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China Faces Hard Job to Control Smoking
On May 31, the 13th World Non-smoking Day, the closing ceremony for the Symposium on China Smoking-Control Countermeasures for the 21st Century and the lottery-drawing ceremony for the 2000 International Quit-Smoking Contest were held in Beijing.
It's reported that China is the largest tobacco producer and consumer in the world. Among the world's 1.1 billion smokers, 0.32 billion are Chinese. In the past 10 years, per-capita annual cigarette consumption has been increasing year by year. According to the 1996 survey , 69 percent of male adults and 4 percent of female adults in China had the habit of smoking, with man consuming 15 cigarettes per day and woman 11 per day. According to the latest research results of experts concerned, over 2,000 Chinese people die from smoking-related diseases each day.
Zhang Wenkang, minister of health, stressed at the symposium that the harm of tobacco is a serious public health problem as well as a social problem in toady's world. Smoking-control involves both the health department as well as all the social and economic departments, it calls for unremitting efforts by the health department, and the understanding, participation and support from the whole society.
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