Liu Ying has always hated the smell of cigarettes. But now the 37-year-old Beijing resident doesn’t have to sit helplessly in smoke-filled bars or restaurants.
“If someone smokes despite the [smoking] ban, I take out my smartphone and take photos,” she says.
Using a smartphone app, she can report the infraction. The offending establishment is then marked with a blue light on a digital map for all to see. The light turns red if there are more than five infractions, which carries a hefty fine.
“It’s not nice, but it works,” Liu Ying says.
Following half-hearted attempts in the past, the Chinese capital has finally succeeded in implementing an “excellent” smoking ban, says Bernhard Schwartlaender, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in China and a sharp critic of China’s massive national smoking habit.
Since the law took effect two years ago, it’s not only Beijing’s bars and restaurants that have become smoke-free zones, but also all indoor workplaces, hotels, airports and public transport facilities as well as many outdoor public places.
Bosses have helped enforce the ban among their employees because they are afraid of heavy fines, Schwartlaender notes. “There’s a totally new attitude,” he says.
Although three of China’s largest and most developed cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen – have passed and are currently implementing comprehensive smoke-free laws, Schwartlaender is anything but satisfied with the big picture.
“Wide swaths of the country lag far behind,” he says. During his travels around China, Schwartlaender often spends time in cities where hotels still have smoking and non-smoking rooms.
In a recently published joint report, the WHO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warn that smoking-related diseases are on track to claim more than 200 million lives in China this century. With 315 million smokers, it’s the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco. Forty-four per cent of the world’s cigarettes are produced there.
The report calls for “critical steps” to reduce China’s dependency on tobacco.
China’s powerful state-owned tobacco industry is hindering the country from meeting its international obligations on tobacco control, points out Schwartlaender, who says the tobacco lobby so far has been able to stall adoption of a national smoke-free law.
Nearly the entire tobacco market is controlled by the state-owned China National Tobacco Corporation, which sells more than 160 cigarette brands. Efforts to scale back the health-harming habit of smoking have foundered largely due to the tobacco industry’s enormous importance.
Cigarette sales not only pour money into state coffers, but also provide a livelihood for roughly 20 million people, including some 1.3 million tobacco farmers and 5 million salespeople.
“The tobacco industry has a seat at the table for all [tobacco policy] decisions,” complains Zhang Jianshu, chairman of the Beijing Tobacco Control Association.
“And it always asserts that it provides the government with massive tax revenues.” But, he adds, the long-term costs of sick smokers to the healthcare system are far greater.
In Zhang Jianshu’s view, three things should be done quickly: The power of the Chinese tobacco industry should be curtailed; the strict smoke-free laws in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen should be extended to the rest of the country; and cigarette prices should be sharply increased.
Schwartlaender sees the last of these as the best way to reduce the number of smokers. “A pack of cigarettes here is as cheap as a bottle of water,” he says. “This is systematically making addicts out of young people and the poor.” – DPA