Recruitment of tobacco control volunteers begins

The recruitment of volunteers to help carry out Beijing's tough tobacco control regulations started on Friday.

The volunteers will assist health inspectors in tobacco control education, promotion and supervision. They will also provide counseling to smokers who wish to quit. The number of volunteers could reach 100,000 by the end of the year.

A major obstacle to effective implementation of the regulations is the relatively weak enforcement forces that are available to police a large number of businesses and more than 4 million smokers in Beijing, said Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Commission of Health and Family Planning.