The joy of breathing free and clean, well, sort of.
This week, Taiwan’s new Tobacco Hazard Prevention and Control Act went into effect and while many of us who are non-smokers welcome the efforts, it’s not quite as clearcut as some would like. Many businesses are confused as to what they should or shouldn’t be doing and some patrons are just disobeying out of habit.
A few folks have mistakenly compared the new ban to prohibition . . . these are different monkeys. Smoking bans in the workplace have already been shown to be linked to massive benefits to health of workers. One study in Colorado found extremely significant decline in heart ailments from one workplace ban (see for http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=826419&lang=eng details), not to mention the savings in household costs as well as public and private health costs. The fines for breaking the various bans in the new regulations can be high, despite most folks still being unclear as to what they really are (see http://www.chinapost.com.tw/health/other/2009/01/09/191218/Most-still.htm for some clarification).
There is now no legal indoor smoking in Taiwan as far as public businesses or workplaces go. If establishments have smoking areas, they are outside. We saw a lot of folks huddled near doorways the other day and the Starbucks Lorraine and I had coffee and hot chocolate at on Friday had a pretty strong stench of cigarettes blowing in from the folks at the tables by the doors.
A group of legislators on a bit of a Taipei tour of establishments found that quite a few folks did not have the NO SMOKING signs in the right places or large enough and that the managers of a number of establishments didn’t understand their legal obligations. See http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/01/10/2003433400 for some obvious examples of signage issues.
Things are slowly getting figured out and in the long run I believe that the ban will help folks . . . but I’m an uberliberal with an allergy to air pollution, so what would I know?
In any case, you can no longer smoke in enclosed public spaces here. You can only smoke in public spaces if it’s in a designated smoking area. Convenience stores may not publically display cigarettes but must keep them out of sight. While it’s been illegal for those under 18 to purchases tobacco products for some time, it is now also illiegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke.
It is now illegal to smoke in the presence of a child or around a woman who is pregnant.
There are a whole slew of new points to the new laws.
Or course, this means that more folks will be seeking to quit smoking. What’s one of the absolutely best ways to help a person quit smoking? Hypnosis. See a ton of posts in the hypnosis in the news section of the Life of Brian blog at https://briandavidphillips.net/ for more examples than you can shake a hypnostick at.
Folks in Taipei who wish to schedule hypnosis sessions to stop smoking should check our webpages at http://www.briandavidphillips.com and then contact us for an appointment. We offer English and bilingual Chinese-English sessions. For those who cannot schedule an appointment, we do have a Stop Smoking hypnosis audio CD set that can help you. See the CDs at http://www.briandavidphillips.net/store for details and to order a copy for yourself.
All the best,
Brian
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http://www.briandavidphillips.net/store
See http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com for details
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
