Major cities in China crack down on smoking in public

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-09-15

A banner forbidding smoking at a work unit in Fuzhou, Fujian province,
Aug. 2. (Photo/CNS)

Under instructions from the central government, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and some other major cities in China have launched a crackdown on smoking in public places in a bid to reduce lung cancer, a major contributor to the rising cancer rate.

The crackdown is in line with the efforts of the central government to target a reduction of the smoking rate among adults by 3 percentage points by 2017, according to a three-year action plan put forth recently by 16 ministry-level departments, including the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the National Development and Reform Commission.

Every year 2 million people die of cancer in China and there are 3.1 million new cancer cases. Thirty percent of cases are related to smoking and smokers are eight to 12 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers.

According to a study released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization jointly in August, more than 20% of people smoke in nine of the 14 cities surveyed. The highest rates were in Shenyang, Luoyang and Anshan where 44% of men smoke.

Numerous anti-smoking statutes and regulations, both at the central and local levels, have been passed to ban indoor smoking and smoking at specific public facilities, as well as bans on tobacco ads. Enforcement is inevitably the key issue, however, as smoking is a deeply entrenched part of public life in the country.