Government Regulation Of The Tobacco Industry In China And Countermeasures

China has the most smokers in the world, and suffers the severest harmfulness of smoking. Smoking is one of the most dangerous factors that cause lung cancers and other diseases, so the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified smoking as a worldwide epidemic, tobacco as the biggest treat to human health, and problems of smoking and health have gradually became a hot spot. At present, there are about thirteen hundred millions smokers in the world, about five millions smokers die of diseases caused by smoking each year, and the number of deaths from smoking will approximate to one hundred million in this century if tobacco is not controlled. In today's world, great efforts of multinational co-operation made to control tobacco never stop, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (the Convention for short) is the first worldwide convention for controlling tobacco approved by 192 members of the WHO in May 2003, and the first worldwide multilateral convention targeting tobacco. China became the 77th country to sign the Convention in November 2003. The third conference attended by contracting parties of the Convention of the WHO dropped the curtain in the South African city of Durban in November 17-22,2008, at the meeting, China was banned an embarrassing prize of "dirty ashtray" which has the "prize words" "pretty cigarette case rather than health of citizens". Scientists have proved that smoke generated while burning tobacco contains more than 4000 chemicals known to man, most of which are harmful to human bodies. From the prize, we can understand that artificial prosperity has been attached great attention but public interests and public health are ignored in current China's tobacco market.China adopts a direct government regulation on the tobacco industry, and the government makes decisions on economic entity of the tobacco industry in legal means of approval and allowance. The direct regulation can be classified as economic regulation and social regulation:in respect of the tobacco industry, the economic regulation refers to mandatory regulations implemented by China's government to tobacco enterprises on entrance, quitting, price, output and the like; the social regulation refers to regulations targeting to protect social environments, reduce health hazards caused by smoking, and improve poverty situation. Sources of disaster are concealed behind that great amount of tobacco output value and tax revenue seems to be a considerable sum on the surface. Far-sighted persons should consider that "tobacco is a legal drug, and tax on tobacco is a fool's treasury".The author considers that harm caused by smoking outweigh government's revenue income, China's government regulations on the tobacco industry should finally target how to attach attention to public security, implement effective smoke control measures in order to reduce hazards caused by tobacco to smokers and involuntary smokers. China's tobacco industry should consider profoundly its own social responsibilities, consider public health, and assume liabilities on environments and persons besides pursuing interests.In the paper, government regulations on the tobacco industry are first outlined, including introduction of foreign government regulations on tobacco industry and history and basic characteristics of China's government regulations on the tobacco industry; problems of China's government regulations on the tobacco industry are second elaborated, including diversification of control objectives, unreasonable arrangement of regulatory agencies, deficiency of smoking ban in public places, deficiency in system, high cost of government regulation and the like; several countermeasures for solving the problems of China's government regulation on the tobacco industry are offered in the end, including to definite targets of government regulations on the tobacco industry, separate government functions from enterprise management and separate promotion from production in the tobacco industry, quicken legislation of smoking ban and control and improvement of relative regulations.