Good morning and thank you so much for joining us this morning at the official launch of the 2017 WHO/UNDP report, The Bill China Cannot Afford: Health, Economic and Social Costs of China’s Tobacco Epidemic.
This has been a solid collaboration between the two United Nations (UN) agencies over the past two years in getting this report out. We are particularly pleased to note that both the WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark have signed the Foreword expressing their full support for this ground-breaking work.
I would just like to start off by emphasizing the scale of the tobacco epidemic in China.
44% of the world’s cigarettes are smoked in China alone – more than the next 29 countries combined.
There are 315 million smokers in China – including more than half of all adult men. For every two men you see in China, one of them is a smoker.
From a strictly public health perspective, tobacco is taking an enormous toll on China’s health.
More than 1 million people die in China every year as a result of tobacco use. This will grow to 2 million annually by 2030 and 3 million by 2050 without drastic action to reduce smoking rates.
Tobacco is the only commercially available product that, when used as designed, kills half of its users. In China that means a third of young Chinese men alive today will eventually be killed by tobacco use.
If China doesn’t change course, tobacco is on track to claim 200 million lives in China this century.
And this is only speaking of smokers. What about non-smokers? Through exposure to harmful second-hand smoke, 100,000 lives are lost a year. Not because they are smoking. But simply as they are exposed to second-hand smoke indoors.
What other consumer product is so lethal, but permitted for use indoors, around children? Even paint, and the toxic fumes, we take more seriously than tobacco. You cannot use certain kinds of paint indoors, but we are struggling to get the same common sense applied to tobacco. Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai have made the right moves. But in other cities around the country why can’t we ask smokers to simply step outside when they light up a cigarette?
Our report also highlights the unsustainable increase of economic costs from tobacco use in China – the modelling in the report shows a tenfold increase in total annual economic costs of tobacco use from 2000 to 2014 (estimated at 350 billion RMB or US$ 57 billion). We are speaking here of direct medical expenses, indirect costs of having to manage tobacco-related illnesses and loss of productivity. This is neither sustainable nor acceptable. My colleague from UNDP will talk about the impact this is having on the poor and most vulnerable.
Our joint report addresses the question of costs, because this is the argument used most often by the tobacco industry – that it contributes too much to China’s economy to be further regulated -- in their effort to push back against stronger tobacco control policies. And we have seen this over and over around the world.
I want to be absolutely clear – this is a cynical, cynical argument. For the WHO, health and human life are the highest value and no human life can be measured against the amount of tax revenue you earn from this kind of product.
Furthermore, tobacco has no value except in making profits. There are no economic multiplier effects – no innovation gains or productivity gains. Tobacco doesn’t drive China’s economy towards the future. It is a drain. Every dollar earned from this industry is a drain – both in economic terms and in the most fundamental terms, the number of Chinese lives lost. We reject this cynical proposition.
President Xi Jinping has been clear about his vision for the Chinese Dream. About his vision for a new path of economic development, one focused on innovation and services. About his vision for Healthy China 2030 – where economic development enhances, rather than sacrifices, individual well-being.
We know what to do – we know how to control tobacco, by implementing a comprehensive package of tobacco control policies – starting with the adoption of a strong 100% national smoke-free law, raising tobacco taxes, introduction of graphic health warnings on tobacco packages, scaling up mass media campaigns on the dangers of tobacco use and strengthening cessation services.
Of course China can do this. The question isn’t how. The question is when. And it has to be now.