Beijing sales down

The number of cigarettes sold in Beijing during 2016 fell by eight percent year-on-year, according to a story by Wang Xiaodong for the China Daily citing a report on the health of the city’s population released by the Beijing municipal government on Wednesday.

This was said to have been the biggest decline in recent years.

The incidence of smoking among people aged 15 or older last year stood at 22.3 percent, a drop of 4.7 percentage points from that of 2014.

The number of smokers had decreased by about 200,000, the report said.

The number of cigarettes sold in Beijing last year reached 93.8 billion, the report added, citing the Beijing Bureau of Statistics.

In introducing a public-places tobacco-smoking-ban in June 2015, Beijing was said by Wang Xinmei, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Shanghai’s political advisory body, to have done a good job.

Wang, who was comparing the performances of Chinese cities in introducing bans, pointed out that on all flights and trains bound for Beijing there had been repeated broadcasts informing people about the smoking ban.

That was a powerful message from which Shanghai could learn, said Wang.