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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Randir" data-source="post: 9807683" data-attributes="member: 3497">AROUND 700m Asians, mostly men, cannot get through the day without puffing on a cigarette. The habit is thought to kill around 2.3m Asians every year, almost half smoking's global victims. Cases of cancer and other tobacco-related diseases are rising sharply. But health ministries are taking tougher action against smoking. Thailand, which banned it in most public buildings in 2003, is holding hearings on a plan to extend the ban to all places of entertainment. China's press said this month that cigarette makers would be told to put larger health warnings on their packets, including images of skulls, blackened teeth or diseased lungs.Cigarette consumption in China soared between 1970 and 1990 but has fallen slightly since. There, as elsewhere in <a href="http://www.exinkai.com/" target="_blank">Asia</a>, smoking among men is far more common than in the West. The worry, says Burke Fishburn of the World Health Organisation (WHO), is that Asia will follow the Western trend, with more women taking up smoking as men quit. In Vietnam, for example, cigarettes are being peddled to urban women as a “sophisticated” pursuit.Western tobacco firms, their home markets shrinking, have turned their attention to developing Asia, drawing fire from anti-smoking groups. But, says Mr Fishburn, a bigger worry is the ambitious plan by China's huge state tobacco monopoly to become a big exporter of cut-price smokes to the rest of the region. Thailand, while extending its smoking bans, also plans a giant new factory for its state tobacco firm.</blockquote>

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