Calls for tighter anti-tobacco law in China

Anti-tobacco activists in China have called for Beijing’s proposed smoking control legislation to be more tightly defined, according to an Ecns.cn story.

The legislation, which is currently under review, is scheduled to take effect next year.

It includes a proposal that smoking be banned in public places, but Zhang Jianshu, head of the Beijing Patriotic Health Campaign Committee, who was invited to take part in the review, said he was urging lawmakers to define in the legislation exactly what was meant by “public places.”

She said too that 15-meter smoke-free buffer zones should be established at places such as sports stadiums and railway and subway stations. While there was a growing consensus for a smoking ban in enclosed public places, the concept of buffer zones needed further promotion.

Outdoor places such as parks, which were frequented by children, should also be made smoke-free under the new law, she said.

Meanwhile, Cui Xiaobo, a professor of social medicine at Capital Medical University in Beijing, said the law ought to ban tobacco sales to minors.

Currently, a ban on sales to minors was included in the law on the protection of minors, but who was supposed to enforce that was not clearly defined, he said.