work’ is said to have started already and is due to be completed before the end of the year.

    Asked whether a person passing a bus stop while smoking would be performing an illegal act, Lei said that such a person should put out their cigarette before entering a smoke-free zone. Currently, he said, people were unable to avoid second-hand smoke.

    At the same time, Lei admitted that smoking was not a crime and that it was difficult to put an end to it. The government could only try its best to control smoking through public education and enhanced law enforcement.

    According to the SSM, in most of the world, law enforcement can reduce the use of tobacco by only about 20 percent. The remaining 80 percent mainly stems from publicity and education.

    The SSM said that it would continue to conduct anti-smoking inspections.

    In addition, the bureau said that some tobacco-control associations would use Facebook and WeChat, along with other new media sources, to collect the public’s reports of cases of illegal smoking.

  • Casino risk lottery ending

    Casino risk lottery ending

    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.

  • Gambling on smoking

    roulette photoMacau’s Health Bureau announced yesterday a proposal to retain smoking lounges in the city’s casinos and therefore drop a previous plan to implement a zero-smoking regime inside these venues, according to a GGRAsia story.

    The bureau’s deputy director, Cheang Seng Ip, said, however, that the new proposal would include higher technical requirements for smoking lounges.

    Additionally, smoking at VIP gambling tables would be banned under the proposed new regime. And VIP smoking lounges could not be established as a right of the casino operators, who would need to apply to the government for permission, just as they currently do for smoking lounges on the main floors of casinos.

    A number of investment analysts have said that in markets where casino smoking has been banned completely, casino revenues subsequently dipped.

    The bureau’s announcement came two days after the public release of results from a survey commissioned from the University of Macau by the city’s six casino operators. The survey indicated more than half of respondents supported the retention of smoking lounges on the main floors of casinos.

    The new technical requirements for smoking lounges now proposed by the bureau echo those included in a proposal on that topic by the six operators, who suggested that the lounge specifications were publicly disclosed on Monday along with the results of the opinion survey.

    Smoking on the main floors of casinos in Macau is currently only allowed in airport-style enclosed smoking lounges that do not contain any gaming tables or slot machines, but having a cigarette while gambling is allowed in VIP rooms.