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The 16th Asian Games, part of the worldwide Olympic movement and governed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), will be “going smokeless” with firm prohibitions on the sale of tobacco products and tobacco sponsorship of the Games.
The Asian Games are the second largest sports event in the world after the Summer Olympic Games.
Governed by the Olympic Council of Asia, the 16th Asian Games follows all mandates of the International Olympic Committee in which Games’ organizers are prohibited from accepting sponsorship of the Games by tobacco manufactures.
Organizers are also prohibited from allowing the sale of cigarettes or tobacco products at any athletic venue.
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Not unlike their contemporaries in other Asian cities, woman in metroes of India, including those in Mumbai run a significant risk of developing peripheral arterial disease (PAD) from secondhand smoke (SHS), an NGO Smokefree Mumbai has said in its report.
Presenting the report on Chinese women and SHS, published in the American Heart Association's Circulation (AHAC), today Smokefree Mumbai said the report found that SHS had a significant, negative impact on the health of Chinese women, who had never smoked, the risk which would, without doubt, equate to Indian women too.
The first of its kind report by the AHAC had revealed a link between exposure to SHS and an increased chance of suffering from coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). . . .
''While 97 per cent Mumbaites have voted in favour of smoke-free environment, the ramification of the ban on smoking in public on the women population, largely non-smokers, may be found as reason for contemplation,'' observed the report.
Guangzhou has prepared a tobacco control regulation which is pending approval by the city's National People's Congress standing committee.
The new regulation lists ten areas including hospitals, kindergartens, schools, and buses as tobacco-free areas and states that people smoking in these areas will be fined CNY50 and those who sell tobacco products to vulnerable groups such as teenagers and pregnant women will be fined CNY1,000. . . .
In addition, the regulation forbids tobacco manufacturers and sellers to send tobacco products as gifts
Organisers of China's national games have pledged to return 20 million yuan (HK$22.75) in sponsorship fees from tobacco companies after an official complaint, state press said on Thursday.
The pledge came after the tobacco control office of China’s Centre for Disease Control issued an open letter saying the fees violated regulations on accepting sponsorship money from tobacco companies, the Beijing Times said.
As a member of the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), China is committed to a ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship at domestic and international events, it said.
China’s four-yearly national games, the country’s own mini-Olympics, formally open on Friday in Jinan city, in eastern Shandong province.
The 20 million yuan in sponsorship revenue had been pledged by nine tobacco companies linked to the state-run Shandong Tobacco Wholesale Company, the report said.
Basketball superstar Yao Ming and famed soprano Peng Liyuan Monday became the new faces of China's anti-smoking campaign, which health officials said is still a tough task in the world's largest tobacco market.
Both Yao and Peng were not present at a meeting of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC) in Beijing, where their representatives received certificates from the association.
It is believed that they would appear in public service advertisements persuading the people not to smoke at public places or to give up the smoking habit. . . .
The CATC's anti-smoking campaign was previously supported by other Chinese celebrities including table tennis player and Olympic gold medalist Zhang Yining and actor Pu Cunxin. Pu also joined some 40 actors and actresses to launch a campaign to advocate smoking-free films.
Member states of WHO's Western Pacific region have unanimously agreed on a new action plan to tackle the huge burden of tobacco-related illness in the region. Margaret Harris Cheng reports.
To the surprise and delight of tobacco-control campaigners, a plan to operationalise the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was passed with barely a murmur of dissent at the WHO's Western Pacific regional meeting held in Hong Kong last month.
Although representatives of three of the world's biggest tobacco producers—China, the USA, and Japan—were present when the plan came up for discussion, only China voiced any misgivings about the plan. “The action plan should offer guidance—it should not be a mandatory requirement for member states”, China's representative told the meeting.
The ease with which the plan was accepted was a surprise because it is considered a radical departure from its predecessors (this is the fifth such plan for the WHO's Western Pacific region). For the first time, the plan sets out objectives for member states and a timeframe (2010—14) in which those objectives should ideally be reached. All member states are expected to attend a progress review in 2012, and be ready and willing to explain what stage they are at with tobacco control and why they have, or have not, achieved their objectives.
It was this, the setting of very specific objectives, that made China somewhat uncomfortable.
Smoking would be banned in all enclosed public venues and penalties would be increased under new draft legislation for Beijing.
Cui Xiaobo, professor of Social Medicine at the Capital Medicine University, also a tobacco control expert helping draft the anti-smoking law, said a total ban was the only practical solution for public health.
"The city's work on anti-smoking has indeed made a great achievement, thanks to the smoking regulation, effective May 1, 2008, a way to meet the country's pledge of a smoke-free Olympics. But there is still more to be done," Cui said.
Beijing is going to draft laws to ban smoking areas in all public areas, the Beijing Evening News reported.
The new draft of the legislation on smoking in public places in Beijing will be submitted to Beijing Municipal People's Congress by the end of the year, the report said.
Meanwhile, in the second half of this year, Beijing will focus on supervising the enforcement of current bans, as well as launching a campaign to help smokers quit smoking, the report said.
A LEADER of one of the teams that will enforce Shanghai's coming smoking control law wants to completely ban tobacco use inside KTV parlors, video arcades, pubs and other entertainment venues.
"The law should ensure fairness. There should be no difference in smoking control among different rooms inside a karaoke bar or elsewhere in the industry," Lan Yiming of the Shanghai Culture Market Administrative Law Enforcement Team said during a public hearing yesterday on the draft measure.
Without a blanket ban, he fears his agency and the others handling enforcement will have a difficult time persuading people to stop smoking in one area when they see people lighting up in another nearby.
Lan was among the 20-plus people brought together by Shanghai People's Congress to give their views on the issue. Law makers may amend the draft based on what they heard yesterday as they continue discussion of the proposal. Their goal is to enact the measure by the end of the year, well in advance of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, which starts on May 1.
Under the plan, smoking would be banned inside schools, hospitals and public places such as cinemas, museums, banks, malls, airports, railway and bus terminals and many privately owned businesses. Smoking would be allowed only in special areas in bars, restaurants and entertainment venues.
SHANGHAI legislators should completely ban smoking inside karaoke bars, restaurants, pubs and other entertainment venues, suggests the head of the city's cultural industry watchdog.
There should be no smoking rooms allowed inside these venues because a partial ban would make it difficult to enforce properly, said Lan Yiming, vice director of Shanghai Culture Market Administrative Law Enforcement Team, today.
He called on lawmakers to incorporate his suggestions into Shanghai's first anti-smoking laws due to take effect in January.
Five days' detention for people who defy the smoking ban at indoor public places or fire-risk areas has been ordered by the Ministry of Public Security.
The move is part of a 50-day campaign to prepare a safe environment for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1.
The draconian detention measure in a country that boasts the world's largest smoking population became a talking point after a man caught smoking in a shopping mall in Chongqing was jailed for five days by police on Saturday.
(Fortune Small Business) -- Want to plunge into the modern American melting pot? Try the offices of Social Smoke, a hookah manufacturer in Arlington, Texas.
Here a silk Persian rug and a piece of Arabic calligraphy, The 99 Names of Allah, share wall space with a signed photo of a Willie Nelson impersonator. There's a Chinese green tea set in the conference room, and Mom's homemade enchiladas are chilling in the fridge. Abrahim Nadimi, director of sales and marketing, is tapping a bobblehead doll of Dwight from the TV show The Office. "Welcome to the 21st century," he says. No kidding.
Social Smoke is growing gangbusters, and its success says a lot about the new international, cross-cultural landscape of American small business. It is run by Abrahim's father, Sayyid Nadimi, 51, who emigrated from Iran before the 1979 revolution, and his U.S.-born sons.
The Nadimis are tapping into America's deepening love affair with an ancient Middle Eastern tradition: hookah smoking. The company makes "authentic" Iranian and Egyptian hookahs in China, having tried and mostly failed to source them in the Middle East. Yet Sayyid is anxiously watching developments in Iran -- and praying the U.S. government will soon let him sell his product back to his homeland. Social Smoke is one of the largest and fastest-growing suppliers in the international hookah market.
A comprehensive draft law aims to prevent smoking from becoming a bad habit for teenagers in Hangzhou.
Under the draft, anyone caught selling cigarettes to juveniles will be fined up to 2,000 yuan ($294).
Some young smokers and tobacco sellers, however, view the draft as ineffective.
Lan Yuhong, a 22-year-old senior at the Beijing Sports University who has smoked for five years, said his first cigarette was stolen from his dad.
"Most of my smoking friends got cigarettes from their families. Can they ban smoking at home?" Lan asked.
The draft law also stipulates that tobacco sellers have the power to ask consumers for identification.
Police in Chongqing have detained a man for five days for smoking in a wholesale market, a move they hope sets an example for others who may be tempted to break a new law.
"Before we would give them a warning or a fine, but we found that didn't work well," said police officer Xu Yuhang, who caught the 56-year-old man smoking in an evacuation stairway on Saturday.
The man, surnamed Zhao, is the first person detained under the new law, which bans people from smoking in areas considered to be a fire hazard.
"I didn't know I would be detained for smoking," Zhao said. "I regret it now."
Ruyan Group Holdings Ltd, the inventor of electronic cigarettes, hailed a US regulatory agency's warning against other brands of e-cigarettes as good news in its fight against copycats.
Scott Fraser, vice president of Ruyan Group, said the announcement by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will help Ruyan protect its intellectual property rights to its e-cigarette brand.
The FDA on July 22 reported that a laboratory test of e-cigarette samples of other brands found that they contained carcinogens and toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze.
The two American brands tested by FDA are Njoy and Smoking Everywhere. The former has been named in an IPR lawsuit initiated by Ruyn Group. . . .
"The FDA is doing its job. They are concerned about consumer safety, and we support that," Fraser said.
"As the inventor, we also consider the safety of customers the top issue, and we are always testing our product," he said. "We understand the test results (of the other brands). The two copycats infringed on intellectual property. It is not surprising." . . .
The company has filed eight lawsuits against copycat factories operating mostly in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. Many of the companies also sell counterfeit MP3s and cell phones, Ruyan has alleged.
Ruyan holds 16 patents on its e-cigarette.