Smoking – A health time-bomb in China
A special news programme on China’s smoking problem was broadcast on CNN last night. Experts in community medicine expressed their concern on the cost, both economic and health, incurred by smoking in China. I found this programme very relevant to the AL Biology curriculum and spent a few minutes on browsing the CNN website in a hope that the online version of the programme could be located and would be shown in the class. To my disappointment, the online version of the programme was not available and so I switched to BBC website and found a news archive related to this issue.
The archive is a report of a scientific research on health cost of smoking in China conducted by scientists from the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University. The research predicts that one-third of all young men in China will die from smoking related diseases and millions will be killed if they refuse to give up the habit. The medical cost and economic cost due to the loss of human capital are enormous. How much resource can a developing country like China, already plagued by problems of rural poverty, spare for defusing the smoking time-bomb?
Smoking as a community health burden is not unique in China. It is also a common problem in many Asian countries. With a lax restriction on tobacco trade and tobacco related advertisement, these countries become the last and major revenue centre of tobacco manufacturers, already face a heavy tax and tighter ban on advertisement in most Western countries. Solving the problem requires the commitment of substantial political will from the officials and effective anti-smoking education at all levels of society.
Here in Hong Kong, the legislation on the ban of smoking in restaurants and night clubs invites serious opposition from their owners and staff working in these places. I am pessimistic on the successful legislation of the ban as the employment opportunity of those working in eating and entertainment establishment means too much to politicians in the looming ‘jobless recovery’ in Hong Kong and may even overrride the demand for better public health.
Fore details of the news, please refer to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1493887.stm
For video archive, please refer to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/215000/video/_217628_smokersmovie_vi.ram
The archive is a report of a scientific research on health cost of smoking in China conducted by scientists from the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University. The research predicts that one-third of all young men in China will die from smoking related diseases and millions will be killed if they refuse to give up the habit. The medical cost and economic cost due to the loss of human capital are enormous. How much resource can a developing country like China, already plagued by problems of rural poverty, spare for defusing the smoking time-bomb?
Smoking as a community health burden is not unique in China. It is also a common problem in many Asian countries. With a lax restriction on tobacco trade and tobacco related advertisement, these countries become the last and major revenue centre of tobacco manufacturers, already face a heavy tax and tighter ban on advertisement in most Western countries. Solving the problem requires the commitment of substantial political will from the officials and effective anti-smoking education at all levels of society.
Here in Hong Kong, the legislation on the ban of smoking in restaurants and night clubs invites serious opposition from their owners and staff working in these places. I am pessimistic on the successful legislation of the ban as the employment opportunity of those working in eating and entertainment establishment means too much to politicians in the looming ‘jobless recovery’ in Hong Kong and may even overrride the demand for better public health.
Fore details of the news, please refer to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1493887.stm
For video archive, please refer to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/215000/video/_217628_smokersmovie_vi.ram
posted by K W Ho @ 1:30 PM
1 Comments:
I like this posting and you obviously wrote it with heart. As I told you before, I considered writing about this. How convenient it is to have copied and pasted it onto mine! And I did so already for my students. Thousand thanks!
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