Smoke screen

A middle school in Long Island, New York is cracking down on students using campus restrooms to discreetly vape.

Lindenhurst Middle School installed the FlySense FS300 which can detect nicotine and THC — the psychoactive substance in marijuana — in the air, the New York Post reported.

Upon detection, the artificial intelligence-powered equipment alerts school officials by sending an email. Those caught vaping are subjected to a lecture on the harmful effects of electronic cigarettes on their health.

In Japan, there are designated areas for smokers. The Sukima Department Inc. (SDI) put up smoking lounges equipped with vending machines, air purifiers and air conditioners. The company has 43 such lounges located inside multi-tenant buildings in Tokyo.

SDI claims 45,000 office workers use its lounges daily. The high demand is due to the decreasing number of smoking rooms. A competitor of SDI has even emerged, setting up 64 smoking lounges in 18 municipalities in Tokyo, Kanagawa and Osaka prefectures at the end of April, Asahi Shimbun reports.

The number of private smoking lounges was still not enough for many Japanese smokers. Some smokers’ alternative smoking area almost cost them their jobs.

Gifu Prefecture Vice Governor Takanori Kawai, 66, and 18 co-workers were reprimanded and warned as a result.

Kawai had covered his tracks so well that his repeated smoking inside his office at the prefectural government building for nearly four years was only discovered in February.

Smoking inside public buildings is prohibited under the Health Promotion Law and other legislation, according to Asahi Shimbun. Kawai is the first vice governor of Gifu to be reprimanded for the offense.

In the prefecture’s investigation into the indoor smoking, Kawai reasoned, “I was too busy working that I wasn’t able to take time to go outside to smoke,” Asahi Shimbun quoted him saying.