The City of Yokohama has announced at a city council committee that all of its 2,700 parks, including Yamashita Park, one of the city's most popular tourist attractions, will be completely smoke-free from April next year.
According to the policy presented by the City of Yokohama to the City Council Standing Committee on the 18th, the city's park ordinance will be amended to include "smoking" in the list of prohibited activities, and "Yamashita Park", which is crowded with many people including children, will be closed. Approximately 2,700 parks managed by the city, including Minato no Mieru Oka Park, will be completely smoke-free.
If you violate the law, you will be subject to a penalty of 50,000 yen.
Regarding this, members of the standing committee said, ``We need to consider who and how to confirm violations and decide on warnings and punishments,'' and ``We need to make sure that smokers and non-smokers don't get in trouble.'' There were opinions such as, ``This should be made known.''
The city will solicit opinions from citizens about this policy for about a month starting next month, submit a bill to amend the ordinance to the city council meeting in September, and ban smoking in parks from April next year. I'm looking forward to it.
Yokohama City says, ``We want smokers to understand the purpose, so we would like to proceed while providing detailed explanations.''