2 Chinese men smoke on a street in Shanghai
China is considering fining smokers who light up indoors as much as 500 yuan (USD81) and penalizing operators who don’t stop them, a sign of rising political willingness to curb an industry that brings in billions in tax revenue.
If implemented, the changes would mark a reversal in the world’s most populous country, which so far hasn’t succeeded in eliminating smoking in public indoor places such as bars and restaurants.
China is home to about 300 million tobacco users, and cheap cigarettes are often exchanged as a social courtesy – almost like a handshake. Surging health-care costs are now forcing China to follow other parts of the world in restricting such public smoking.
Operators would be required to set up designated areas for smokers, with some exceptions such as women and children’s hospitals where smoking would be totally banned, according to the draft of a law proposed by the health ministry and posted on the website of the State Council yesterday.
The proposed law, for which the government is currently soliciting public opinion, would introduce restrictions with actual penalties for flouting them, more than three years after the National Health and Family Planning Commission issued a largely ineffectual ban on public smoking.
“Smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke causes mainly chronic diseases that are a heavy health-care burden for the country and result in economic losses,” the health ministry said in an accompanying letter to the draft law.
The efforts to restrict tobacco use pits future economic gains from a healthier population against more than $95 billion in annual tax revenue from an industry in which the regulator, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, also runs the China National Tobacco Corp., producer of 97 percent of China’s cigarettes.
Owners and operators of indoor properties such as restaurants and hotels would be asked to stop customers from smoking, and could report those who refuse to the police, under the proposed draft. Operators would be encouraged to set up smoke alarms and monitors to strengthen management of their properties.
More than 90 percent of people surveyed in China support smoking bans in public transport, schools and hospitals, while over 80 percent of respondents back the bans in meeting rooms, restaurants and bars, the ministry said.
In December last year, the government took an early step by ordering cadres to stop lighting up at official functions and in public premises such as government buildings and sporting venues.
The main training institution of China’s Communist Party last December proposed legislative changes to tighten tobacco controls and curb the state cigarette monopoly’s regulatory powers. Bloomberg
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