How many smokers are there in China now?

The current number of smokers in China is approximately 350 million. Over the years, China Tobacco has maintained seven "world firsts": No. 1 in tobacco leaf planting area; No. 1 in tobacco leaf purchase volume; No. 1 in cigarette production ; No. 1 in cigarette consumption; No. 1 in the number of smokers in the world; No. 1 in tobacco profits and taxes; No. 1 in the number of deaths from smoking-related diseases. Since 2000, about 1 million people have died from smoking-related diseases in China every year, accounting for five of the global number of deaths. 1 in 1

In November last year, a 9-year-old girl in Shandong was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. When she was found, there was water accumulation in the right side of the girl's chest and there were already cysts on her lungs. There was a mass, and there was cancer cell metastasis in the lungs, pleura and mediastinal lymph nodes. There was no hope of treatment.

This incident caused a great shock in the domestic medical anti-cancer field. Yang Xiujun, director of the Radiology Department of Shanghai Eighth People's Hospital and member of the Minimally Invasive Tumor Treatment Professional Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, told the "First Financial Daily" This case is still heartbreaking, he said. Later investigation revealed that the child's father had been an alcoholic for many years, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and never avoided being in front of the child. Even when my wife was pregnant, she did not quit smoking. "The reason why children get lung cancer is precisely because of passive smoking every day."

The latest data released by the Ministry of Health on May 29 shows that there are currently 350 million smokers in our country, and "passive" smokers There are 540 million people, including 180 million children under the age of 15. The number of people who die from passive smoking every year has exceeded 100,000.

May 31 this year is the 20th World No Tobacco Day. The theme is "Creating a Smoke-free Environment". However, "Smoke-free Environment" has been a problem in China for ten years. An internal research report shows that starting in 1997, European and American international cigarette giants began to aggressively enter the Asian market, especially the Chinese market, due to the impact of domestic anti-smoking policies. However, China's tobacco control pace lags far behind that of European and American countries.

Smoking and Poverty

The devastation of tobacco on health is self-evident, and its role in death and disease has also been well established. However, tobacco's role in exacerbating poverty has not received enough attention. Limited household resources are consumed on cigarettes instead of on food and other necessary expenses such as education and nutrition. The cost of cigarettes spent by poor families (accounting for 4 to 5% of their total household disposable income) has a very high opportunity cost and wastes precious resources that should be used to meet food and other basic needs.

As early as the eighth "World No Tobacco Day" in 1995, tobacco control and poverty reduction were already proposed as themes. According to information provided by the National Patriotic Health Campaign Committee at the time, my country ranks first in the world in terms of tobacco production, sales volume and number of smokers, and the economic income generated by tobacco accounts for a large proportion of the national fiscal revenue.

In May 2003, 192 World Health Organization member states finally adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco (hereinafter referred to as the "Convention"), including China. Member states are committed to meeting the public health challenges posed by tobacco and are determined to address key issues such as tobacco prices and taxes, tobacco and poverty, cross-border smuggling, tobacco advertising and promotion, and the right to clean indoor air.

The World Health Organization report shows that tobacco cultivation and consumption increase poverty has been ignored. "Although tobacco use has been declining in many high-income countries in recent years, it is rising sharply in low- and middle-income countries."

75% of the world's smokers are in developing countries, and 75% of the world's smokers live in developing countries every year. Smoking about 60% of the total cigarette consumption in the world (5.7 trillion sticks). This in itself confirms the need for comprehensive tobacco control. However, it is important to note that the relationship between tobacco use and its associated disease burden is skewed. In other words, poor people are more likely to use tobacco than rich people, and a similar pattern holds true for education and socioeconomic status.

Professor Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and vice president of the China Tobacco Control Association, once said in the media that because the effects of tobacco do not occur immediately, many people fail to feel the harm of tobacco to their health.

At this stage, the average life expectancy of Chinese smokers is 4.6 years shorter than that of the general population. Each person works an average of 2 years less, and the labor value created will be greatly reduced. However, according to the current smoking pattern, due to population growth alone, the number of smokers will increase to 431 million by 2030, and nearly 2 million people will die from diseases caused by smoking every year starting in 2025.

Yang Gonghuan said that tobacco use leads to an increase in medical expenses. The current rising rate of medical expenses is much higher than the rising rate of profits and taxes in the tobacco industry. If the number of diseases and deaths attributed to tobacco in 2025 is 33, then only 33% will be spent. The medical expenses will exceed the profits created by the tobacco industry for the country. If you add in the other indirect costs of getting sick, the economic value of tobacco is more than offset by direct medical expenses and lost working years alone. This does not include other economic losses caused by tobacco consumption, such as fires.

International cigarette giants secretly fight against China

The UK has been gradually tightening restrictions on cigarette advertising. A law passed in 1996 first banned tobacco advertising in movies and TV shows and required all cigarettes sold to carry the words "Smoking is harmful to health."

Since the 1970s, the UK has been continuously raising tobacco taxes. Especially after 1998, tobacco taxes in the UK increased by an average of 5% per year.

According to relevant statistics, due to the adoption of various anti-smoking measures, the British tobacco giant's cigarette sales in the UK have also gradually declined.

A research report obtained by the reporter shows that since local sales have been greatly squeezed, some large British tobacco giants have begun to target the target market in Asia, especially China.

This phenomenon also occurs in the United States. Dr. Ye Dongsheng of the National Institutes of Health told reporters that American tobacco companies are currently facing limited profits in their country due to the year-by-year increase in consumption taxes and tobacco control policies.

The doctor said that the most profitable place for American cigarette dealers is not at home, but in China. Many organizations in the United States are also constantly putting pressure on the Chinese government, hoping to use the Olympics as an opportunity to vigorously promote the ban on smoking in China.

In addition to normal channels, the amount of smuggled cigarettes sold to China from abroad is also immeasurable. Dr. Kelley Lee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr. Jeff Collin of the University of Edinburgh conducted several years of research on a large number of internal documents that British American Tobacco was forced to release due to successive lawsuits. Research, according to the latest research data, shows that in 2003 and 2005, British American Tobacco's sales to China were 50 times China's official total import figures. This huge gap has been difficult for British American Tobacco to explain.

Internal documents also admit that the vast majority of tobacco products exported to Hong Kong are used to supply the smuggling market in mainland China. "Clearly, over the past 20 years, smuggling cigarettes has been hugely profitable and has become part of British American Tobacco's business in China. What started as a way to get around the tight restrictions in the Chinese market is now a source of huge revenue. Smuggling At that time, it was used to enter the market and compete with other brands, and its pricing and supply management were very cautious. "(See this newspaper's report on July 18, 2006, "Internal document disclosure: British American Tobacco proactively smuggled large quantities of cigarettes into China")

Dr. Li, the author of the report, also told this reporter that after long-term research, it was found that Asia, especially China, has become the largest market for British and American Tobacco sales.

In addition, the reporter also learned that tobacco companies have launched "anti-tobacco control" actions in response to the World Health Organization's global tobacco control campaign. A batch of internal tobacco company documents disclosed in the United States showed that tobacco companies had tried to discredit the WHO and reduce its budget.

According to overseas media disclosures, a U.S. tobacco giant once planned to organize a counterattack: secretly monitor anti-smoking meetings to obtain confidential information; convince the United Nations agricultural organization that tobacco control actions will reduce the income of tobacco-growing poor countries and harm the poor. .

The WHO investigation found that these cigarette dealers designed 26 action plans, including sabotaging the 1992 "Cigarettes and Health" conference, sending specially trained reporters to intimidate participants; organizing spies to enter WHO, monitors anti-smoking trends and steals confidential documents.

To this end, WHO issued a warning that if the current situation does not fundamentally change, 10 million people will die from tobacco every year in 30 years, 70% of them in developing countries.

According to foreign reports, the World Health Organization plans to provide expertise and advice to countries that take tobacco companies to court on smoking-related deaths and diseases, and encourage developing countries to support and prosecute Big Tobacco.

National tobacco control is weak

Over the years, China Tobacco has maintained seven "world firsts": No. 1 in tobacco leaf planting area; No. 1 in tobacco leaf purchase volume; No. 1 in cigarette production; It ranks first in the consumption of cigarettes, the number of smokers in the world, the number of tobacco profits and taxes, and the number of people who die from smoking-related diseases. Since 2000, about 1 million people have died from smoking-related diseases in China every year, which is one-fifth of the global death toll. one.

Zhang Yifang, former vice president of the China Smoking Control Association, told this reporter that China's tobacco control was pretty good before 2000. It reached its peak in 1997 and has gone downhill since then. "One reason is that the competent authorities are not proactive and the decision-making level lacks a group of people who are enthusiastic about tobacco control."

He said that the Chinese government has joined the Convention, but its actual actions are not enough. Especially when it comes to trademarks and slogans, the Convention requires warnings to be placed on two-thirds of the places on cigarette packages, but China has not done so. This is required to be fully implemented by 2008.

The "Convention" also requires reducing the smoking rate, but China has always been ranked among the top, and even increased year by year. The smoking rate is now 40%, and men are 70%.

The World Health Organization has issued a report stating that China is the only country in the world where the proportion of smoking is increasing.

A research report obtained by the reporter shows that a World Health Organization report on cardiovascular disease risk factors ("Trends in coronary risk factors in the WHO MONICA project") published as early as 2001, Data on smoking status of 38 people in 21 countries in the past 10 years was collected. Among men aged 35 to 64, only one country and region has a significantly higher smoking rate, and it is far ahead. This is the sample population from Beijing, China.

Zhang Yifang said that in 1990, the "Smoking Hazards Control Law" was reported to the National Legislative Affairs Bureau, but the other party said that there was already a relevant law, so it was not approved. "Our country's laws on tobacco control are very lagging behind. Only Chapter 5, Sections 18-19, Chapter 3 of the "Tobacco Monopoly Law" contains tobacco control content, which has become an excuse for some departments not to continue legislation. In fact, tobacco control The content of the Tobacco Monopoly Law is also somewhat nondescript. The Tobacco Monopoly Law has become a cover, preventing the real tobacco control law from coming out. "

In addition, he said that China has done nothing in terms of tobacco advertising. It's not enough, and all the media in various places turn a blind eye for their own interests.

"China's current legislation prohibiting smoking in public places has many shortcomings. More than half of the cities at or above the prefecture level still have gaps in smoking control regulations, and the places where smoking is prohibited are relatively limited, and the content of the regulations is vague. , The operability is not strong," said Wang Longde, Vice Minister of Health.

Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and vice president of the China Tobacco Control Association, said in an interview with China Business News that China’s tobacco control work started very late, probably in 1990. Although it has always been at the level of expert tobacco control, it was not until China started negotiating to join the Framework Convention after 1999 that it began to enter the level of government tobacco control.

She said that at present, China should be in the process of advancing from expert tobacco control to government tobacco control, and has not yet reached the point of universal tobacco control. The road to tobacco control is indeed still long.

However, she also disagrees with some experts’ claims that China’s tobacco control efforts are going backwards.

"Since 2003, the government has not only intervened, but also led China's smoking cessation work. I believe that with the efforts of everyone, China's tobacco control will be faster after joining the Framework Convention."