Angela Leong: Macau’s smoking control policy “ambiguous”

Legislator and executive director of casino operator SJM Holdings Ltd. Angela Leong On Kei estimates that the industry has spent more than MOP2 billion in modifying their air purifying facilities and ventilation systems in order to comply with local smoking regulations whilst the government has been “ambiguous” in its tobacco control policy.
The city’s Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Alexis Tam Chon Weng, mentioned in late January that the government proposed delivering an amended proposal to the Regime for Prevention and Control of Tobacco Use within the first half of this year, whereby a proposed rule to enforce a universal smoking ban in casinos is included.
“If the government had implemented a full smoking ban in casinos in the very beginning, then a lot of resources and effort [to comply with smoking control policy] would have been saved,” Ms. Leong said during the Macau Forum programme of public broadcaster TDM Chinese Radio on Friday.
Having expressed support on several occasions for a full smoking ban in casinos in Legislative Assembly sessions before, Ms. Leong argued on Friday that smoking lounges should be allowed to be retained in casino properties while having a full smoking ban in effect.
Macau’s first tobacco control regime, known as law no.5/2011, was put into effect on January 1, 2012 in which smoking was banned in all indoor public spaces, with the exception of casinos which were given a one-year grace period to ensure at least half the space on their gaming floors were smoke free.
On January 1, 2013, a partial smoking ban in casinos here was put into effect. Casinos that have applied for smoking areas – permitted up to fifty per cent of casino floor space – were required to submit a monthly air quality report to the Health Bureau. Throughout the year, not all operators could pass the government’s air quality test, and in the final month of the year the government said it had received suggestions from the city’s six gaming operators to instal smoking rooms inside casinos, instead of smoking areas that take up half their gaming floors.
The setting up of smoking lounges was in compliance with a new smoking ban rule that came into force on October 6 last year, whereby smoking was only allowed on the main floors of casinos in enclosed smoking rooms that did not contain any gaming facilities. But smoking is still allowed in VIP rooms.
However, the Social Affairs Secretary, Alexis Tam, has said that the government might not adopt the suggestion of retaining “airport-style” smoking lounges inside casinos in order not to compromise the air quality on gaming floors.
The Federation of Trade Unions, an influential local labour group that has been adamant in proposing a full smoking ban in casinos, told Business Daily that gaming workers did not really oppose the setting up of smoking lounges in casinos.
“The gaming employees don’t really oppose the setting up of smoking lounges. In fact, those [on the mass floors] welcome gamblers smoking in the lounge, while the employees working in VIP rooms also want to have a lounge in place nearby where they work,” union member and legislator Ella Lei Cheng I remarked to us.
“It all depends on whether the companies have good ventilation installed in place near the gaming tables the employees are working at, or whether these tables are placed too near the smoking lounges where the air quality is bound to be a bit worse,” Ms. Lei said. “The government also ought to release more statistics about how the air quality has been in the spaces near these smoking lounges.”