A Smoker's Paradise Lost

A Western smoker stepping onto Chinese soil becomes immediately aware of two things: freedom and lack of judgment. Lighted cigarette in hand you can step into a taxi or crowded elevator blissfully puffing away. No longer are you banished to the dumpsters by those judgmental eyes at home screaming, “How dare you jeopardize my health?” In short, when you entered China, you entered a smoker’s paradise. Is that an asthmatic, pregnant woman beside you? Worry not. She’ll casually excuse herself in good time.

Still, it is a rare smoker who hasn’t dabbled with the idea of quitting and staying quit. Countless mornings of commitments have burned away with the afternoon sun. Then a persistent dry hacking here, and yellowing tooth there, gets a smoker back on the quit-smoking-carousel. Now try quitting in Shanghai. Those bobbing Shanghainese horses are twirling at a mile a minute and getting on is nearly as hard, if not harder, than staying mounted.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 67 percent of men in China smoke compared to 4 percent of women. A study in Shanghai’s Minhang District showed that Chinese smokers spend an average of 60 percent of their personal income and 17 percent of their household income on the addictive little cancer sticks. Twenty years ago tobacco multinationals didn’t have a prayer of entering China’s market, but as China opens its economy these multinationals certainly want a piece of the pie. In 1993, China itself made 5 billion USD from tobacco taxes, let alone what it made as the worlds largest producer of tobacco. WHO estimates smoking has cost the country about 7.8 billion USD in lost productivity and heavy healthcare burdens. Safe to say, tobacco creates a bit of a false economy.

So what’s a smoker to do in the economic and business engine of one of the world’s most cigarette-addicted country? In truth, the options are endless. Books, acupuncture, hypnosis, clinics, websites, support groups, nicotine replacement therapy, medications, gums, electronic cigarettes, patches, and of course, that ever elusive will power we hear so much about.