Smoking ban in public places introduced for 300 million Chinese
Millions of Chinese nicotine addicts will be unable to light up in bars, restaurants and even hospitals from Sunday. But few believe this will make them healthier.
At the Hongta cigarette factory in Yuxi, the heartland of the Chinese tobacco industry, smoking is a serious business.The largest tobacco production facility in Asia, it makes 90 billion cigarettes a year - enough to satisfy the 20-a-day habit of more than 12 million smokers.
Its 4,000 employees, dressed in identical khaki uniforms, work in a spotless, windowless environment, aided by state-of-the-art robots and machines that can roll out 16,000 cigarettes a minute.
Ironically, the factory floor at the Yuxi plant is one of the few places inChina where smoking is not permitted. But from Sunday May 1, the country's 300 million plus smokers will find their freedom to light up anywhere severely curtailed, when Beijing introduces its most rigorous nationwide anti-smoking legislation yet.
In a move the World Health Organisation (WHO) describes as "groundbreaking", smoking will be banned from a list of public places that includes bars, restaurants, hotels, bus and train waiting rooms and museums.
Unlike in Europe and the USA, people will still be allowed to smoke in most workplaces. But for China, which is home to almost one-third of the world's smokers and produces more cigarettes than anywhere else, the ban will still be a huge test of the government's resolve to fight both its own addiction to tobacco taxes and its desire to wean its population off the weed.
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