In China, Lanzhou People's Congress approved the local tobacco control law on 27 April 2013. The law will go into effect on 1 January 2014, making Lanzhou the fourth city, after Guangzhou, Harbin and Tianjin, to pass a local tobacco control law supported by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use (BI). 70% of the 3.6 million Lanzhou population are non-smokers, who are expected to benefit from the protection offered by the law that requires most of the public venues in the city to be smokefree.
According to the law, restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, karaoke bars and public bathing houses are required either to establish smoking rooms or smoking areas with separate ventilation or to be 100% smokefree, if the requirement of separate ventilation cannot be met. The local municipal government was granted the discretion to remove, when it deems appropriate, the smoking rooms and smoking areas of the aforementioned venues to make Lanzhou completely smokefree.
Enforcement will be carried out by 10 agencies, with each agency enforcing the law in one or more types of public venues or workplaces. The Health Bureau will be the coordinating agency for all enforcement work. Smokers violating the law will face a penalty between RMB 20–200. Venue owners and managers who fail to comply with the law will be fined between RMB 200–5000.
Through BI, The Union has been supporting the China Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Tobacco Control Office for the past three and a half years to promote smokefree legislation within the "Sub-national Smokefree Initiative", which currently includes eight cities – Guangzhou, , Harbin, Jinan, Lanzhou, Nanchang, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Tianjin – and Guangdong Province. In each case, The Union has worked with local partners to promote smokefree legislation in the absence of a national tobacco control law. The locally passed laws are crucial and are easier to implement since the tobacco industry is very powerful on a national level. Supporters hope that these local laws will provide useful evidence and momentum for a national tobacco control law.