Ahead of World Expo, China acts to promote smoking controls

by Xinhua writers Miao Xiaojuan, Wang Cong

BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) - Thirty-two-year-old Sun Ling is not a heavy smoker. But for 10 years, Sun, a civil servant in Shanghai and a father of a 5-year-old, has become used to indulging himself with one or two cigarettes after lunch at work.

However, within one year he might have to find a new after-meal habit, and maybe a healthier one, too..

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which China signed in 2003 and ratified in 2005, the country will ban all types of tobacco advertising and promotion by 2011 in accordance with the FCTC.

Further, smoking in all indoor work places and public areas, as well as public transportation vehicles, will also be banned.

With just one year to go, and less than three months ahead of what authorities promised would be a smoke-free Shanghai World Expo, the Chinese government is fast tracking smoking control, even at this year's annual parliamentary and advisory sessions.

Health Minister Chen Zhu said on March 3, the opening day of the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), that legislation for smoking control in public areas was currently being enacted in China.

Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu also vowed on March 5, when the annual meeting of the National People's Congress kicked off, that China's smoking control progress would see a "giant leap forward" after the parliament session, which is expected to end on March 14.

A dozen political advisors even submitted a proposal to the CPPCC National Committee calling for a "smoke-free" session.

"The Chinese government's commitments are surely good news for the country's smoking control progress," said longtime anti-smoking activist Gregory Yingnien Tsang.

The 77-year-old American Chinese has been advocating a smoking ban in public areas in China for the past 18 years.

"As long as the government sticks to its commitments and speeds up fulfillment of those commitments, the current situation of lax implementation of smoking control regulations in public areas, and people's reluctance to quit smoking, will soon be resolved," he said.

One of the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming nations, China manufactures about 100 billion packets of cigarettes each year. The country now has a smoking population of 350 million, about one-third of the world's total.