Today is World No Tobacco Day

Today is World No Tobacco Day, and according to a joint study done by Shanghai city and Fudan University public health researchers found that 82.8% of Shanghai people in a survey said they supported the idea of smoking/non-smoking sections in restaurants, while around 70% of restaurant managers said they were hoping to either completely ban smoking or else try sections. However, in reality only 6.1% of restaurants have banned smoking, and only 24.2% of restaurants have non-smoking sections.

On this 20th World No Tobacco Day, we fondly recall the time we were on a bus headed towards Tibet. There was a man smoking in the middle of the bus, and when a girl complained about all the smoke, he said to her 不抽烟的对国家没有贡献, or "those who do not smoke do not contribute to the country." We can't remember if he meant it facetiously or not. The older we get, the more we realize that some of the world's stupidity is real.

But let's get to the facts: there are 350 million smokers and 540 million second-hand smokers in China (including 150 million children under the age of 15). The problem of second-hand smoke is worse, as one might guess, in some of the inner provinces, like Gansu and Qinghai, where 60 percent of people are regularly breathing in second-hand.

Don't get us wrong, we smoke too, but one of the great things about having non-smoking restaurants is that you're forced to allay your cravings, and for anyone who's tried to quit, you know how much that test of willpower means in the battle against nicotine. It seems, from the survey results, that the will is there. But will it happen?

Photo from news.163.com