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Snuffing out smoking will require sustained effort
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SOME 6.9 percent of Chinese junior high school students aged 13 to 15 smoke, and 80.5 percent of them were not refused when attempting to buy cigarettes over the past 30 days, according to a report issued last Wednesday, in the run-up to the International Children’s Day.
Over 64 percent of students reported that cigarettes can be bought near their schools, said the report by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP). The ban on underage sales seems just nominal.
Those who sell cigarettes to the young or around schools must be seriously punished to help children resist the temptation of tobacco, said Mao Qun’an, spokesman with the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
As the world’s largest cigarette producer and consumer, China has 300 million smokers, with at least 740 million nonsmokers regularly exposed to secondhand smoke, including 180 million children. In an environment with such a solid smoking culture, children tend to become smokers subconsciously.
It is likely that children will become smokers if their parents smoke, according to the CCDCP researcher Xiao Lin. If kids’ TV idols smoke, their acceptance to smoking will be 16 times higher, Xiao said. In China, cigarette advertising is banned on TV, but still a large number of the students surveyed saw cigarette ads outdoors or on the Internet.
“Parents, teachers and idols are all smoking, which lets the children feel that smoking is not a bad thing. That’s seriously misleading,” said Xiao.
In China, about 1.4 million people die of cigarette-related diseases every year, and that number is predicted to reach 3 million by 2050 if no sound measures are adopted to control Chinese people’s puffing on nicotine.
In 2003, China signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. But it has been criticized for failing to fulfill the promise of reducing use of tobacco, a backup for the nation’s fast-inflating economy.
China’s tobacco industry generated a huge 956 billion yuan (US$154.9 billion) in taxes and profits in 2013, up 10.5 percent from the previous year.
Dr Bernhard Schwartlander, World Health Organization representative in China, has advised China to raise taxes on tobacco products. “Policy-makers should substantially increase taxes on tobacco, while ensuring that the increase is passed on to the retail price of tobacco products,” he said, adding it is the single most effective measure authorities can take to reduce death, disease and future economic harm caused by tobacco.
In fact, the government is making increasing efforts to reinforce anti-tobacco publicity and curb rampant tobacco use nationwide. It has made a public smoking ban one of its goals for the 2011-2015 period. Some cities have already enacted legislation on smoking in public places.
Since the end of last year, officials have not been allowed to smoke in public areas, including schools, hospitals, sports venues and on public transport. A rule meted out by the Ministry of Education earlier this year also ordered a thorough ban on smoking within primary and middle schools, kindergartens and secondary vocational schools.
CCDCP deputy head Liang Xiaofeng suggested that the government can also do more to help the young give up smoking, such as nurturing more professionals or medical workers specializing in smoking cessation.
According to the report, 72.1 percent of the student smokers want to quit, but only 11.4 percent of them had ever received help from professionals.
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