Tobacco companies around the world are making a lot of efforts to demonstrate the relative safety of smoking their cigarettes. Targeted especially toward smokers who order cheap cigarettes on web stores,
In China, the tobacco industry is an absolute monopoly of the state. More than 10 million people participate in its activities. In 2010 alone, the tobacco industry gained $ 97,000,000,000 in profits and taxes. Such a sum was quite enough to “overcome” and “rein in” any efforts and measures of the country’s leadership and those who oppose smoking, to combat this evil.
The largest company in China is Chinese National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC). It produces about 500 brands of different cigarettes from cheap cigarettes for the majority to the elite class tobacco sticks. The number of its employees exceeds half a million. The company owns 183 cigarette-making factories and even dozens of research departments for research on the growing technologies of quality tobacco and its properties.
In 2010, in the Chinese province of Guangzhou, according to the local information agency, “unprecedented measures in the fight against smoking” were taken. Thus, the penalty for smoking in the usual elevator or another public place was 50 yuan ($ 7). A company in whose territory a smoker was caught, and who did not do anything to prevent such a “malicious” act, could be fined 35,000 yuan.
Much of this or a little, one can say by the fact that the annual income per capita in Guangzhou itself reaches $ 10,000.
It remains a screaming fact that the current tax rate on the sale of a pack of cigarettes in China reaches only 40%, at that time, as in other countries, it is 65-70%. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that just an increase in the prices of cigarettes and an increase in the tax on their sale would be the most effective ways and, nevertheless, would have affected a slight decrease in the level of smoking in the state.