Despite the capital's smoking ban, over half of the respondents to a survey of Beijing residents said that they have seen people smoking in restaurants and public toilets.
The ban, introduced in 2014 and billed at the time as the nation's "toughest," prohibits smoking in public places including workplaces, restaurants and campuses.
However 62.9 percent of respondents to the survey conducted by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said that they have witnessed people smoking in restaurants since the ban and 52.9 percent said they have spotted people smoking in public toilets.
More than half of the respondents also said they have witnessed their family members smoking at home.
The survey involved 10,576 respondents aged between 26 and 55 years old and was released on Wednesday, World No Tobacco Day and the second anniversary of the smoking ban.
More than 60 percent of respondents who said they were smokers vowed that they wanted to quit smoking after the ban was issued, and nearly 95 percent of respondents said that they already knew about Beijing's smoking ban. A total of 7.56 million smokers faced some kind of official intervention last year for breaking the ban, the report revealed.
Pollsters hired by the municipal commission found that over 95 percent of Beijing universities have publicized the smoking ban on their campuses, but that 35 percent of campuses were still littered with cigarette butts.
About 200,000 people have quit smoking in Beijing since the ban was issued, according to a survey conducted by the Beijing Disease Control and Prevention Center this year.
