Macau casinos allowed smoking!

Macau is the gambling capital of China. In other provinces and cities of the state, casinos and gambling halls are prohibited, and their opening is strictly prosecuted. Today Macau is a very serious competitor to Las Vegas. Here operates the largest casino in the world, and the total number of gambling establishments is several dozen.

There's some fresh news from Macau, from which it was learned that in the first four months of 2019, the provincial Ministry of Health has approved the authorization of smoking in special rooms in more than 30 casinos. The total number of such rooms amounted to about 550 pieces. The Macau Ministry of Health received requests from casino owners to open nearly 600 rooms back in 2018. Previously, the country's laws banned smoking in all indoor venues in Macau. This caused serious discontent among both casino owners and visitors.

Every year, the Ministry's staff issued a huge number of fines worth millions of yuan for smoking in unauthorized places. More than 80% of those fined were tourists. Chinese citizens were fined much less frequently. This caused serious dissatisfaction not only with the visiting gamblers, but also the provincial government, which began to fear the outflow of those wishing to play in Macau casinos.

Moreover, all the locals remember well an incident that happened not long ago. The Macau police were forced to fire several warning shots into the air after mainland Chinese residents did not want to obey the rules prohibiting smoking. They caused a serious scandal, which clearly does not correlate with the policy of attracting tourists to the gambling zone.

Now the situation in this area should somewhat normalize, as most casino owners hurried to equip special smoking rooms and have already received permission to open them. The provincial authorities can now not fear that such a "small thing" as smoking will become a reason for some tourists to refuse to visit Macau.