<strong>China: NPC Deputy Presses for Tighter Regulation of Tobacco Industry</strong>

Source from:  Global Times 03/05/2013

National People's Congress (NPC) deputy and anti-smoking crusader Huang Xihua has vowed to again submit proposals urging tighter regulation of the tobacco industry on the eve of the top legislature's opening session. Huang has lobbied for tighter tobacco control at the past four NPC sessions in a bid to reduce the government's dependence on revenue from the industry.

Huang, director of the Huizhou Tourism Bureau in South China's Guangdong Province, will propose 30 reforms, including introducing more graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and urging stricter enforcement of smoking bans in public areas, seven years after such regulations were introduced.

Huang said that little progress had been made since China ratified the International Tobacco Control framework agreement in 2005, which ruled the country should stub out smoking in public areas such as restaurants and buses by 2011.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the opening day of the NPC's session, Huang questioned whether the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration should remain part of the government's anti-smoking lobby group.

Huang's proposals have already won early support from fellow NPC deputies, including Zhong Nanshan, a renowned respiratory diseases expert who helped China battle its 2003 SARS epidemic.

China has more than 350 million smokers, more than 26 percent of its total population, according to the China Population and Development Research Center. Enditem