Anti-tobacco advocates are looking for support on the internet (via the net citizens or netizens) according to this article published in the People's Daily.
Source: People's Daily Online
China's anti-tobacco fighters demand warning pictures on cigarettes - People's Daily Online
February 18, 2009
China's
tobacco control authorities are seeking support from netizens to urge
producers to print warning pictures on cigarette packaging, trying to
set an agenda for the coming parliamentary and political advisory
sessions.
The netizens' opinions will be submitted to
national political advisors before they meet in March for their annual
full meeting to call for more effective tobacco control efforts,
organizers said.
The National Tobacco Control Office (NTCO)
initiated the move with several Web sites on Monday to ask the State
Tobacco Monopoly Administration to ensure that harms of tobacco are
clearly specified on the packs with pictures.
In China,
although cigarette packs carry characters that read "smoking is harmful
to your health", 70 percent of consumers are still ignorant or numb to
the warning, according to a survey by the office last year.
The survey sampled 16,521 people in 40 cities and counties of 20
provinces. The result suggested that specifying tobacco's harms with
eye-catching pictures could help more than 90 percent of consumers give
up the idea of giving others cigarettes as gift.
According to
Wu Yiqun, executive vice director of the Think Tank Research Center for
Health Development, many foreign cigarette packings bear shocking
pictures showing the consequences of smoking.
"In the Great
Britain, for instance, picture on a cigarette pack is a smoker with
throat cancer. In Brazil, the picture is heart operation. In Australia,
the pack shows black and yellow teeth of a smoker," Wu said.
"Even exported Chinese tobacco has different packs from that sold in
domestic markets," Wu said, showing a Zhonghua cigarette pack for
overseas consumers with a picture of a smoker's ulcerated foot, which
is invisible on the red packing of the same brand for domestic smokers.
Zhonghua, with an ornamental column on its packing, like those
on the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, is often taken as a symbol of
social status and given as a gift, Wu said.
Yang Gonghuan,
vice director with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, said that each year, 8.4 million people died in China,
among whom 12 percent, or about one million, died of disease connected
with tobacco--lung cancer, throat cancer, coronary heart disease, brain
stroke, tuberculosis and sudden death of the new-born.
"As
smokers are becoming younger, this percentage will soar to 33 percent
by 2050. That means about half of the male smokers shall die of
smoking-related diseases," Yang said.
By 6 p.m. Monday, more
than 5,000 netizens voted on Sohu.com, a major portal in China, to
support the tobacco control office's appeal.
But tobacco companies will have to worry about their profit if the proposal is adopted.
"Although it is in line with the International practice and will be
inevitable, such a move will definitely impact the tobacco sales in the
long run," said Wen Tao, a senior official with the Hongta Group, one
of the country's leading tobacco producers based in southwest Yunnan
Province.
China inked the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003.
The convention stipulates that on packs of tobacco, consequences of
smoking must be clearly and strikingly stated. The words or pictures
shall take up no less than 30 percent of the entire packing.
At a WHO conference in South Africa last year, China was bestowed with
an ash tray as award, which sarcastically implied the government's
passiveness in smoking-control.
To fulfill its pledge, China
changed many cigarette packs before this past January 9, but experts
believed the efforts far from enough.
"On the one hand, the
color of the warning characters is similar to that of the background,
and the warnings are sometimes in English which many people could
hardly understand," Wu said.
"On the other hand, it is clich
especially to those with little education to say 'smoking is harmful',"
she said. "The point is, what harm does it make."
Shen
Minrong, associate professor with the law department of Capital
University of Economics and Business, said many companies only care
about their profit.
"Surely a pack with an ornamental column or a dragon sells better than those with disgusting pictures," he said.
It is improper, however, to print China's totem on products which are
not good for consumers, he said. "Besides, the profit is gained at the
price of people's health."
Shen also believed that changing the pack could also help preventing corruption.
Research by Cui Xiaobo, associate professor with the Capital Medical
University, showed that 12 percent of the smokers in the country didn't
buy cigarettes themselves--their cigarettes were given by others.
A netizen has proposed a more striking warning design: on the cigarette
pack there is a Chinese character "shou", or longevity. When the box is
opened, the character is folded. It in Chinese is considered as "zhe
shou", which means the life span is shortened.
"Of course nobody would give or receive a gift which shortens the life span," Shen said.
Source: People's Daily Online
At a WHO conference in South Africa last year, China was bestowed with an ash tray as award, which sarcastically implied the government's passiveness in smoking-control.
Posted by: cigarettes | April 12, 2011 at 02:22 AM