The number of non-smoking restaurants across the nation is slated to increase five-fold over the next year, an official with the Bureau of Health Promotion announced yesterday afternoon.
"Non-smoking restaurants are a global trend now. In Ireland and Australia, legislation prohibiting smoking in restaurants has already been passed," said Lin Shio-jean (
While restaurants in Taiwan are not required to prohibit smoking, Lin noted yesterday that restaurants of at least 200m2 are required to establish non-smoking areas. According to the Tobacco Hazards Act (菸害防制法), violators can be fined up to NT$30,000.
PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MIN, TAIPEI TIMES
"About 15 percent of the complaints that we receive on our hotline pertain to smoking at restaurants," Lin said.
According to a survey conducted recently by Taipei Medical University, 90 percent of the 2,900 people surveyed expressed support for government-mandated smoke-free restaurants.
Ninety-one percent of respondents said they would be willing to dine at smoke-free restaurants and 90 percent expressed satisfaction with the quality of the air at restaurants that are recognized by the Department of Health (DOH) as smoke-free.
A similar survey into the views of restaurant owners found that 88 percent did not believe that a smoke-free environment would drive consumers away.
The survey received responses from 450 restaurants around the nation.
While only 770 restaurants are now registered with the DOH as smoke-free, the Bureau of Health Promotion plans to expedite establishing such restaurants by setting a goal of 5,000 by the end of this year.
"In general, Taipei has the best environment for smoke-free restaurants. The program for smoke-free restaurants began earlier in Taipei City, four years ago, and there are more restaurants in the city overall," Lin said.
"Right now, what we need to do is educate consumers so that they don't feel that they have to put up with second-hand smoke when they dine out," Lin said.
In order to promote smoke-free restaurants, the bureau is sponsoring a raffle in which 90 contestants a month who recommend a favorite smoke-free restaurant at http://health99.doh.gov.tw will be eligible for gift certificates to smoke-free restaurants.
In addition, the bureau will offer subsidies for advertising and opportunities for coverage in gourmet magazines to restaurants that register with the DOH as smoke-free.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: