China’s top leaders are considering a nationwide public smoking ban, hoping to curb the country’s rampant tobacco-related health problems, which continue to be deteriorating factors not only for society but also for the economy.
According to the deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Tobacco Control, Yang Jie, China’s lawmakers are mulling the idea of a nationwide smoking ban in all public places. The new regulation would “optimistically” be rolled out during the next year. The implementation of the smoking ban will be met with some challenges, but the main issue, Yang says, is enforcing such a law. “If you look at the general development legislation, I don’t think there are a lot of problems [in implementing the law],” Yang said in a press briefing. “What is most troubling is how to enforce the law effectively.”
In the past, efforts to control smoking have been largely unsuccessful. In fact this isn’t the first time a smoking ban would be introduced, for some cities. In the capital city, Beijing, smoking inside public places like restaurants, bars, and other establishments has been illegal since last May. However, the poorly enforced law left many bars and clubs in a smoky haze. Often, enforcing such smoking bans is in the hands of bar or restaurant owners, who in addition to posting no-smoking signs are responsible for telling patrons to snub out cigarettes if they light up. Because of this, many indoor smokers go unpunished, because business owners do not want to risk losing customers.
If passed, the law would affect China’s staggering number of smokers, which is estimated to be roughly 300 million or 25 percent of the population. Though smoking is deeply engrained in Chinese culture, legislators hope that a public smoking ban will help cut down China’s growing healthcare costs and force citizens to smoke less. China is currently plagued with a myriad of smoking-related diseases, like lung cancer and respiratory diseases, which cause over a million deaths in the country annually, according to the Tobacco Control office. Experts believe that the number of deaths due to smoking-related issues could triple by the year 2030.
China’s tobacco ban, if enforced successfully, could have an effect on the country’s state-owned tobacco companies. According to a report by the Guardian, the industry plays a large part in the country’s fiscal revenue, with tobacco sales reportedly accounting for 7-10 percent of it. The perceived conflict of interest, with China’s Premier Li Keqiang running the country’s public health programs, and his younger brother Li Keming running the country’s state-owned tobacco conglomerates, may have been a problem for such bans in the past. However, in a study by China’s Central Party School, one of the co-authors, Zhang Zhongjun, said that taking a harsher position against tobacco would be beneficial to China’s economy. According to Judith Mackay, a senior advisor to the World Lung Foundation, this refers to the economic impact of the lives lost to smoking-related disease.
“He said there are a million jobs lost per year because a million people die from tobacco,” Mackay said in a press briefing. “That’s the first time in China that I’ve seen this economic understanding that the economic balance is definitely in favor of health."
China Considers Nationwide Public Smoking Ban Despite Dependence On Tobacco Industry
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