China Confronts Price Of Its Cigarette Habit

The Wall Street Journal

China Confronts Price Of Its Cigarette Habit
An Economic Pillar, Tobacco Now Exacts Heavy Toll on Health
By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
January 3, 2007; Page A11

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The blunt message: Tobacco is responsible for bringing modernity to this poor corner of southwest China. Tobacco money has built highways, railroads and hydroelectric dams. Hongta has branched into businesses ranging from hotels and real estate to securities trading. It's provided capital for biotech firms and paper and cement companies.

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But now, five decades after the state went into the tobacco business, China is in the early stages of an epidemic. Rising rates of smoking-related diseases are one of the human costs of the Chinese government's often single-minded focus on economic development.

More than a million Chinese people die of smoking-related diseases each year, according to official statistics, compared with 400,000 in the U.S. And that's just the beginning. China's economic boom and more sophisticated cigarette-marketing efforts have been leading people to smoke more, and to start smoking at younger ages.

China's annual death toll is expected to more than double by 2025. If current trends continue, epidemiologists say, one third of all Chinese men now age 29 or younger will end up dying prematurely from tobacco-related diseases.


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except try to discourage smoking among the most educated.

China has an oversupply of people. Preventive health and antismoking campaigns aren't going to be priorities.

Sounds like a buy, buy, buy to me :sarcasm:

MZr7

They have some excellent doctors and a lot of modern hospitals (though, plenty of dated ones as well), but only about one in three Chinese has health insurance. To top it off, most doctors/surgeons will not work unless they get the money up front, leaving the patient to get the reimbursement from their insurance company. This goes especially for serious surgeries - after all, if the patient dies and has not paid, the doctor won't get paid. So, a person might have to put up $10,000 or more for a major surgery, and $10,000 in China is like $100,000 here. Imagine if you had to come up with $100,000 out of pocket to pay for cancer surgery or something extensive.

China is also, by far, the most medicated society on the planet. Rather than paying a lot up front, Chinese often try extensive medication in hopes that whatever drug/antibiotic they are taking will cure them without them having to go through surgery. (You can buy penicillin over the counter there, BTW)

That means, we're dying at a much higher rate because our population is about 300,000,000 and there population is about 1.3 billion.

Most of you are too young to remember the black days in England and the deaths from coal polution.