Un jeune homme d'origine chinoise fume à l'intérieur de Pékin, Chine, 28 décembre 2010. Chines s'engagent à interdire de fumer à l'intérieur semble vouloir partir en fumée comme le Janu
A young Chinese man smokes indoors in Beijing, China, 28 December 2010. Chinas pledge to ban smoking indoors looks set to go up in smoke as the January 9 deadline set five years ago approaches. Despite the promise on entering the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2006, The Beijing Times reported Tuesday (4 January 2011) that China has witnessed no decline in smoking, but has 200 million more people suffering from the effects of second hand smoke over the past three years. A report named Tobacco Control and Chinas Future, which will be issued on Thursday, said 3 million deaths in China will be caused by smoking in 2030, accounting for 25 percent of the total, compared with 2 to 3 percent for AIDS. The social welfare effect of the tobacco industry has also declined sharply from 150 million yuan (US$23 million) in 1998 to minus 60 billion yuan in 2010, considering the high costs including medical and labor which far outnumbered its contribution of tax and employment, the report said. The situation will be even worse in the next 20 years, said Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the National Center of Disease Control of China. Yang said it is hard for the government to take a knife to the tobacco industry because it is an important taxpayer, despite 60 experts research finding the industry has posed the greatest threat to peoples health and become the main factor for the fast rise of chronic diseases in China. Anti-smoking activists said a law is crucial to enforcing the commitment to the tobacco control convention. But China has yet to make one, and its current Advertising Law does not even ban tobacco companies from advertising.
