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Surprising Science

How to Get Chinese Smokers to Stop

China is tobacco’s biggest stronghold. After years of working in vain, anti-smoking activists are trying a new tack in China: using economic rather than health and morality arguments.
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Why do so few take China’s campaign against cigarettes seriously? The very government promising to crack down on tobacco use is the owner and chief beneficiary of the $93 billion industry, writes Willian Wan. “China’s struggle over smoking embodies a key dilemma facing its government: balancing the state’s obsession with economic growth with the appearance of looking out for the public interest.”

What’s the Big Idea?

After years of working in vain, anti-smoking activists say they must move their fight away from simplistic arguments over health and morality and into the arena that matters most in modern China: economics. The  head of the Tobacco Control Office and some of China’s most prominent economists, plus international experts, have produced an attention-grabbing study on the social cost of tobacco. “Factoring in the cost of health-care and lost productivity from dying smokers, the report argued that the long-term expenses of tobacco outweigh its short-term gains.”

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