Smokers targeted by bans, price hikes

China published a four-year plan on tobacco control Friday, with plans to widely enforce a public smoking ban, and strengthen health warnings on cigarette packs, as well as to adopt more price and tax measures to reduce the demand for tobacco.

China is the largest tobacco consumer in the world, but by the end of 2015, the smoking rate among Chinese adults will drop to below 25 percent, compared with 28.1 percent in 2010, according to the plan, which was released jointly by eight government departments led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The juvenile smoking rate will fall from 11.5 percent to 8.5 percent.

In China, the MIIT is both responsible for tobacco control and for developing the tobacco industry.

The plan also aims to make indoor public places, workplaces and transport smoke-free, and suggests that the percentage of Chinese exposed to second-hand smoke can be reduced to 60 percent by the end of 2015, down from 72.4 percent in 2010.

Non-smokers hope tough measures can be enforced to punish violators.

"I always find people smoke in small restaurants. Some waitresses might persuade them not to smoke or ask them to change to the non-smoking area, but on most occasions, waitresses ignore smokers as they did not want to lose the business," Xia Tian, a 31-year-old non-smoker in Beijing, told the Global Times Friday. Beijing has a theoretical ban on smoking in restaurants, but it is rarely enforced.

"Without strict supervision and severe punishment, I am not optimistic that the situation will get better," Xia said.

The plan also highlighted difficulties in tobacco control in China, which has more than 350 million smokers and where every year about 1 million people die from tobacco-related diseases.

 The tobacco industry is a major source of China's tax revenue, and more than 20 million people, including farmers, factory workers and retailers, currently work for the industry, the plan said.

In the first half of 2012, the tobacco industry produced 328.7 billion yuan ($52.8 billion) in tax revenues, accounting for nearly 6 percent of the country's tax income during the period, data from the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the Ministry of Finance showed.

Separately, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, said Friday that it will raise purchasing prices for tobacco leaves by an average of 10 percent in 2013, a move to protect tobacco farmers' interests and stimulate them to produce more high-quality products.

But experts said smokers will not be affected by such a move. "The price hike will increase cigarette factories' production costs, but will not increase cigarette prices," Xu Yunbo, a tobacco industry analyst with the Xinhua News Agency, told the Global Times Friday.

"There might be an increase in cigarettes' factory price in the future. But the wholesale and retail prices will not change as they are set by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and supervised by local price departments," he said.