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January 17th, 2013:

severely lacking !

Policy Address 2013

(vi) Tobacco Control

61. To safeguard public health, the Government has been adopting a

multi-pronged approach comprising legislation, taxation, publicity, education,

enforcement and provision of smoking cessation services to reduce smoking and

public exposure to second-hand smoke.  After our sustained and continuous

efforts in tobacco control, the prevalence of daily smokers aged 15 and above in

Hong Kong had been reduced steadily from 23.3% in early 1980s to 11.1% in

2010.  We will closely monitor the effectiveness of our tobacco control

measures, including the trend of smoking prevalence, sale figures of cigarettes,

demand for smoking cessation services, enforcement of tobacco control

legislation, public acceptability and expectations regarding tobacco control,

recommendations and guidelines of the World Health Organisation, etc. and

formulate appropriate tobacco control policies and measures.

Food and Health Bureau

January 2013

Chinese tobacco firms’ tax payments surge

BEIJING – China’s tobacco firms paid 864.9 billion yuan (US$137.7 billion) in taxes in 2012, up 15.7 percent year on year, according to new official data.

The industry also handed over 716.6 billion yuan in profits to the government last year, a 19-percent rise from a year earlier, Jiang Chengkang, head of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, said at a national work conference on Thursday.

Jiang said the tobacco industry is turning greener. Energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of value-added output fell 14.8 percent year on year to 25.3 kg of standard coal in 2012.

The industry’s total chemical oxygen demand and sulfur dioxide emissions decreased 3.7 percent and 10.9 percent respectively from a year earlier, the official added.

The Chinese government made a public smoking ban one of its goals in the 2011-2015 period. Some cities have already enacted local legislation on public smoking control.

From 2006 to 2010, the combined taxes and profits created by China’s tobacco industry jumped 139 percent to 604.5 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of about 19 percent.

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