China's Olympic planners kick the
butt By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Chinese leaders have promised to
make next year's Summer Olympic Games in Beijing
non-smoking - ambitious for this country of 360
million smokers. Never has the event that
celebrates physical fitness been held in a country
more hooked on tobacco and more afflicted by
smoking-related diseases.
China's smoking
population, as in so many other global rankings,
is the world's biggest. Nearly 60% of men in the
country smoke, and proffering cigarettes is a
ritualized form of social courtesy. But the health
toll from tobacco addiction is also very high - an
estimated 1.2 million Chinese
die every year from smoking-related illnesses.
"It is the cheapest way to let off steam,"
said Yang Dong, a nervous Beijing taxi driver who
could not resist lighting up when the traffic
lights took too long to change. He shrugged when
asked about the risks to his health: "There is not
much to do when you are stuck in a traffic jam,
and these days it happens a lot."
He was
clueless about the risks of second-hand smoke. And
he is not the only one. Health experts say only
35% of the people surveyed for a new national
tobacco-control report were aware of the dangers
of passive smoking.
The report, released
by the Ministry of Health this week, has for the
first time publicized its hazards, calling
second-hand smoke "a killer at large". It says
about 100,000 Chinese die every year from it,
while more than 500 million suffer from the smoke
exhaled from cigarettes.
More public
education is needed to get the anti-smoking
message across, says Henk Bekedam, the World
Health Organization representative in China. "We
do not yet have enough change in behavior as a
society. We need to do an awful lot more in order
to get there," he said.
But if the capital
city's authorities have their way, chain-smoking
taxi drivers will be nowhere to be seen next year
when Beijing plays host to the Olympics.
By promising to host a smoke-free
Olympics, China's leaders seek to project the
right image - that of a modern and progressive
force. But they also hope that the example of a
smoke-free Olympics might be just that external
factor needed to boost the efforts of a nascent
anti-tobacco movement in China.
A
"smoke-free China" campaign was officially
launched here in April. The program is part of the
US$125 million Bloomberg Initiative, which uses
funds donated by Michael Bloomberg, New York's
billionaire mayor, to curb tobacco use in 15
developing countries. With help from China's
Center for Disease Control and other groups, the
program will be initially rolled out in 20 Chinese
provinces, and will last through the end of 2008.
Attempts to curb smoking in China, which
is the world's biggest tobacco producer, involve a
difficult choice for the country's leadership.
That is because the state owns the national
tobacco monopoly, which makes 97% of the
cigarettes sold in the
country.
State-controlled China National
Tobacco Corp is the world's biggest tobacco
producer, churning out more than 2 trillion
cigarettes last year, accounting for about 30% of
production. In 2005, it paid $31 billion in taxes
and profits to the central government, amounting
to 7.5% of revenue received by the Finance
Ministry that year.
Tax bounty aside, in
many poor regions such as Guizhou and Yunnan in
the country's southwest, the tobacco industry is
regarded as a pillar of economic development,
providing employment and funding47 for localities.
The stakes in the industry are so high
that Beijing has fought hard to protect its
producers and the state monopoly from the
onslaught of foreign tobacco giants. As part of
its deal to join the World Trade Organization,
China agreed to lower tariffs on imported
cigarettes to 25% from 65%. Foreign companies,
however, are still not allowed to make cigarettes
in China.
Yet even as it battles to
preserve its financial interests, Beijing is
becoming more aware of the spiraling health-care
costs and the overall economic price through lost
productivity the country will pay unless tobacco
use is controlled.
A study by a Peking
University research center calculated the overall
economic cost of smoking at $31 billion in 2005,
including medical bills, a shorter life span, lost
work days, and fires started by errant cigarette
butts. What is more, the annual death toll is
expected to nearly double to 2.2 million people by
2020.
One sign that China is beginning to
confront its cigarette habit emerged when the
government signed a landmark global treaty to curb
tobacco usage. Beijing ratified the United Nations
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005
and began its implementation in 2006.
The
treaty obliges the signatory nations to put clear
and strong health warnings on cigarette packages,
ban tobacco advertising, increase the price of
cigarettes, and create smoke-free buildings and
workplaces within three to five years of
implementing the convention.
The
challenges, though, are tremendous. When delegates
to the annual meeting of the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference, China's
advisory body, submitted in March proposals for
smoking bans in public places and an increase in
tobacco taxes, they were met with stiff
resistance.
Zhang Baozhen, a top
bureaucrat at the State Tobacco Monopoly
Administration, warned that such proposals could
lead to social instability.
"We take the
fact that smoking is harmful seriously, but
without cigarettes the country's stability will be
affected," he told the meeting.
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