Designated smoke areas harm efforts at reduction

The recent move by the tobacco industry to build more designated smoking zones in public places in many Chinese cities could seriously dampen China's tobacco control efforts, experts warned on Friday.

"Setting up comfortable and luxurious smoking booths both indoors and outdoors is not an act of care for smokers. Rather, it is an effort to draw them nearer to diseases and death," said Wu Yiqun, former deputy director of Thinktank Research Center for Health Development, a nongovernmental organization based in Beijing that promotes tobacco control.

"Such measures will make it more difficult for smokers to quit, will attract more people to become smokers, and goes against China's pledge to reduce smoking."