PUTRAJAYA, Feb 3 — Public and national parks in the country have been gazetted as no-smoking zones effective Feb 1 (2017), said Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said the inclusion of public and national parks was aimed at protecting non-smokers from the dangers of inhaling second hand smoke.

The move, he said, was also in line with Article 8 of the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control of which Malaysia had been a signatory from 2005.

"This expansion of no-smoking zones is aimed at curbing smoking in public places so that the smoking culture is not accepted by society,” he said in a statement here today.

According to him, under the Control of Tobacco Product (Amendment) Regulations 2017, public parks throughout the country, parks gazetted as national parks under the National Parks Act 1980 and equivalent enactments by the states were no-smoking zones.

With this latest gazetting, Dr Noor Hisham said all areas at public parks were no-smoking areas except for open car parks.

As for national and state parks, he said three areas where the public often converged were no-smoking zones, namely view towers, camp sites and canopy walks  and also a perimeter of five metres from the entrance and exit of canopy walks.

Offenders can be fined up to RM10,000 or jailed not more than two years, if convicted. — Bernama