Draft adds anti-smoking measures

Beijing is considering banning cigarette sales on World No Tobacco Day each year, and it proposes adding to the list of no-smoking areas, under a draft regulation to be published this month to solicit public opinion.

Cigarette sellers in the Chinese capital would have to suspend sales on May 31, World No Tobacco Day, under the draft regulation.

The proposal will be ready for public comment from Friday until the end of April.

Aside from the ban on cigarette selling, the draft also proposes adding to no-smoking areas by including outdoor areas of hospitals, universities and places where most people are juveniles.

Ticket offices and waiting lounges at bus and railway stations where smoking is not explicitly banned in the city's anti-smoking regulation are also included in the no-smoking areas in the draft.

Beijing's current anti-smoking regulation, which was introduced in 1996, was last revised in 2008 ahead of the Olympics.

Ying Songnian, a legal professor at China University of Political Science and Law and director of the drafting panel, said the regulation would balance the right of smoking for smokers and the right of health for non-smokers.

China, the world's top tobacco producer and consumer, has about 350 million smokers, 35 percent of the world's cigarette smokers. The country also has 740 million people exposed to secondhand smoke.