Seven Chinese cities to launch smoke-free program

Seven Chinese cities are campaigning to start a tobacco-free program to prevent spreading threats of passive smoking, especially to pregnant women and children, health officials and experts said Monday.

Experts and representatives of cities of Shanghai, Wuxi, Ningbo, Changsha, Luoyang, Tangshan and Qingdao, gathered in Beijing Monday for a three-day workshop to present their plans for the program.

Smoke-free means no smoking is allowed in any indoor area at any time, without exception.

Luoyang, Changsha and Shanghai raised their plans for community-based intervention of secondhand smoking among pregnant and infants, while the other cities would start smoke-free policies at schools, hospitals and offices.

Children, pregnant women and people with asthma or cardiovascular disease are at special risk of secondhand smoke.

Shanghai, China's financial center with a population of over 17 million, is aimed at reducing the rate of pregnant women's exposure to secondhand smoke by 10 percent, said Li Xinjian, a Shanghai Health Bureau official, told the workshop.

"By avoiding secondhand smoke at home which is the biggest smoke exposure, we will continue to raise smokers' awareness of the harm or even help them quit smoking," Li said.

The program was sponsored by the Emory Global Health Institute (GHI) of the United States, and ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development (TTH), a nonprofit institution in China.

China has more than 300 million smokers, the world's largest, with more than two trillion cigarettes sold in the country every year. More than 500 million people are exposed to secondhand smoke, mostly at home, in public places and offices.

The United States spent 50 years to reach its goal for smoke-free cities, while Hong Kong used 20 years to do so. "It will not be overnight for China to realize the goal," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of GHI.

"But it can happen, and it is just a matter of how quickly it happens," he said.

Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that the non-tobacco efforts would arouse resistance, for example, from tobacco industry and retailers.

China signed the UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003 and the country's top legislature ratified it in 2005.

The country's health authorities have asked all medical administrations, hospitals and disease control centers to impose total smoking bans by 2011.

Shanghai's 2010 World Expo turned down a 200-million-yuan (29.3 million U.S. dollars) sponsorship deal from a tobacco company in July 2009.Guangzhou City in south China also promised to hold a smoke-free Asian Games this year.