[photopress:condoms.jpg,full,alignright]The Beijing News has reported that the government has ordered all hotels, holiday resorts and public showers to provide condoms, part of nationwide efforts to fight the spread of AIDS.
The regulation, issued by the commerce and health ministries, also requires pamphlets about AIDS prevention to be displayed.
The move follows an unusual step by the booming eastern province of Zhejiang in March to fine hotels and bars if they did not provide condoms.
It is a difficult situation. The idea that people staying in a five star hotel are not starkly aware of the problems connected with unprotected sex seems, on the face of it, ludicrous.
There should be no problem in ensuring that all hotels, no matter what their standards, should have condoms available. And discreet posters in public rest rooms within the hotel would probably be acceptable. But the idea of handing out condoms to guests — would it replace the chocolate on the evening bed turn down? — is a little difficult to accept. (That this actually happened in a play in the West End of which Peter O’Toole was the star — Venus? — is besides the point. It is not what one would expect in the best hotels.)
Source: Jongo News