Since January last year and up until Tuesday, a total of 8,913 people had been fined for breaking the city’s smoking ban, the Health Bureau said yesterday. The figure includes both the full smoking ban in public areas and the partial smoking ban inside casinos. The Health Bureau didn’t provide independent data for the fines only related to the partial ban on smoking inside casinos. At the beginning of this month, a partial ban on smoking in casinos was implemented. But operators can still designate up to half of their gaming floors as smoking areas. In contrast, smoking is not allowed anywhere in restaurants and cafes, where a full ban on smoking was enacted one year earlier, in January 2012.
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