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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Big tobacco rejects grisly warning packs
Source: Xinhua |
November 17, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ZHOU Daqing, 35, had been smoking for 10 years, but didn't have the courage to light up again after seeing the warning on the package of cigarettes a friend bought for him in Hong Kong.
"Smoking can lead to impotence. Man! How come I never saw this warning these last 10 years?" said Zhou, who has recently given up smoking.
In 2008 China received a Dirty Ashtray Award from the NGO Framework Convention Alliance after China's representatives made excuses for not printing warning pictures on cigarette packs at the third conference of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
There are no warning pictures or specific words of warning on cigarette packages sold on the Chinese mainland.
The convention's article about printing warning pictures on cigarette packs was supposed to take effect before January 9, 2009, in China, according to Jiang Yuan, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He spoke to Xinhua on Monday.
The only improvement in China's commitment to the WHO FCTC on packaging was the ambiguous warning "Smoking is Harmful" that is printed on the front of packs, not the sides, Jiang Yuan said.
But text size is small and doesn't stand out in contrast to the color of the packaging, Jiang added.
China signed the WHO FCTC agreement in 2003. The convention stipulates that the consequences of smoking must be clearly and strikingly stated on packaging of tobacco products and that the words and pictures take up no less than 30 percent of the entire packaging space.
Images of bleeding brains, blackened teeth and rotten lungs are visible on the cigarette packs in Thailand, Australia, Canada and other countries, said Wu Yiqun, executive vice director of the Thinktank Research Center for Health Development.
"Exported Chinese tobacco has different packaging from that sold in domestic markets," Wu said, showing a pack of Chunghwa cigarettes for overseas consumers with a picture of a smoker's ulcerated foot. On the domestic pack, there is no such picture.
Putting health warning pictures on tobacco packaging is supposed to be one of the most cost-effective ways to increase public awareness of the serious health risks associated with tobacco consumption.
A survey in 2008 of 1,169 respondent smokers in four Chinese cities showed that warning pictures were twice as effective in helping smokers quit as cigarette packs without text. It was carried out by the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project.
The graphic pictures deliver a strong message and are effective in reaching illiterate people, Wu said, noting that many smokers in China live in remote and impoverished areas.
Statistics show China has more than 300 million smokers. Smoking puts 23.7 million rural residents into poverty every year, as smoking takes up 6 percent to 11 percent of their expenditures.
Anti-tobacco fighters believe printing warning pictures on cigarette packets will change the Chinese custom of giving cigarettes as gifts. A 2008 survey by China's CDC in 20 provinces showed that 90 percent of its 16,000 respondents would not give cigarettes as gifts if there were disgusting and horrible pictures printed on their packaging.
With pretty pictures like Mount Tai and Tian'anmen Square, cigarettes are a symbol of social status and often given as gifts in China. The tobacco gift culture is a major obstacle for tobacco control in China.
China could improve its warnings to include graphic images of the harm tobacco does, according to Sarah England, a technical officer at the Tobacco Free Initiative of the WHO Representative Office in China.
This would educate people about the specific diseases and disabilities caused by tobacco while simultaneously making cigarettes an unattractive item to give as a gift, England added.
China's tobacco control authorities sought netizens' support to urge producers to print warning pictures on cigarette packaging, in an effort to set the agenda ahead of parliamentary and political advisory sessions this year.
More than 1.42 million netizens voiced their support for putting graphic warnings on cigarette packages in the two weeks after the online survey began.
"We got the reply recently. The authorities refused our proposal. They said they would make the warnings on the front larger and print warnings on the back of the packs in minority languages," Wu said.
Experts say it is China's tobacco monopoly system that makes putting warning pictures on cigarette packaging difficult, as China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration is both the tobacco producer and the regulator responsible for tobacco control.
"There is no way that tobacco control and the development of the tobacco industry can be properly done by the same department," Jiang Yuan said.
High-end cigarettes and those given as gifts contribute significantly to the tobacco industry's profits and taxes. If disgusting pictures appear on the packs, there will be no market for these cigarettes, said Hu Linlin, a doctor at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Now, some 23 countries print large warning pictures on cigarette packs. But smokers in 90 percent of the world.
There is still much to be done for tobacco control in China, and around the world, Wu Yiqun, said.
"Smoking can lead to impotence. Man! How come I never saw this warning these last 10 years?" said Zhou, who has recently given up smoking.
In 2008 China received a Dirty Ashtray Award from the NGO Framework Convention Alliance after China's representatives made excuses for not printing warning pictures on cigarette packs at the third conference of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
There are no warning pictures or specific words of warning on cigarette packages sold on the Chinese mainland.
The convention's article about printing warning pictures on cigarette packs was supposed to take effect before January 9, 2009, in China, according to Jiang Yuan, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He spoke to Xinhua on Monday.
The only improvement in China's commitment to the WHO FCTC on packaging was the ambiguous warning "Smoking is Harmful" that is printed on the front of packs, not the sides, Jiang Yuan said.
But text size is small and doesn't stand out in contrast to the color of the packaging, Jiang added.
China signed the WHO FCTC agreement in 2003. The convention stipulates that the consequences of smoking must be clearly and strikingly stated on packaging of tobacco products and that the words and pictures take up no less than 30 percent of the entire packaging space.
Images of bleeding brains, blackened teeth and rotten lungs are visible on the cigarette packs in Thailand, Australia, Canada and other countries, said Wu Yiqun, executive vice director of the Thinktank Research Center for Health Development.
"Exported Chinese tobacco has different packaging from that sold in domestic markets," Wu said, showing a pack of Chunghwa cigarettes for overseas consumers with a picture of a smoker's ulcerated foot. On the domestic pack, there is no such picture.
Putting health warning pictures on tobacco packaging is supposed to be one of the most cost-effective ways to increase public awareness of the serious health risks associated with tobacco consumption.
A survey in 2008 of 1,169 respondent smokers in four Chinese cities showed that warning pictures were twice as effective in helping smokers quit as cigarette packs without text. It was carried out by the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project.
The graphic pictures deliver a strong message and are effective in reaching illiterate people, Wu said, noting that many smokers in China live in remote and impoverished areas.
Statistics show China has more than 300 million smokers. Smoking puts 23.7 million rural residents into poverty every year, as smoking takes up 6 percent to 11 percent of their expenditures.
Anti-tobacco fighters believe printing warning pictures on cigarette packets will change the Chinese custom of giving cigarettes as gifts. A 2008 survey by China's CDC in 20 provinces showed that 90 percent of its 16,000 respondents would not give cigarettes as gifts if there were disgusting and horrible pictures printed on their packaging.
With pretty pictures like Mount Tai and Tian'anmen Square, cigarettes are a symbol of social status and often given as gifts in China. The tobacco gift culture is a major obstacle for tobacco control in China.
China could improve its warnings to include graphic images of the harm tobacco does, according to Sarah England, a technical officer at the Tobacco Free Initiative of the WHO Representative Office in China.
This would educate people about the specific diseases and disabilities caused by tobacco while simultaneously making cigarettes an unattractive item to give as a gift, England added.
China's tobacco control authorities sought netizens' support to urge producers to print warning pictures on cigarette packaging, in an effort to set the agenda ahead of parliamentary and political advisory sessions this year.
More than 1.42 million netizens voiced their support for putting graphic warnings on cigarette packages in the two weeks after the online survey began.
"We got the reply recently. The authorities refused our proposal. They said they would make the warnings on the front larger and print warnings on the back of the packs in minority languages," Wu said.
Experts say it is China's tobacco monopoly system that makes putting warning pictures on cigarette packaging difficult, as China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration is both the tobacco producer and the regulator responsible for tobacco control.
"There is no way that tobacco control and the development of the tobacco industry can be properly done by the same department," Jiang Yuan said.
High-end cigarettes and those given as gifts contribute significantly to the tobacco industry's profits and taxes. If disgusting pictures appear on the packs, there will be no market for these cigarettes, said Hu Linlin, a doctor at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Now, some 23 countries print large warning pictures on cigarette packs. But smokers in 90 percent of the world.
There is still much to be done for tobacco control in China, and around the world, Wu Yiqun, said.
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