Tag: China

The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control has suggested changing the emphasis on public-places smoking regulation so that it is no longer something that ‘should be controlled’ but something that ‘must be banned,’ according to a China Daily report.
The Association put forward its suggestion during a panel discussion on a draft of the Promotion Law on Basic Medical Treatment and Public Health, which is being reviewed by the legislature.
The suggested revision was not only reasonable but also urgently needed because China had not made any breakthroughs in tobacco control since it signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, the Legal Daily said.
The country’s smoking rate had remained largely unchanged at about 27 percent, and 740 million people suffered from the effects of inhaling second-hand smoke. It was estimated that at least one million people died of smoking-related diseases in China each year.
The fight against tobacco use has been an uphill battle because the state-owned industry is a reliable source of government revenue and a large job creator, which means that it can bring its influence to bear on any efforts that might affect its business.
Last month, the China National Tobacco Corporation urged its local branches to try to fulfil the annual sales objective of 47.38 million boxes of cigarettes – each box contains 50,000 cigarettes – a sales figure that has remained stable or slightly increased during recent years.
The Legal Daily said the Healthy China 2030 plan, adopted by the central authorities in 2016, had proposed reducing the smoking rate from 27 percent to 20 percent. Anti-smoking legislation was needed to realize that objective.
China would take a big step forward in tobacco control if the suggested revision could be adopted－from ‘should be controlled’ to ‘must be banned’ – and if the types of public places where issues of second-hand smoke were most serious were specified.
‘If the revision becomes law, a number of local laws and rules on public health and tobacco control will be amended,’ the Daily said. ‘The current wording of “should be controlled” would give the local lawmakers too much space to turn a blind eye to the problem, which is an important reason why tobacco use has not been put under effective control till now.
‘Hopefully, the revision can be endorsed and strictly implemented with supporting supervisory and punitive measures, which wait to be written into the law, so as to endow the law with deterrent forces to thwart smoking in public places.
‘Also, more efforts are needed to raise the public awareness of the harm smoking can inflict on people’s health, as well as the necessity of protecting young people, particularly adolescents, from tobacco use.’

The official China Youth Daily (CYD) has called for a change to the monopoly tobacco system operating in China, according to a story in The China Daily.
The story reported that the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) had urged its local branches to try their best to fulfil the annual sales objective of 47.5 million cases of cigarettes, or 2.38 trillion cigarettes, by the end of next month.
But the CNTC’s urgings were opposed by the CYD, which reported that the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control had said it was contrary to the Healthy China 2030 plan and the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which China was a signatory country, for a state-owned tobacco enterprise to set an annual sales objective.
The CYD said that it should be relatively easy for China to reduce tobacco use, since tobacco was under state control.
But this was not happening. The size of China’s smoking population had remained unchanged or had increased slightly in the recent past. And annual sales of cigarettes had risen fast since 2016 when they fell to 47 million cases from a historical high of 51 million cases in 2014.
China was said to have 350 million smokers, or 31 percent of the world’s total, and about 740 million ‘second-hand smokers’. Diseases related to smoking caused the deaths of 1.36 million smokers each year, and the deaths of 10,000 ‘second-hand smokers’.
The CYD said that the Healthy China 2030 plan vowed to reduce the size of the country’s smoker population, but given the ‘tobacco corporation’s deployment and growth momentum’ (its net profit in 2016 was 1.08 trillion yuan [$156 billion] or 28 times that of Alibaba), the goal of downsizing the smoking population was mission impossible unless there was a drastic change in how it operated.
‘For example, cigarette packs in China do not bear anti-smoking photos to dissuade people from smoking, and the price of cigarettes is markedly lower in China than in many other countries,’ CYD said. ‘Trying to prevent smoking in public places, even though it is banned, is often greeted with fierce reactions from smokers. And smoking-cessation treatment remains expensive in even public hospitals.
‘Unless there is a change to the monopoly tobacco system, smoking control will remain an uphill struggle.’

Health authorities in Beijing will include illegal tobacco smoking into citizens’ credit records as part of the city’s smoke-free Beijing campaign, according to a China.org.cn story quoting the Beijing Youth Daily.
In addition to publicly naming and shaming offenders, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning will share information about their offending with the city’s industry and commerce authorities.
Citizens in Beijing with a bad credit record could face difficulties in applying for commercial loans.
Beijing imposed a blanket smoking ban on June 1, 2015, covering all indoor public places, workplaces and public transportation. The ban is said to be the strictest of its kind in China.
According to a report by the Beijing Tobacco Control Association, 2,265 violations of the ban were reported to the public WeChat account of Smoke-free Beijing between August and September this year.
Meanwhile, the association reported also an increasing number of complaints over the use of electronic cigarettes in public places.
In response, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said that more studies would be carried out into the harm caused by vaping electronic cigarettes to provide a scientific basis for its control.

Xi’an, the capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, is set to ban tobacco smoking in all indoor public venues, according to a China Daily story.
The regulation banning smoking, which was announced on Tuesday by the city government, prohibits also smoking in some outdoor public places, such as schools, stadiums and health institutions for pregnant women and children.
Smokers who do not adhere to the regulation will be fined 10 yuan (US$1.50), and venue owners may be fined up to 1,000 yuan.
The regulation is due to take effect on November 1.
Xi’an, home to the Terra-Cotta Warriors, is the latest major Chinese city to ban smoking in all indoor public venues, following in the footsteps of Beijing and Shanghai.
China has set itself the target of reducing its smoking rate among people aged 15 and above from the current 27.7 percent to 20 percent by 2030, according to the Healthy China 2030 blueprint issued in 2016.