The Department of Health (DOH) will work with local authorities to provide more places for smokers to dispose of their cigarette butts in light of the recent indoor smoking ban, a spokesman said yesterday.
DOH Public Relations Office chief Wang Che-chao (王哲超) said it appeared that street cigarette bins were in higher demand now that smoking had been forbidden in restaurants and KTV parlors.
Under the ban, public establishments are not allowed to provide ashtrays for customers.
“In the past, smokers could take their cigarette butts into a restaurant to dispose of them, but now they have to find a place outside,” Wang said.
However, he said that the move to install more bins should not be seen as encouraging smoking, rather as a transitional step to help smokers adapt to the ban.
“In the future, as people start smoking less, the problem will ease,” he said.
He said that in addition to helping prevent littering, the cigarette bins would also serve as a reminder for smokers to put out their cigarettes before entering non-smoking areas, thus enhancing public awareness of the ban.
The ban took effect on Jan. 11. Over the past two months, however, there have been many complaints about an increase in cigarette butts outside non-smoking premises and about exposure to second-hand smoke.
Under the terms of the ban, smoking is not allowed on public transport or inside most public premises, such as roofed bus or train stations, KTV parlors, Internet cafes, comic-book stores and offices manned by three or more people.
Smoking in prohibited areas can result in fines of up to NT$10,000 for the offender and NT$50,000 for the owner of the establishment.
The new law requires that prominent “no smoking” signs be posted at the entrances of such establishments, with fines of up to NT$30,000 for owners who fail to comply.
Vendors are not allowed to sell cigarettes to persons under 18 years of age, display cigarettes on shelves that are accessible to consumers or place cigarettes in vending machines. Violators can be fined up to NT$50,000.
Cigarette advertisements and cigarette promotions are also banned, with the fines for violations set at a maximum of NT$500,000 for vendors, NT$25 million (US$737,000) for cigarette companies and NT$1 million for the advertising media.
In the first month after the ban took effect, 76 offenders were fined, including a betel nut vendor in Taichung City who received a NT$100,000 penalty for offering free cigarettes to customers.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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