Hong Kong smokers will now have to think twice before lighting up just anywhere in town. The Department of Health announced earlier last week that as of August 20, frontline inspectors from Hong Kong’s Tobacco and Alcohol Control Office (TACO) will be equipped with video cameras worn on their bodies (colloquially called body cams) in a push to enforce the city’s growing restrictions on smoking in statutory no-smoking areas.
In the government’s increased strategy to safeguard public health and safety, reduce second-hand smoke hazard, and deter smoking violations, the body cams will be used ‘as necessary, based on actual needs and circumstances’, according to an official government press release. Inspectors are also supposed to, ‘where reasonably practicable’, inform individuals of the device before they begin recording a situation for evidence collection, but it’s unclear what constitutes ‘reasonably practicable’ circumstances (and whether smokers should be expecting a heads-up from inspectors from, say, across the street before the light on the body-cam starts blinking red and recording).
Hong Kong is actively clamping down on smoking as part of an ongoing anti-smoking drive, with a possession and usage ban on e-cigarettes and vapes proposed for April 2026 to expand on the prohibition of the import, manufacture, and sale of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. New enforcement strategies introduced in 2023, such as the deployment of plain-clothes inspectors and longer surveillance periods of statutory no-smoking areas, have led to an increase of fixed penalty notices issued for illegal smoking, rising from 6,296 in 2022 to 10,261 in 2023 and 13,488 in 2024.
If you get caught smoking in a statutory no-smoking area by a patrolling inspector, expect to get slapped with a $1,500 fixed penalty for your troubles – which you’ll need to pay off within 21 days or risk facing an even greater penalty. Statutory no-smoking areas in Hong Kong include all public indoor premises, as well as public transport facilities. Smoking is also prohibited in certain outdoor public areas, including but not limited to escalators, public pleasure grounds and parks, bathing beaches, as well as places like educational establishments and healthcare facilities.
Maybe this news will be all the incentive you need to finally kick the habit.
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