[Intl-tobacco] Thai Govt. Vows to Enforce Smoking Ban

[Robert Weissman]

Govt vows to enforce smoking ban - The Nation
December 17, 2003

Napanisa Kaewmorakot

The Public Health Ministry said yesterday that it would strictly enforce
a smoking
ban in schools, government offices, hospitals and clinics, department
stores and
all restaurants. Dr Narong Sahamethaphat, deputy director-general of the Disease
Control Department, said the enforcement campaign would be carried out
after a
Public Health Ministry-sanctioned survey found the public overwhelmingly supported
a smoking ban in air-conditioned restaurants.

Smoking in schools, government offices, hospitals and clinics,
department stores
and restaurants is already banned, but the ministry has previously only
concentrated on enforcing the ban in air-conditioned restaurants. The Assumption
University survey, carried out a year after the ministry began enforcing the
smoking ban in restaurants and presented at a seminar yesterday, found
86.9 per
cent of the 1,625 customers and 832 restaurant workers it polled
supported the
smoking ban in air-conditioned restaurants.

University official Thewin Khoniewklang said that most respondents said conditions
inside restaurants had improved markedly since the ban was enforced. A
majority of
those polled said they now enjoyed going to restaurants more, he added.
Thewin said
the survey also found that 39.1 per cent of smokers admitted violating
the ban
during the past three months, while only 21.5 per cent of this group
said they were
warned by restaurant staff to stop smoking.

Narong said violations of smoking bans in schools, government offices, department
stores, restaurants, and hospitals and clinics still existed. It is the ministry's
goal to end those violations, he added. Narong said the new enforcement campaign
would first be carried out through pilot projects in Bangkok and 12 provinces,
including Samut Prakan, Chon Buri, Nakhon Ratchasima and Songkhla. He
said the
ministry would require targeted venues to prominently display no-smoking signs.

Prof Dr Prakit Watheesathokkij, secretary-general of the Anti-Smoking Campaign
Foundation, said the ministry should continue to focus on air-conditioned
restaurants until it had a 100-per-cent enforcement record before
launching a new
campaign. The survey showed the ban is still being violated at air-conditioned
restaurants and that many restaurants had yet to put up no-smoking
signs, he said.

Prakit said he discovered US-based tobacco giant Philip Morris planned
to lobby the
government against extending the smoking ban by hiring scientists who
would claim
second-hand smoke was not dangerous. Philip Morris has hired researchers
in Asia,
including Thailand, to carry out tests to back up its argument.

But Dr Gregory Connolly of the Massachusetts Department of Health in the
US told
the seminar that research conducted by his department found that
second-hand smoke
affected the health of restaurant workers. He said restaurant workers
subjected to
second-hand smoke had toxin levels in their blood six times higher than
staff at
non-smoking restaurants. Seventy per cent of Boston residents supported
the smoking
ban in restaurants, he added.