China Tobacco Struggles To Survive Increasingly Stringent Tobacco Control

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By TobaccoChina Online

With the decline of the overall growth rate of the domestic economy and the increasingly severe tobacco control, the growth rate of the production and marketing scale of China’s tobacco industry has slowed down, and marketing channels are strictly limited. Consequently, public opinion of the industry has become more difficult with both predictable and unpredictable risk volatility.

As the idea of healthy living spreads, smoking controls and quitting have become the trend of the times. In July 2019, China’s State Council issued three white papers describing the Health China Campaign. One of them is entitled Opinions on the Implementation of the Health China Campaign and Health China Campaign (2019-2030) and proposed to implement 15 special actions on tobacco control, cancer prevention, and smoking cessation. The campaign, launched in major cities across China, has carried out a series of targeted tobacco control steps all over the country.

The campaign has set an ambitious goal of reducing the smoking rate of people over 15 years old by 24.5% by 2022 and by and additional 20% by 2030. The new comprehensive smoke-free laws and regulations will cover over 80% of the Chinese population.

To achieve the goal of tobacco control, many large and medium-sized cities have launched a number of the most stringent tobacco control orders in the history of the country. More than 20 cities now, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, have issued their own stringent local regulations against smoking in public places. Meanwhile, smoke-free city legislation is also upgrading.

In Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, smoking is totally forbidden indoors, with plans to forbid smoking in outdoor places like the beach. In Shenzhen, anti-smoking measures will be expanded to within five meters outside public places, where smoking is totally banned, like at high-speed rail platforms. In Hangzhou, the 2019 anti-smoking measures that covered some public spaces have been expanded to the entire city, and e-cigarette use will be included as part of the smoking prohibition laws. Wuhan, the city that’s been hit the hardest by Covid-19, also started and awareness campaign for smoking controls in January 2020. If not for the sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the tobacco control measures would have been staged in more cities.

It is worth mentioning that the e-cigarettes that have always been excluded from the supervision of tobacco products are not exempt from these new measures. Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai have clearly stated that e-cigarettes will be included in the local tobacco control regulations, and Beijing is considering doing it too.

As the tobacco control movement revs up, the tobacco industry, including smokers, has lost the right to offer any explanations or even to have a voice. With the implementation of various “smoking control orders”, public smoking rooms in airports, railway stations, bus stations, shopping malls, and some places of entertainment are forcibly closed. On the one hand, smokers fail to find places to smoke legally. On the other hand, social conflicts caused by smoking continue to escalate with smokers and non-smokers finding themselves in two opposing camps.

For instance, in February, most communities in Beijing implemented home quarantine and epidemic prevention. As people rarely go out, neighborhood disputes caused by smoking increase. According to the smoking control regulations in Beijing, if an individual smokes in a place where smoking is prohibited, the municipal or district/county health and family planning administrative department will issue a warning and may impose a fine of RMB50. If the person refuses to make corrections, he/she will be fined RMB200. Those who throw away cigarette butts in random places shall be punished by the law enforcement department of urban management in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of urban planning and environmental management.

In 2017, an old man in a residential building in Zhengzhou, Henan province, drew the ire of his neighbors because of his smoking in the elevator lobby. While a neighbor was chastising him, the old man died of a sudden heart attack. This case became very well known and caused widespread public concern. The final judgment of the court exempted the neighbor from any liability for trying to prevent smoking, affirming that the behavior that safeguards public interest should take precedence, which also led to more such cases. Since then, similar disputes often take place each month in different cities.

Many cities’ smoking control laws and regulations stipulate that all areas are public except the residents’ home, and the corridor of residential buildings also belongs to indoor areas, so it is also prohibited to smoke there. Finding a place to smoke has become a big issue for smokers, even when it comes to superstars. In 2019, actors Sun Honglei and Wang Yuan, were strongly criticized by the media and the audience for smoking at dinner with friends, and they had to apologize publicly.

The construction of proper smoking environment was originally proposed by the Chinese tobacco industry to facilitate solving the urban management issues, such as cigarette butts disposal and second-hand smoking. Piloted in Shenzhen for over a year with good results, it has been expanded to other cities but is strongly opposed by the tobacco controllers, who believe the measure is actually designed by the tobacco industry to provide a better smoking environment for smokers. So, even though it is very effective, this campaign has to come to a standstill.

In an environment where “smoking is public enemy No. 1”, the tobacco industry seemingly can’t do anything right. “Annual sales volume” and “cigarette tax profits” have become sensitive topics in China, as they always draw criticism in the media. All the initiatives and explanations of Chinese tobacco firms is misinterpreted by the media, whipping up every-multiplying frenzied crises in the court of public opinion.

The outbreak of Covid-19 in January 2020 also played a role in accelerating the tobacco control campaign. The epidemic has put an emphasis on people’s health. On the one hand, the government is expected to take more drastic measures in the public health domain, so local tobacco control laws and regulations are likely to become even more stringent. On the other hand, the epidemic also resulted in a strong demand for vaping and HNB products.

If China’s tobacco industry is interested in sustainable development, it should seriously consider the ramifications of as well as the response to this increasingly strict anti-tobacco environment, while further increasing investment in science and technology.