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Clifford Coonan

432 days to go

It was a ciggie break the construction workers at the National Stadium, centrepiece of next year's Olympic Games, will remember for a long time.

Dozens of security guards with metal pipes beat up the builders who were having a fag. No smoking here. A shocking reaction to what seems a mild breach of protocol, which underlines the occasionally fanatical approach to the Olympic project, as well as the low esteem in which construction workers are held.

But it also shows the  government is very serious about having a smoke-free Olympics next year and has issued a raft of new regulations to back this up.

Under the new rules, there is absolutely no smoking at all 37 Olympic sites, dozens of training facilities, the Olympic village and a phalanx of hotels, restaurants and entertainment areas associated with the competition.

The first smoke-free Olympic Games were in Barcelona in 1992 and the organisers of the Beijing Games are very keen to keep up this tradition. The new rules, as well as the appalling mistreatment of the building workers, shows how serious this intention is.

Changing  the attitude to smoking looks an uphill battle, even if goodwill for projects relating to the Olympic Games seems boundless.

China makes and consumes more tobacco than any other country in the world, and is an incredibly cigarette-friendly environment. Smoking is a central part of mainland  culture.

There are 350 million smokers in China who can puff away with impunity pretty much anywhere they like.

The ban on smoking on public transport is regularly ignored, restaurants rarely offer a non-smoking option, and people still light up happily in hospital wards and schools. Offering cigarettes around is a crucial part of meeting and greeting, packets of cigarettes are handed out to mourners at funerals, and handing around top-brand ciggies is a staple at weddings.

Ever more restricted in how they sell cigarettes elsewhere in the world, multinational companies are looking to China for growth.

Plus, there is strong political opposition to restricting smoking. One senior tobacco industry representative, Zhang Baozhen, pointed out how the old Soviet Union had riots when cigarettes were not available, and said widening a smoking ban could lead to something similar happening on mainland streets.

At the National People's Congress in March, delegates from areas where tobacco is grown, or where cigarettes are manufactured, vociferously attacked the anti-smoking lobby, saying they were a threat to stability.

There are strong fiscal reasons for keeping the ashtrays brimming. Tax revenues from cigarettes pour 242 billion yuan a year into the coffers of the  government, which researchers at Beijing University calculate would be enough to pay for 15 Olympic Games. The 1.3 trillion yuan tobacco industry employs 60 million people in growing, producing and selling the cursed weed.

Pressure for change is growing, and the first step is creating awareness about the dangers of smoking.

This week, the Ministry of Health issued a report to coincide with World No Tobacco Day.

It said 100,000 Chinese die annually from diseases associated with passive smoking, while more than half a billion suffer from the smoke exhaled from cigarettes. Among passive smoking victims, about 180 million were children younger than 15.

More than half the population in 20 provinces across China were exposed to passive smoking while the figures in the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Jilin, as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, were above 60 per cent, the report said.

Only 35 per cent of respondents to its survey were aware of the dangers of passive smoking. Their suggestion was for the government to ban smoking in public places.

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) pulls no punches in describing the damage smoking is doing in China.

'The death toll from diseases associated with tobacco is around one million Chinese annually, a figure that is expected to increase to 2.2 million per year by 2020 if smoking rates remain unchanged,' said WHO's China representative, Henk Bekedam.

He reckons smoking costs 40 billion yuan in medical charges every year and emphasised that something must be done to change attitudes to smoking and reduce the number of addicts.

'Fighting tobacco is not easy, especially when there is a state monopoly on tobacco production. There will always be huge opposition to tobacco control in China. Political commitment is needed across every element of the Chinese government,' he said.

And Olympic stadium building workers should probably think about quitting the habit.

A fight to the death

China faces an uphill battle in its efforts to have a  smoke-free Olympics

The number of people on the  mainland who smoke: 350m



Smoke at your peril  in Olympic venues