The Beijing Olympics may be a time to slow down smoking, a habit that kills about a million people in China every year.

China has about 360 million smokers, which is 26% of its population and a third of the global total. Financially the nation is partially dependent on the tobacco industry for huge tax revenues.

It is not considered socially unacceptable to smoke. Even top Chinese athletes such as Liu Xiang, world and Olympic champion in the 110m high hurdles, advertises for Chinese tobacco company Baishan, while some football and basketball professionals still enjoy a smoke at half-time.

In most other countries of the world smoking is realized to be pretty evil and is banned most places. Possibly the tobacco companies have though they could outsource smoking to China. This may be changing.

Communications expert Ren Mengshan is openly advocating the Olympics as ‘a good platform for the government to promote non-smoking and the benefits of good health.’
Besides declaring the Beijing Olympics ’smoke-free,’ organizers have also banned tobacco from public places where athletes and Olympic officials are likely to meet.

The capital has further mandated that 70% of all hotel rooms be non-smoking and since October last year, has banned taxi drivers from smoking in their cars.

In addition to its recent efforts, since 1996 Beijing authorities have tried to ban smoking in public places such as restaurants, schools, hospitals, train and bus stations, libraries and museums.

Although their efforts have met with little success, there are glimmers of hope.

Beijing’s first non-smoking eatery, the Meizhou Dongpo, opened in the capital in October last year. Tables in the Sichuan-style eatery are decorated with signs that read ‘no-smoking restaurant, a forest in the middle of the city.’
Source: Times of India

Reading the newspapers around the world one finds that athletes are worried about the weather at the Olympics — mainly in the hands of the gods — and the pollution, particularly from cigarette smoke. Now Beijing has banned smoking in taxis.

Smoking is now banned in all of the city’s 66,000 taxis for both drivers and passengers. Drivers will be fined $13-26 if caught smoking at the wheel.

Ma Yanjie, deputy head of the city’s taxi bureau said passengers caught smoking will have their names ‘exposed through media.’ The agency said green-colored ‘No Smoking’ signs have been posted in most taxis and the ban is now in force.

Other measures to allow Beijing to breathe — at least during the Olympic games — are limits to the number of cars in the city and the closure of factories. There will also be etiquette campaigns to stamp out bad manners like jumping ahead in line, spitting, littering and reckless driving.
Source: Canadian Business

Olympic organizers are planning a smoke-free Games in Beijing next year. It will not be easy. Legislation imposing strict curbs on tobacco use at Olympic sites is in place but enforcing them will be another matter.

Zhang Jianshu, head of the Beijing Health Bureau’s publicity department said, ‘We have been in final talks with the International Olympic Committee and other groups to fine-tune draft regulations.’

It was easier in, say, Australia where smoking had been banned for some time before the Olympic Games and smoking was on the downturn. That is not the situation in China. Some 400 million smokers are free to light up at will in most public places in the country.

Yang Jie, who works with the anti-smoking program at China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, ‘We are very much at the beginning stage of the battle against tobacco in China and a smoke-free Olympics will hopefully help us get the message out.’

The problem is two fold. First of all a large percentage of the people smoke. The second is the tobacco industry is owned by the government and makes serious profits.

Zhang Baozhen, a senior official in the state-run tobacco industry, said riots erupted when the former Soviet Union collapsed because smokers could no longer get cigarettes. ‘The dangers of smoking are there, but a smoking ban could cause instability,’ he was quoted as saying in the Chinese media.

Tobacco is a government-run 160 billion dollar-a-year business that employs some 60 million people in productions, supply and sales. It netted $31 billion in taxes for the government in 2005, enough to pay for the running costs of the Beijing Olympics 15 times over.

But smoking also kills some one million Chinese a year and incurs five billion dollars in annual medical bills.

The new regulations will include bans in all of the 37 Olympic competition sites and dozens of other training sites during the August 8-24 Games next year. The ban will spread to other areas including the Olympic village, designated Olympic hotels, restaurants, and entertainment areas.

Whether the ban can be enforced without confrontation is another matter.
Source: Khaleej Times