UNICEF welcomes NPC decision on tobacco advertising & celebrates city of Beijing regulations on public smoking

Beijing 29 May, 2015 –The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) welcomes the City of Beijing's new Regulations on Smoking Control in Public Places that will begin on 1^st June. This is a great way to do something very concrete for children to celebrate International Children's Day.

This new regulation comes just after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress impressive new advertising law which restricts adverting on tobacco which will improve the survival and health of children.

Tobacco use causes more than 1 million deaths in China every year. The number of deaths each year is projected to increase to more than 3 million by 2050, if current smoking rates are not reduced. Most people suffering the deaths projected to occur in the year 2050 and beyond will be the babies, children and young people of today.

The recently adopted advertising law, prohibits the use of tobacco ads on all mass media and public places, and also in order to protect the child health, the law specifically prohibits on any form of tobacco advertisements to children.

The law prohibits the use of advertisements and public service announcements of other products or services to publicize the name, trade mark, package, or design of tobacco product or content. Tobacco product manufactures or operators are also not allowed to use the name, trade mark, package, or design of tobacco product or content of such kind in its announcements for change of address, change of name, or recruitment, among others. 

UNICEF is greatly concerned about the impact of tobacco on children and young people. Pro-smoking messages, delivered through marketing and the media, can reach very young children and influence attitudes and behaviors around smoking. A staggering 86% of 5 to 6 years old children in China could identify at least 1 cigarette brand logo, according to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2013^*. 

Most smokers take up the habit when they are young.^** Therefore, preventing young people from taking up smoking is one of the most effective means of reducing smoking rates in the long-term, and providing lifelong protection against the health hazards of tobacco addiction.

Children are more sensitive to second-hand smoke than adults: children breathe more frequently and they inhale more air from the surrounding environment relative to body volume. Also, infants and young children tend to spend longer time indoors, which increases their exposure time to the second-hand smoke surrounding them. The increased dose and duration of exposure to tobacco smoke impacts negatively children's health, whether in public places or at home.

More than 700 million people are routinely exposed to secondhand smoke. Rates of exposure to secondhand smoke among women at home, and by extension their children, in China are amongst the highest in the world.^*** Like tobacco use itself, exposure to secondhand smoke causes a range of serious health problems. A review of the Chinese literature^**** revealed that second hand smoke is associated with major causes of under 5 mortality: low birth weight is up to 3.4 times more frequent in pregnant women exposed to second hand smoke, children of smoking fathers had up to 4.9 times higher chance of being born with a birth defect, and risk of pneumonia was 5.2 times higher of children exposed to second hand smoke.

By making all indoor public places and many outdoor public places smoke-free, the new Regulations in Beijing will make an enormous contribution to reducing the health impact of exposure to second-hand smoke on women and their children. UNICEF particularly welcomes the provisions of the Regulations which will require outdoor spaces at schools, kindergartens, and maternal and child hospitals and health facilities to be smoke-free.

^* Borzekowski DLG, Cohen JE. International reach of tobacco marketing among young children. Paediatrics, 2013.

^** Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) China 2010 Country Report.

^*** Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) China 2010 Country Report; US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Current Tobacco Use and Secondhand Smoke Exposure Among Women of Reproductive Age — 14 Countries, 2008–2010, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), November 2, 2012 / 61 (43); 877-882; China Ministry of Health, China Report on the Health Hazards of Smoking, May 2012.

^**** Liu Rui, Scherpbier RW. WHO, 2010. Systematic review of the Chinese literature: second-hand smoke as risk factor of multiple selected diseases in Chinese children under 5 years old.