Tobacco consumption raises questions over sustainable development in China

As well as raising health concerns in China, tobacco consumption has negative implications for the country’s sustainable development, according to a Global Times story quoting a Tsinghua University researcher.

Hu Angang, director of the university’s Research Center for Contemporary China, was speaking at a three-day seminar on tobacco control that ended yesterday in Beijing.

Hu said tobacco was the biggest killer in China; so it was not just a public health issue but something that impacted the sustainable development of the whole nation.

While the government worked on economic renewal, the transformation of the tobacco industry had to be addressed and the tobacco supply reduced, Hu added.

China signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003 and it became effective in January 2006.

But experts are said to be critical of current government efforts to curb smoking, describing them as lagging far behind FCTC standards.

However, in December last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Health and six other government departments issued the China Tobacco Control Program (2012–2015) aimed at reducing tobacco plantings and tobacco production consumption.

The program was the first state-level tobacco-control initiative and it marked a new phase in the quest for comprehensive tobacco control.