Smoking ban fines jump 14 percent nationwide

Business owners in the hospitality industry received 1,578 fines from the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) last year for failing to comply with the national smoking ban. The number of fines increased by 191 from the previous year, and written warnings jumped from 379 in 2013 to 619 last year, NU reports. All together, NVWA received 1.4 million euros from the distributed fines. However, in 136 municipalities, every inspected location abided the rules. Urk was the municipality with the most fines, where every hundred inspections netted 22 violations. Zwartewaterland did not do well either with 13 penalties for hundred locations.