China Increased Taxes on Tobacco

At the end of last week Ministry of Finance told that China increases the wholesale tax rate for cigarettes to 11% from current 5%. The law came into action on Sunday and it aims to reduce number of smokers in the entire country. In past several years the country implemented more anti-smoking measures despite strong

Smoking Ban in Beijing

Authorities in Beijing, the capital of China, want to introduce a smoking ban in all indoor public spaces, thus smokers will have to seek other places to light up. Also cigarettes will be banned from advertising in magazines, movies, newspapers and public transport. Data shows that today in China there are around 300 million smokers.

Chinese Passengers Smoked in Airplane Despite Ban

Recently a group of passengers told that they were on-lookers of a case when a budget airline did not stop passengers from smoking their cheapest cigarettes during a flight. The talk is about passengers from China United Airlines (CUA) flight 5216 who told they saw people smoking cigarettes in the toilet during the flight from

Hong Kong can go further to quit smoking, says WHO official

Meeting the recommended international standard for tobacco tax is not enough for Hong Kong - it can and should go further, a World Health Organisation official said ahead of an expected increase in the cost of smoking in Wednesday's budget.

Dr Carmen Audera-Lopez, acting team leader of the WHO's tobacco-free initiative in the Western Pacific region, said an expected increase in tobacco tax would only make up for inflation since the last rise in 2011.

Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah is expected to increase the flat HK$34 duty on a pack of 20 cigarettes by between HK$4 and HK$8, meaning that the tax rate would be above the WHO recommended rate of 70 per cent on all brands, an increase of between 11 and 24 per cent. Mainland brands like Double Happiness sell for about HK$43 per pack, with international brands such as Camel costing HK$50 to HK$52.

"The Hong Kong government has the capacity to go higher." Audera-Lopez said. "The suggested tax increase is only a moderate one and considering that it has not been increased since 2011, it is probably just compensating for inflation."

For tax rises to work, she said, they must be regular and make the habit less affordable. Encouraging governments to increase tobacco taxes will be the theme of World No Tobacco Day on May 31.

Anti-smoking campaigners had pressed the government to go much further, with some suggesting the duty be doubled.

Lam Tai-hing, chair professor of community medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said experiences from other regions showed that drastic tax measures were needed to make an impact. Doubling tax could lead to a fall of one percentage point in the proportion of the population who smoked, he said.

Beijing in Top Smoke-Free Cities in China

A survey conducted in China shows that during past 12 months in Beijing there was significantly dropped number of smokers. Chinese Association on Tobacco Control made a poll in 800 colleges and universities. Today Beijing ranks number two in list of smoke-free cities while in 2011 it ranked number 23. Xu Guihua, deputy director of