Support for smoking ban at all eateries

I read your front page articles on smoking ban dated 3 January 2019 with great interest.

While I have relatives and friends who smoke, I feel there is outweighing reason that the smoking ban should be favoured.

Before the rationales are given, I should qualify that the smoking ban is neither a total nor a blanket ban for smokers to lit their cigarettes.

Smokers can still light up wherever they like, e.g. inside their cars, or across the roads, or some metres away from coffee shops and eateries. There is no strong rationale for one to insist he or she must smoke inside a coffeeshop or eatery.

Most customers at coffeeshops or eateries are non-smokers. That is why most air-conditioned restaurants in Kota Kinabalu have more customers prefer to sit inside than at the tables outside.

Moreover, families are nowadays more aware of the dangers of secondary smoke. Some families are not going to certain coffeeshops because the exposure to smoke is great. When families do come, they come in groups and eat a lot, and that is good for business.

Hong Kong has phenomenal record of visitors, particularly those from mainland China. Their anti-smoking rules are much more stringent.

This includes anyone carrying a lit tobacco product in a statutory no smoking areas would be deemed to have committed an offence and liable to a hefty fine.

The stringent smoking ban has not affected the hordes of tourists from mainland China. Similarly, the mainland China tourists have no problems too visiting other countries with the ban, like the United Kingdom and other European countries. They still spend tonnes of monies there. By the way, most of the mainland China tourists are nonsmokers, except for some of their “macho” men.

The adverse effect on smokers and secondary smokers is well-known. Very often, an issue that is normally overlooked is who is going to fork out the bills for treating cancer, smoking-related diseases and healthdeterioration.

The public bills for these are likely to outweigh income from tourism, if not negated.

LT Tsen