According to the Health Bureau, last year there was a significant increase in inspections but the number of prosecutions dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Macau.- The Health Bureau reported a 19.8% decrease in the number of illegal smoking prosecutions in Macau\u2019s casinos in 2019, a year that marked a significant increase in inspections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the institution, there were 1,187 joint inspections of casinos alongside the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau in 2019 \u2013 up 38.2% on 2018 numbers \u2013 but prosecutions for illegal smoking fell by 339 cases to 1,375.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While casinos remained the most common place for illegal smoking to take place, comprising 25.8% of all prosecutions for the year, the installation of additional designated smoking rooms is thought to be behind the fall in prosecution numbers. According to the Health Bureau, as of 31 December 2019 there had been a total of 677 applications for smoking rooms received from 35 casinos, with 642 rooms in 34 casinos now in operation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Macau introduced its New Tobacco Control Act on 1 January 2019, extending the city\u2019s non-smoking areas to include a ban on smoking in the VIP areas of casinos, with smoking now only allowed inside specially ventilated smoking rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Casino prosecutions were predominantly of men (1,289 or 93.7%), while 83.1% were foreign tourists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the Health Bureau, last year there was a significant increase in inspections but the number of prosecutions dropped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Macau's Health Bureau reported a 19.8% decrease in illegal smoking prosecutions within casinos in 2019, despite a 38.2% increase in joint inspections with the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau. This reduction is attributed to the widespread installation of designated smoking rooms following the New Tobacco Control Act implemented on January 1, 2019, which extended smoking bans to VIP areas.","focusai_entities":"Health Bureau, Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau","focusai_location":"Macau","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.8), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), investor_analyst (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Impact on VIP GGR?","query":"What is the observed or projected impact of the New Tobacco Control Act and the designated smoking room implementation on VIP Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) and player visitation trends in Macau casinos?"},{"label":"Future Regulatory Adjustments?","query":"Given the reported decrease in prosecutions, what are the Health Bureau's and Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau's plans for future regulatory adjustments or enforcement strategies regarding tobacco control in Macau's gaming verticals?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,16338,154],"tags":[29,4503,257],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-east-asia-news","category-legislation-news","tag-casino","tag-legal","tag-macau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions\/2092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}