A draft amendment to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法), scheduled to be sent to the Executive Yuan by the end of the month, is likely to allow the continued use of indoor smoking rooms in hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs, health officials said on Tuesday.
A draft revision to the act, released in January by the Health Promotion Administration (HPA), was originally set to ban smoking in all indoor locations, which it stated was in accordance with findings that indoor partitions do not effectively prevent second-hand smoke from spreading.
The HPA then said it would take 60 days to collect opinions from the public before finalizing the amendment and sending it to the Cabinet for review.
HPA Deputy Director-General Yu Li-hui (游麗惠) said the agency now plans to allow smoking lounges in some locations.
HPA official Lo Su-ying (羅素英) said the draft would not introduce a health surcharge on duty-free tobacco sold at airports as originally planned and would continue to allow smoking lounges in hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs.
The agency decided to keep the related clauses as the 43 hotels and restaurants who have smoking lounges have said the rooms serve smokers while enabling nonsmokers to avoid inhaling smoke.
The purpose of the amendment was to reduce the number of smokers under the age of 18 and regulate electronic cigarette use in the same way tobacco use is restricted, Lo said, adding that the act prohibits minors — those under the age of 18 — and pregnant women from smoking.
The amendment, as announced in January, would treat e-cigarettes the same way as tobacco and make it illegal to provide them to minors, with violators subject to a fine of up to NT$10,000.
The John Tung Foundation, which focuses on public health issues and tobacco control, said 47 nations and territories forbid smoking in indoor public facilities and accused the HPA of neglecting its responsibility to safeguard people’s health.
Smoking has been illegal on sidewalks near schools in Taipei since Dec. 26 last year and since Jan. 1. has also been prohibited at all of the city’s 932 bus stops.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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