This Day, That Year

Item from May 12, 1996, in China Daily: The free reign of cigarette smokers is being choked off as a batch of municipal bans begins to snuff out smoking in public places throughout the country.

China is the world’s No 1 consumer of cigarettes, with smokers accounting for 34.9 percent of the population ages 15 years and older.

In March, Shanghai became the latest city to ban smoking in indoor public venues, workplaces and on public transit.

So far, nearly 20 cities have issued regulations on tobacco control, which suggests previous attempts to ban the habit ended in failure.

A national draft legislation on tobacco control in public places was put forward in 2014, but it is still under discussion, according to the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control.

China has more than 300 million smokers, and 740 million are often exposed to secondhand smoke.

Almost 44 percent of the world’s cigarettes are smoked in China, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. More than 1 million people die in the country each year from tobacco-related diseases.

In 2014, the economic losses associated with tobacco use in China totaled 350 billion yuan ($51 billion), according to a recent report published by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Program.