Beijing Smoking Ban Goes into Effect June 1

The Chinese capital of Beijing is set to ban smoking in all public spaces.

Bloomberg reports that the ban will go into effect June 1, after the law instituting the ban was approved in Nov. 2014. Many observers suspect that the Beijing law is a trial for a nationwide ban that could be enacted in the future.

Smoking is so deeply ingrained in China that the ability for the authorities to fully enforce the ban is questionable. In an example of just how pervasive smoking in China really is, it is polite to give someone you just met a cigarette, and rude should someone turn it down.

Roughly 4.2 million residents of Beijing are smokers, and most of them are males. That figure represents about 25 percent of the city's population. Beijingers consume an average of 14.6 million cigarettes a day.

In an effort to make sure the ban is enforced, the government has hired and trained thousands of smoking police. They will have the power to levy fines ranging from $32 for individual smokers, to $1,613 for businesses that violate the ban. The anti-smoking officials are employees of the Health and Family Planning Commission.

The government has even set up a hotline to report people who violate the new ban. The government is also encouraging people to turn in smokers violating the ban via social media.

Another component of the ban will be the outlawing of advertising of tobacco products on television, radio, billboards, public transportation, and print publications.

All of these efforts are meant to reduce the number of smokers in China more generally. More than half of the male population smokes regularly, and the country is home to 300 million smokers, the highest number in the world.