Tag: China

  • Vaping ban in public places

    Vaping ban in public places

    The Chinese city of Shenzhen is to strengthen its regulations on tobacco smoking in public places, according to a story in The China Daily citing a Nanfang Daily report.

    The change in direction has been made necessary because the city authorities have reportedly run into problems in implementing their original regulations.

    The problems apparently arose in the form of difficulties with law enforcement and evidence collection, complex punishment procedures and excessive fines.

    Since the implementation of tobacco smoking regulations in Shenzhen on March 1, 2014, the authorities have raked in 3.745 million yuan in fines, comprising 3.325 million yuan in fines on smokers and 420,000 yuan in fines on venues.

    Deputies of the Shenzhen People’s Congress on January 18 proposed that Shenzhen should revise its policy on tobacco smoking in public places to make the regulations more practical.

    The revised draft of the Regulation on Smoking Control expands the definition of smoking to include the use of electronic cigarettes and other lit tobacco products.

    It expands the scope of smoke-free areas, which now include outdoor queuing areas for public transport, such as buses, coaches, taxis, subways, ships and civil aircraft. Smoking is prohibited also within five meters of subway entrances and exits.

    And it stipulates that no tobacco products are to be sold within 100 meters of kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and children’s activity centers.

  • Wings on, wings off

    Wings on, wings off

    All China’s domestic airlines have been ordered to prohibit immediately smoking and vaping in cockpits, and to punish severely crew members who violate the ban, according to a China Daily story citing a notice issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

    The CAAC has ordered airlines to suspend crew members who smoke or vape in cockpits for 12 months for a first offense and for 36 months for repeat offenses. Other crew members who fail to intervene when a member of a cockpit crew is smoking [or, presumably, vaping] were said to be liable to a six-months’ suspension.

    The CAA said that if smoking [and vaping] on a plane resulted in serious consequences, the penalty would be more severe and would be recorded in crew members’ files.

    Smoking was banned in the passenger cabin and toilets of all aircraft in October 2017, but individual airlines had the option to permit smoking in the cockpit for two years. The recent cockpit ban accelerates the original time frame.

    Originally, the rules would not have taken effect until the end of this year, said Zhang Qihuai, a Beijing lawyer specializing in civil aviation. But only Chongqing Airlines and China West Air had implemented the cockpit ban.

    In July, news reports said that an Air China co-pilot who was vaping during a flight from Hong Kong to Dalian, Liaoning province, wanted to turn off the air circulation fan. But he switched off the aircraft’s air conditioning by accident, which diffused smoke [presumably vapor] throughout the cabin and led to the deployment of oxygen masks and an emergency descent.

    The aircraft climbed to its cruising altitude and the flight continued once the problem was identified.

    There were 153 passengers and nine crew onboard. No injuries were reported.

    Zhang said he believed this incident triggered the early enforcement of the regulation.

    “If heavy smokers among the passengers can forgo their habit during flights, there is no reason to make the crew an exception, especially since they are responsible for the safety of all on board,” Zhang said.

  • India sees export opening

    India sees export opening

    Yesterday saw the signing of a protocol under which Indian leaf tobacco will be exported to China, according to a Press Trust of India story published in the Business Standard and The Week.

    A statement by the Indian Embassy in Beijing said the protocol was signed by India’s Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan and Zhang Jiwen, Vice Minister of General Administration of China Customs, which is responsible for examining market access and quarantine issues in respect of India’s agriculture and allied products.

    The revival of the phytosanitary protocol with China would pave the way for the revival of Indian tobacco exports to China and prove economically beneficial to Indian farmers, the statement said.

  • China craves Cohibas

    China craves Cohibas

    Habanos will this year seek to expand and diversify its presence in China, according to the company’s development vice president Jose Maria Lopez, speaking during an interview with the Xinhua News Agency.

    Lopez said there was great potential for increasing sales in China, which, in the medium term, could become Habanos’ most important market.

    The story said that, according to ‘official figures’, China became the third largest market for the company in 2017, after Spain and France, with an increase in sales of 33 percent on those of 2016.

    Due to a growing demand for premium cigars in China, Habanos reached an agreement with the China National Tobacco Corporation in the summer of 2017 to increase sales and work together to promote a knowledge of, and taste for, Cuban cigars in China.

    Lopez said that Chinese consumers preferred Habanos’ most exclusive products, including its Cohiba brand, “which is our most important trademark and greatest exponent of luxury within the Cuban cigar market”.

    “Between 40 and 50 percent of the Chinese demand is concentrated in the Cohiba brand, which is very high,” said Lopez. “One of our intentions when we talk about developing the tobacco culture in that country is to educate the Chinese consumer that not all cigars are Cohiba.”

    Working with the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, through which domestic imports are made to the Chinese mainland, growth rates of between 20 and 30 percent per year were expected, said Lopez.

    In addition, the company has shops in China’s Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and it is working to attract customers through the China Duty Free Group in the two regions.

  • Smoking ban sought

    Smoking ban sought

    Tobacco-control advocates have called for an outright ban on smoking throughout China’s railway network, according to a Xinhua news agency story quoting the China Daily.

    The call for a ban came after air-quality inspections reportedly found ‘dangerous levels of harmful pollutants’ on slow trains, most of which currently allow tobacco use in designated areas.

    Researchers led by the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control examined four slow trains in October. Three of the trains had designated smoking areas, while one had banned tobacco use due to an earlier lawsuit filed by a passenger.

    The story said that the results of the inspections, released yesterday, showed that the concentrations of PM2.5 particles [fine particulate matter] ‘in carriages of the three trains where passengers can smoke’ exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic meter, meaning the air could be considered hazardous to human health.

    China’s high-speed rail networks all prohibit smoking, but passengers on slow trains can smoke in designated areas, often in the connecting areas between carriages.

    Cui Xiaobo, deputy director of the Beijing Tobacco Control Association, said second-hand smoke was likely to cause life-threatening, acute illnesses.

    “A lot of emergency medical requests occurring on trains are linked to vulnerable groups, including the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases who breathe in smoke,” he said.

    The researchers interviewed 94 passengers on the four trains and found that 77 of them would applaud a complete ban on smoking on slow trains.

    People made 3.37 billion railway trips in China during 2018.

  • Smugglers move with times

    Smugglers move with times

    Customs authorities in China’s Zhejiang Province have arrested 27 suspects allegedly involved in smuggling heat-not-burn devices and consumable sticks with a value of more than 400 million yuan (US$58.4 million), according to a Xinhua news agency story.
    Customs representatives speaking in the city of Ningbo on Monday said that more than 470,000 cartons of sticks had been confiscated in the latest operation.
    Earlier, 30,000 cartons of sticks and 500 tobacco-heating devices had been seized while taking down three cross-border smuggling gangs.
    A suspect surnamed Li was said to have confessed that his accomplice had bought sticks and devices in Japan to smuggle them into China.
    Li alone was said to have smuggled more than 100,000 cartons before his arrest.
    Investigators were said also to have identified nearly 300 other smugglers.
    The Xinhua story said that ‘electronic cigarettes’ could not be sold in China legally. However, it said, smugglers resorted to online platforms and instant messaging applications to sell them disguised as other products.
    The story referred to the smuggled products throughout as ‘electronic cigarettes’, but it seems likely that they were in fact heated-tobacco products given that reference was made in the story specifically to ‘tobacco heating devices’ and ‘cartons of cigarettes’.
    The story seems to be questionable also in claiming that electronic cigarettes cannot be sold in China, though, again, the question of legality could refer to heat-not-burn products. According to the recent report, No fire, no smoke: Global state of tobacco harm reduction, electronic cigarettes can be sold legally in China.

  • Nation-wide ban sought

    Nation-wide ban sought

    Anti-tobacco campaigners in China have renewed calls for a national ban on smoking in public places, according to a story by Wang Xiaoyu for the China Daily.

    The Beijing-based Thinktank Research Center for Health Development (TRCHD), which lobbies for tougher tobacco control measures, called last week for the creation of a smoke-free environment for the public.

    The latest draft of a basic medical care and health promotion law, which was published in October and is under review by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, highlights the need for publicity campaigns to curb smoking and higher taxes on tobacco products.

    Kelvin Khow, a technical officer for the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, said the new draft was encouraging, “but regarding smoke-free public places, we need stronger wording – to ban smoking in all indoor areas”.

    The draft, he said, used less-specific phrases such as “control smoking in public places”.

    Khow said nearly 90 percent of Chinese people were not protected by smoke-free laws, making them vulnerable to health risks from second-hand smoke.

    “We’re hurting people by not acting on a national law,” he said.

    Twenty-one Chinese cities have banned smoking in indoor public spaces, with the latest being Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, in November.

    Zhangjiakou, co-host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, is expected to join them soon. It released a draft regulation in September.

    Wu Yiqun, deputy director of the TRCHD, said tobacco companies were hindering the launch of a nationwide ban.

    “At the very least, we should stop advertising and sponsorship by tobacco businesses and introduce larger graphic warnings on all tobacco products,” she said. “A healthy China must be smoke free.”

  • Illegal trade evolving

    Illegal trade evolving

    The Internet and courier services are increasingly being used for smuggling tobacco products, including counterfeit ones, in China, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
    Zhao Hongshun, deputy chief of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, told a press conference on Friday that the production of and trade in counterfeit tobacco products had evolved.
    Production sites were now changed frequently, while those involved in the illegal trade used Internet-based distribution and decentralized modes of transportation.
    In response, Zhao said, China’s tobacco authorities and public security agencies would launch a campaign targeting crimes related to tobacco products that were transported through courier services.
    Between January and November 2018, 363,000 cartons of fake cigarettes and 137,000 cartons of smuggled cigarettes were seized by law enforcers, Zhao said.
    At the same time, 6,306 suspects were detained, of whom 2,631 were subject to criminal prosecution.

  • Flights of fancy

    Flights of fancy

    Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport is closing all the tobacco smoking rooms in its domestic and international terminals starting from tomorrow, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.
    The airport terminals have been designated non-smoking areas under new smoking control regulations brought in by the city of Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang Province.
    At the same time, the airport is setting up new smoking areas outside the terminals.
    Meanwhile, the news agency reported that the airport is being expanded as part of a project that will make it the second largest aviation hub in the Yangtze river delta region, after Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

  • Vaping is not smoking

    Vaping is not smoking

    There are no national regulations governing the use of electronic cigarettes in China, though increasing numbers of smokers are turning to these devices, according to a Xinhua News Agency story quoting a China Daily report.
    The Beijing Tobacco Control Association has reportedly received a growing number of reports and complaints about e-cigarettes being used in public places.
    But existing control regulations in the capital city cover only the use in public places of traditional, combustible tobacco products. So while law enforcement officers can impose fines on those who smoke combustible cigarettes in public places, they are powerless to act against those who use e-cigarettes.
    Yang Jie, a researcher at the Tobacco Control Office of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted as saying that e-cigarettes were not considered to be either drugs or electronic products, which created a dilemma in respect of effective supervision.
    The China Daily report quoted a World Health Organization official in China as saying there was a risk of unintended health consequences from exposure to electronic nicotine delivery systems, due to the high nicotine concentration in the e-liquids of some of them.
    And it reported Zhang Jianshu, president of the Association, as saying that his Association believed that many e-cigarettes were harmful to smokers and others, and that it would promote the inclusion of such devices in tobacco control law enforcement.