Macau casinos can keep smoking lounges, lose VIP exemption

Macau casino operators won a partial victory last week after legislators announced they were abandoning plans to push for a total indoor smoking ban.

Last Thursday, Macau’s Health Bureau announced that the government had decided not to force casino operators to dismantle the designated smoking lounges they’d constructed after the government banned smoking on the casinos’ main gaming floors in October 2014.

Casino operators had previously submitted their own proposals for ways to improve the technical standards of these lounges, including negative pressure mechanisms to ensure smoke doesn’t leak out into the main gaming floor and separate ventilation systems to vent the smoke outside the building.

The Heath Bureau said its preliminary analysis of these proposals indicated that they were “feasible” but that the government would soon issue “higher and stricter” technical standards than those proposed by the operators.