Shanghai plans to make laws to expand smoking bans from the traditional public venues to all indoor workplaces, and then even focus on pedestrians who smoke on the street.
Zhang Liqiang, a representative from Shanghai Municipal Tobacco Control Office, announced that Shanghai is upgrading the government mandate on the smoking ban by creating a new law. Zhang says that new law will come out no later than the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
In 2007, Shanghai initiated no-smoking program and tobacco control was for the first time included into the municipal government's work report of 2008. In March, ten hospitals in Shanghai took took the lead by initiating a no-smoking initiative at their hospitals.
Shanghai's no-smoking law may cover strict criteria. For example, smoking sites with ventilation equipment may be set at indoor workplaces, and restaurants may be divided into smoking and non-smoking areas. Based on these processes, smoking will be gradually banned from all public places and indoor workplaces, and second-hand smoking will hopefully be diminished.
China is the largest tobacco production and consumption country in the world and it is also one of the countries that suffers the most from tobacco — about one million people in China die from tobacco-related illnesses.
