Social awareness of smoking bans in public places has improved in the past year but some amusement parlors still needed to be improved, according to a recent check by Shanghai Huangpu District Health Bureau ahead of Saturday's World No Tobacco Day.

From May 16 to 22, the health bureau conducted inspections in 39 public venues of the district covering amusement parlors, karaoke and dance halls, music cafes, stores, hospitals, schools, hotels and restaurants.

No working staff or sellers of cigarettes were found in smoking-ban areas. Conspicuous no-smoking signs have been erected in hospitals, karaoke and dance halls, and music cafes. Smoking bans were introduced to schools.

The inspection also covered 23 stores in smoke-controlled areas on Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall. The result shows that public halls of these stores had achieved zero-smoking.

The city government has implemented a program to turn the commercial street into a smoke-free zone before Shanghai Expo in 2010. Twenty-three stores on the street from Xizhang Road N. and Zhejiang Road M. have been selected as test venues.

"It is not difficult to establish non-smoking areas in high-grade stores of downtown areas, but it is hard to promote the work in some chess rooms and dance halls," said Xu Min of the bureau. The bureau fined two and warned eight amusement parlors about thick smoke in the rooms. They encouraged them to intervene if anyone lit up.

Amusement venues often charge low fees and are afraid of losing customers angry at the smoking-ban as their patrons are usually laid-off workers or newly-retired who are heavy smokers.

"The city law has not achieved smoking bans in all public places. It depends on people's notion and virtues to not let others intake passive smoke," he added.

To cultivate the non-smoking ideas, the bureau put lots of emphasis on intervention and education of minors.

(Shanghai Daily May 29, 2008)