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China Exclusive: Campaigners call for tobacco advertising ban

(Xinhua)    19:48, June 09, 2014
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Health professionals and tobacco control experts in China have called for tobacco advertising to be fully outlawed as the draft amendment to the Advertising Law failed to stipulate the ban explicitly.

At a debriefing conference in Beijing on Monday, campaign organizers read a letter drafted to the national legislative body, calling for a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising in the amendment.

Scholars, health and legal professionals and tobacco control experts jointly signed the letter.

The draft amendment was reviewed at an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday, and will be submitted to the legislative body after further revisions.

According to the draft, tobacco advertisement is not allowed in radio, movie, television, video, newspapers, journals, books, electronic publications, mobile communication networks and on the Internet. Tobacco advertising is also banned in waiting rooms, theaters, meeting halls, sports gymnasiums and stadiums, libraries, cultural halls, parks, hospitals, schools, and on public transport. Also, tobacco advertisement should not involve names and images of minors.

Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), said the wording has its loopholes, which may be used by tobacco companies.

"The Children's Palace, for example, is not included, but obviously tobacco advertising there is inappropriate and should also be banned," he said.

A Children's Palace is an educational facility where children are enrolled for extracurricular activities, such as chess and drawing clubs.

China signed the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003 and it became effective in 2006. It requires signed parties to "comprehensively ban all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship."

The current Advertising Law, effective from 1995, does not include such a ban, which should be stipulated in the amendment, Liang said.

The amendment, however, failed to "comprehensively" cover "all" advertising of any kind, as required by the FCTC, he said.

Wu Yiqun, deputy director of Beijing-based non-government organization ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development, said tobacco advertising has a huge negative psychological impact on the public, especially on teenagers.

According to a report released by the China CDC on May 28, 6.9 percent of Chinese junior school students smoke and 48.5 percent of students between 13 and 15 years old had seen a tobacco advertisement over the previous month. In a survey conducted of children aged five and six, 85 percent of Chinese kids can identify with at least one cigarette brand, ranking it first place in the six surveyed countries, namely China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil.

"It took 20 years before the Advertising Law was amended, it may take another 20 years if we fail to include an explicit tobacco advertising ban in the law this time," Wu said.

(Editor:Wu Yanping、Bianji)

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