From danwei.org
Three-hundred and fifty thousand people smoke cigarettes in China. If those smokers enter Beijing, they'll have to obstain, according to a new smoking ban that prohibits lighting up in restaurants, offices, bathrooms, hotels, hostels, resorts, and other public places. The new restrictions arrive less than 200 days before the Olympic Games in support of "Smoke-free Olympics."
A previous ban on smoking in Bejing restaurants was met with empty tables and declining business, according to an article in China Daily.
"We figure that, if we're going to die, at least we're going to die honorably," said Guo Xiaodong, the deputy director of Meizhou Dongpo, a restaurant chain in China. "We are happy to be the first Chinese restaurant in Beijing to ban smoking, but we may not be able to afford the drop in customers," he added. "At least we'll be remembered for championing the cause" (http://chinadaily.com/olympics/2008-01/18/content_6404823.htm).
With 100,000 people dying each year from second-hand smoke, and the largest smoking-related deaths in the world, China could save hundreds of lives with this ban, if it is enforced.
Three-hundred and fifty thousand people smoke cigarettes in China. If those smokers enter Beijing, they'll have to obstain, according to a new smoking ban that prohibits lighting up in restaurants, offices, bathrooms, hotels, hostels, resorts, and other public places. The new restrictions arrive less than 200 days before the Olympic Games in support of "Smoke-free Olympics."
A previous ban on smoking in Bejing restaurants was met with empty tables and declining business, according to an article in China Daily.
"We figure that, if we're going to die, at least we're going to die honorably," said Guo Xiaodong, the deputy director of Meizhou Dongpo, a restaurant chain in China. "We are happy to be the first Chinese restaurant in Beijing to ban smoking, but we may not be able to afford the drop in customers," he added. "At least we'll be remembered for championing the cause" (http://chinadaily.com/olympics/2008-01/18/content_6404823.htm).
With 100,000 people dying each year from second-hand smoke, and the largest smoking-related deaths in the world, China could save hundreds of lives with this ban, if it is enforced.
According to a BBC News report, smoking could eventually kill a third of all young Chinese men (few women smoke in China) if they don't quit (http://news.bbc.co.uj/2/hi/health/216998.stm).
In the survey on tobacco use in China, featured in the BBC report, two-thirds of Chinese people think smoking does little or no harm, 60% think it does not cause lung cancer, and 96% don't know that it causes heart disease. It appears that smoking control education is needed in addition to the smoking ban.
4 comments:
I love blog....neat, and interesting!
Well what a bummer. Tobacco is still a cash crop in North Carolina. We need the revenue! It's a sad state of affairs. Every time some smoker coughs up a little blood, they suddenly start getting serious about quitting. Their sudden health epiphany costs the State of North Carolina revenues. We need that money. It's a documented fact that the best way to stop a bleeder is to cauterize it. So it stands to reason, that if your lungs are bleeding, the best way to cauterize those bleeders is to SMOKE MORE!
And right here in the heart of tobacco country I see more and more restaurants posting their foul little no smoking signs. You know, if they're not going to help stimulate the economy by allowing their customers to smoke, they really just need to pack it up and move to Manhattan. Manhattan, Manhattan..a place filled with self-righteous metrosexuals who will drone on and on about those foul cigarettes while they snort a few lines of coke over their lunch break. I guess the second-hand thing is the real rub. People who don't smoke feel intruded upon when I blow my cloud of North Carolina's economic power to waft through the room, soaking into their precious cocaine-only sinuses and taint the fresh marbled rye they're about to stuff into their greasy maw.
Maybe it's rude. I don't know, and I can't say that I really care. Would I be offended by second-hand cocaine dust? Nah. I'd enjoy it with my Marlboro and happily eat my cocaine dusted sandwich, and thank you for being considerate enough for dusting the room with your coke.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Take the 30-day challenge. Go buy a carton of cigarettes (manufactured in North Carolina) and smoke a pack a day for one full month. If at the end of that month, you still believe those cigarettes are more damaging to your health then the carbon monoxide pumping out of every vehicle exhaust in the country, more damaging than the chemicals sprayed on every item you stuff in your mouth, worse than the chemicals in your favorite soft-drink that will peel the paint off your beloved BMW, worse than the tumour you're going to get from your cell phone, and worse than the recycled air in every building in the world, well go ahead. Complain about the secondhand smoke I just puffed in your face. And while you’re busy complaining to me, take a few minutes and complain to every corporation in the world for polluting your entire planet with toxic waste that is also helping you to the grave a little quicker than you had originally planned.
You keep your cigarette smoke, along with the butane, acetone, formaldehyde, Polonium 233, etc., that comes along with it, to yourself, and I'll stop driving my BMW while snorting cocaine while eating with my greasy maw fresh marble rye (although I don't really like rye, so will change that to multi-grain vegan). Deal, my NC brother?
I think this is just one more step that China is taking to become more "westernized."
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