GGRAsia – Close to 200 fined for smoking inside Macau casinos

Close to 200 fined for smoking inside Macau casinos

Jul 10, 2014 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

A total of 198 people were fined for smoking inside Macau casinos on non-smoking areas during the first six months of 2014, the city’s Health Bureau said in a statement.

The bureau, in partnership with Macau’s gaming regulator, conducted a total of 227 inspections to the city’s casinos during the first half of the year.

Among those fined, 78.8 percent were visitors, while the remaining were Macau residents, the bureau said.

The large majority of offenders – 94.9 percent – were male.

Current regulations – in place since January 2013 – allow casino operators to set up smoking zones on their casinos comprising up to 50 percent of the gaming floor space. But new regulations announced earlier this year state that all mass-market casino floors in Macau must go smoke-free from October 6.

While operators will be allowed to build enclosed smoking lounges on their mass-market floors – without any gaming tables or slot machines inside – smoking in the open while on casino premises will only be allowed in private areas. Those places must be of “limited access to specific games and gamblers”, the city’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau said in an instruction issued earlier this month. That is understood to be for VIP and certain premium mass gaming areas.