Warning images on cig packs 'will help'

By Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-17 07:48

A worker at a park in Beijing tries to stop two men from smoking. [File photo]

Tobacco-control advocates in the country, home to about 350 million smokers, are soliciting public support for putting graphic warnings on cigarette packets to ensure better results from the anti-smoking campaign.

According to a survey released yesterday, 90 percent of the 16,000 respondents polled in 20 provinces, said they would "stop buying cigarettes and sending them as gifts" if the packets came with graphic picture warnings, Yang Gonghuan, director of the National Tobacco Control Office under the Ministry of Health, said.

Almost 34 percent of the respondents said that the new cigarette packs, which come with warning notes on the front and the back instead of the sides, have raised their awareness on the dangers of smoking, said the survey, which was conducted by the "Toward a Smoke-Free China" project.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has suggested member states to adopt graphic picture warnings.

However, China's tobacco monopoly administration has till yet adopted only the minimum requirement, printing warnings in the smallest font size and covering an area 30 percent of the packet's portion, without a contradistinctive background color to highlight the message.

"It is partly because health officials have not been included in China's executive body of the convention," Yang, who is also professor and deputy director general of Chinese Center for Disease Control & Prevention, said, adding that State Tobacco Monopoly Administration manages the work related to the implementation of the convention.

The masses are "too tolerable of the tobacco-control status quo," Shen Minrong, associate professor with the Capital University of Economics and Business, said.

"People should stand up and push the government to take stricter anti-smoking measures, including putting image warnings on cigarette packs," he said.

Yesterday, the project and Sohu.com, a popular Internet portal, launched a joint action, soliciting netizens' support for the suggestion.

By 6 pm, more than 5,400 netizens had signed up to support the petition.

According to Yang, about 1 million, or 12 percent, of the near 8.4 million people who die each year, die of diseases related to tobacco use.