China's inertia on tobacco control 'promises costly tsunami of illness'

Mainland tobacco control campaigners liken their battles for more obvious and graphic health hazard warnings on cigarette packs and a ban on the promotion of tobacco products on social media sites to disarming a ticking time bomb.

Tobacco is recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the major risk factors in chronic, non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and lung disease, which account for 85 per cent of deaths on the mainland.

More than 300 million mainlanders smoke, with another 740 million people regularly exposed to second-hand smoke, official figures show.

The deputy director of the National Office of Tobacco Control, Jiang Yuan, said the prevalence of tobacco use on the mainland was shown in side effects such as people having strokes at younger ages and a steady increase in the number of children with asthma.

"Without effective control of tobacco use, by 2030 chronic disease will increase dramatically, like a tsunami," she said this week, ahead of today's World No Tobacco Day.

The WHO says tobacco is responsible for a million deaths on the mainland every year and a quarter of the men who die from tobacco-related non-communicable diseases are younger than 60, resulting in major economic implications for an ageing society such as China.

"If China cannot effectively control the tobacco use of current smokers or prevent a rising number of young smokers, China will face a heavy burden of non-communicable disease," said Professor Yang Gonghuan , former director of the National Office of Tobacco Control and a professor of public health at the Peking Union Medial College.