Abstract
Tobacco smoking is the number one preventable cause of disease and death in China as it is globally. Indeed, the toll of smoking in China is much greater than its status as the world’s most populous country. There is a persistent and continuing need for China to implement the measures specified in the global tobacco control treaty, the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which China ratified in 2005. The theme for the 2021 WHO World No Tobacco Day focuses on the need to support smoking cessation. This article presents findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project cohort surveys in China, in comparison to ITC cohort surveys in two neighboring countries: Japan and the Republic of Korea. These findings demonstrate that smokers in China very much want to quit, but these intentions are not being translated into quit attempts, relative to smokers in Japan and the Republic of Korea. Additionally, about 80% of Chinese smokers want the Chinese government to do more to control smoking. These findings reaffirm the need for China to implement strong, evidence-based measures to reduce smoking. The objective of Healthy China 2030 to reduce deaths from non-communicable diseases by 30% can be achieved by reducing smoking prevalence from its current 26.6% to 20%, and this reduction can be achieved through strong implementation of FCTC measures.
Highlights
Smoking prevalences in the Republic of Korea are from the Republic of Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) [19]. * The smoking prevalence in Japan for 2018 may include users of heated tobacco products (HTPs), since the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHNS) asked about “smoking”, not making a clear distinction between cigarettes and HTPs
For World No Tobacco Day in 2021, World Health Organization (WHO) calls on governments to ensure that their citizens have access to brief advice, toll-free quit lines, mobile and digital cessation services, nicotine replacement therapies, and other supports for quitting
Tobacco control efforts at the city level have been reported to improve in China since that time, but that would likely have only increased the level of support among smokers for stronger tobacco control action, making any claims that the Chinese people would not support stronger policies even less valid
Summary
Achieving the Goals of Healthy China 2030 Depends on Increasing Smoking Cessation in China: Comparative Findings from the ITC Project in China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. This article presents findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project cohort surveys in China, in comparison to ITC cohort surveys in two neighboring countries: Japan and the Republic of Korea. About 80% of Chinese smokers want the Chinese government to do more to control smoking These findings reaffirm the need for China to implement strong, evidencebased measures to reduce smoking. The objective of Healthy China 2030 to reduce deaths from noncommunicable diseases by 30% can be achieved by reducing smoking prevalence from its current 26.6% to 20%, and this reduction can be achieved through strong implementation of FCTC measures. The goal of Healthy China 2030 is to reduce noncommunicable diseases (NCD) deaths by 30% This cannot be achieved without great reductions in smoking. The FCTC obligates 181 countries, including China, to implement strong tobacco control
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