Tobacco News and Interesting Information

Smoking has no place at the Olympic Games. But Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan is a reluctant anti-smoking crusader. After all, he's a smoker.

He's got company at the Olympic Village, where the chief of the organizing committee of the Olympic Games also can sometimes be seen through a haze of cigarette smoke.

An astonishing number of China's Cabinet members and sports officials are among the 350 million Chinese whose cigarette habits support a state industry that's generating more taxes in China than any other industry.

Smoking is common even at the Health Ministry. Deputy Minister Gao Qiang smokes heavily, and surveys show that more than 50 percent of China's male doctors and health workers smoke.

"They are under high pressure, stress, so they smoke to get relief," said Zhi Xiuyi, the non-smoking chief of the lung cancer center at Capital Medical University hospital.

Under growing criticism from the World Health Organization and other international bodies, China is slowly combating tobacco usage. It's agreed to put warning labels on cigarette packs by 2009 and prohibit tobacco-related advertising and promotion by 2011. Last month, Beijing banned smoking in the city's 66,000 taxis.

But the sprawling state tobacco monopoly keeps increasing production; it's on course to crank out more than 2 trillion cigarettes this year. Smokers snap up packs of White Sand, Red Pagoda, Yellow Mountain and 400 other national brands, adding to state coffers. The tobacco industry contributes $31 billion a year in taxes.

Last March, the deputy chief of the state tobacco monopoly warned anti-smoking campaigners not to press too hard.

"We take very seriously the health dangers of smoking, but not having cigarettes also impacts stability," Zhang Baozen, deputy chief of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, told state television.

Cigarette taxes provide Beijing with steady revenue. According to the World Bank, 8 percent of China's central revenues come from taxes on cigarettes, compared with 3 percent in Britain, 1.8 percent in India and 0.4 percent in the United States.

China has been slow to address health concerns about smoking partly because the government doesn't shoulder much of the health care cost of those who fall ill from tobacco-related illnesses.

The nation's socialized health care system has fallen by the wayside, replaced by one in which citizens largely pay for themselves.

Yet there are signs that the central government is embracing limited anti-smoking efforts, wary of being out of step with much of the rest of the world. Last year, Beijing ratified a World Health Organization anti-smoking convention that commits it to curb smoking in public places, such as schools and buses, and further limit cigarette advertising.

Smoking is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture — male culture, that is.

In China, 63 percent of men smoke, while only 3 percent of women do. At weddings, the bride normally circles the reception hall, offering cigarettes to each man, a rite said to augur well for her eventual childbearing. Cigarettes are also handed out at funerals. Between courses at banquets, male diners frequently pause for a smoke.

Many Chinese don't think cigarettes are harmful. Some even say smoking helps their health. They point to the long lives of former paramount leaders and smokers Mao Zedong, who died at 82, and Deng Xiaoping, who was 92 at his death.