China has a smoking problem, and Professor Liming Li from Beijing’s Peking University doesn’t pull his punches, saying: “About two-thirds of young Chinese men become smokers, and most start before they are 20. Unless they stop, about half of them will eventually be killed by their habit.”
Zhengming Chen, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University, adds: “About 40% of the world’s tobacco is consumed by people in China, almost exclusively by men. A substantial increase in cigarette prices and effective package warnings could save tens of millions of lives.”
This is because smoking increases the risks of 56 diseases, and kills more than one million adults in China each year from 22 different causes, according to new research from Oxford Population Health, UK, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, both in Beijing.
