Time to make smoking ban real

Comment on "Govt urged to get tough on smoking" (China Daily, April 9)

I own up to being a life-long non-smoker. When I was a teenager, my friends offered me a cigarette in a disco. Go on, it's cool, they said. I tried one and hated it. Thanks to that experience, I never touched a cigarette again. I thus deprived the United Kingdom government of many years of tax revenue and the cigarette companies of some profit.

But many of my friends in China smoke and I have not been able to convince them to stop. People in China tell me that smoking is one of the Chinese freedoms. It is an act of rebellion and people do not want it taken away. If I ask my friends not to smoke over a game of cards in a bar, they would merely point to the next table where another group is inhaling.

China's anti-smoking policy is ineffective. The tax on cigarettes is far too low. Worse, many fake cigarettes are freely sold in the market that contain even more harmful ingredients. The government should seize all fake cigarettes, burn them, imprison those making them and heavily fine those selling them.

Strong, scary warnings should be printed on cigarette packets. And of course smoking should be banned in many, many places and the laws that do exist should be enforced.

In some Chinese hotels the difference between a smoking and a non-smoking room is whether or not your ashtrays will be removed during room cleaning. In United States, if a guest smokes in a non-smoking room, he or she pays maybe $100 to have the room cleaned.

It is not understood well enough by Chinese that the danger to health from tobacco smoke lingers for years. In China, smoking is banned in public buses. But during breaks at bus depots, drivers, joined by their colleagues, smoke in the vehicles. This is against all norms. Such people need to be educated about the harm smoking causes to their health and that of others.

Am I seeking to take away people's freedom? No, I am seeking to increase the freedom of those who wish to live in a smoking-free environment and to help smokers chose life over death. Yes, it is as stark as that. And now is time for the Chinese government to act.

Colin Speakman, from China Daily forum

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(China Daily 04/16/2014 page9)