After decades of campaigns to enforce indoor smoking bans, Shanghai is now moving to try and stop residents lighting up in outdoor public spaces as part of a wider effort to turn the city into a smoke-free environment.

Nine municipal-level authorities jointly released new guidelines for controlling smoking in outdoor spaces Wednesday, which specify the anti-smoking measures that a variety of different public venues should adopt.

Tourist sites, restaurants, and bars across the city will be required to add anti-smoking signs to waiting areas and train staff to discourage people from smoking, according to the document.

Metro stations must also install “no smoking” signs outside all entrances, train staff to discourage smoking, and tighten supervision of public areas to ensure passengers obey the rules.

The authorities said they will also step up their inspections of outdoor public spaces and recruit a team of anti-smoking volunteers to enforce the guidelines.

Shanghai’s anti-smoking regulations prohibit smoking in outdoor areas inside certain venues frequented by large crowds, including schools, hospitals, and stadiums.

However, many other venues are not covered by the ban, and it’s unclear exactly what punishments will be meted out to smokers who defy the new campaign. The guidelines mostly stress that venues should “dissuade” people from smoking.

Shanghai has gone further than most other parts of China in its efforts to curtail smoking, and it is one of very few mainland cities where the smoking rate has dropped below 20%.

The metropolis has a three-step action plan to turn the city into a smoke-free environment, which begins with wiping out indoor smoking, followed by restricting smoking in outdoor public spaces, and ultimately aims to confine smoking to a few designated areas.

Smoking remains a serious problem in China, which is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco. China has more than 300 million smokers, and more than 1 million die from diseases caused by smoking every year.

The Chinese government has set a target of reducing the smoking rate among adults to 20% by 2030, but experts say the country would need to enact major policy changes to achieve this goal.

There appears to be strong public support for a clampdown on smoking in public spaces in Shanghai. In a recent survey by the city’s health regulators, respondents complained bitterly about people smoking while walking along busy streets in particular.

Nearly 60% of the 10,000 respondents said they were constantly exposed to second-hand smoke in the street, and over 90% said they detested the behavior.

According to the survey, the top five outdoor areas where people are most likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke in Shanghai are outdoor waiting areas, sidewalks and crosswalks, public parks, bus stops, and the entrances to major commercial buildings.

Jiang Yuan, deputy director at the state-backed ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development, told Sixth Tone that the new guidelines represented a step forward for the country’s anti-smoking efforts.

“Shanghai has started to curb outdoor smoking. This sets a good example for other cities in the country, given that second-hand smoking is a nationwide issue,” she said.

But Jiang suggested that Shanghai should go even further by introducing harsher penalties for smokers who violate the new rules. Currently, the campaign is focusing simply on raising awareness, according to a commentary by Shanghai-based media outlet The Paper.

“Past experience suggests that warnings alone may not produce an ideal outcome,” Jiang said. “This is something future policy changes could improve on.”

Chen Shuxing, an office worker from the southwestern city of Chongqing, is one of many young Chinese who is fed up with continually being subjected to others’ smoke.

“My day typically starts with second-hand smoke,” she complained. “If I were to vlog my day, it would be filled with scenes of people smoking in the corridors of my building, in elevators, on the streets, and even in the office.”

Chen said she once confronted an elderly man who was smoking in a neighborhood park where more than a dozen children were playing. To her frustration, the man responded that it was not against the law to smoke there.

While she wished that legal intervention wasn’t necessary to prevent people from smoking in children’s parks, Chen said she hoped that Chongqing would introduce Shanghai-style guidelines banning smoking in outdoor spaces to prevent similar situations happening in the future.

(Header image: VCG)