China has failed on tobacco control, needs major reforms
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For five decades, Lao Long’s lungs have endured cigarette after cigarette—thousands of cigarettes inhaled with chemicals and carcinogens ingested with each puff. Smoking had been a comforting and relaxing short-term pleasure for Lao, but the advent of lung cancer now has him filled with regret and struggling for his life. In Beijing’s Xuanwu Hospital, Lao stares undauntedly at the needle slowly penetrating the vein in his hand. Needles rate as a minor nuisance compared to the harrowing reality of lung cancer. Along with Lao, the surgical ward has more than 40 lung cancer patients, with the youngest just over 30, and like Lao, 90 percent have smoked for decades. The fatal disease has converted the majority to an anti-smoking stance, where their regret has brought them the resolve to finally quit. “It’s about time we understand that life is much more important than smoking,” Lao said.
According to China’s Tobacco Control Report issued in 2010, each year over one million people die from smoking-related diseases. Yet despite this, China has failed to fulfill its commitment to ban smoking entirely in offices and indoor public places five years after it signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2006.
While the number of smokers has remained high, there’s been a sharp increase in the victims of second-hand smoke in the past five years, and the in the last three years the number has grown by 200 million.
According to a research conducted by 60 medical experts, economists and legal professors, tobacco is responsible for the rampant spread of the chronic diseases, and tobacco manufacturing is the most hazardous industry.
The research report, “Tobacco Control and China’s Future,” revealed the medical costs and labor force loses caused by tobacco exceeds the revenue of the industry, which poses a negative value of the net social benefit, which was calculated at minus 60 billion yuan ($9.08 million) last year.
“The negative impact will be expanded in the next 20 years if tobacco is not controlled appropriately,” said Yang Gonghuan, deputy director from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the report, by 2030 three million people will die from diseases caused by smoking. That figure accounts for a quarter of the total deaths, a percentage over 20 points higher than for fatal diseases such as AIDS.
In what makes the situation even grimmer, the government’s countermeasures have been less effective than anticipated.
“The tobacco industry has generated a huge amount of tax revenue, so it’s hard for the government to resolve to trim it,” Yang said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently scored the countries that participated in the tobacco control convention and gave China a 37.3—one of the lowest ratings.
Many are asking why the government seems so ambivalent despite the harm tobacco inflicts upon citizens. According to Yang and Wu Yiqun, the deputy director of the Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, it’s largely due to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s lack of leadership and general disorganization.
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