Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2014 10 Smoking Prevalence Rates – 2012 Source: John D. Kasarda and Taoyuan Aerotropolis China is a signatory to WHO’s 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which monitors public policies in areas such as prevention, treatment, awareness, marketing and advertising and taxation, but government’s efforts to curb the country’s habit have been, at best, spotty. Some of this can be blamed on the fact that China isn’t just the world’s biggest tobacco consumer, it’s the biggest producer, home to a vast and flourishing business that’s run as the monopoly of a state-owned enterprise known as the China National Tobacco Corporation, whose operations extend across 33 provincial administrations and more than 70 state-owned sub-enterprises and another 1,000 commercial enterprises employing in all more than half a million people and specializing in everything from cultivation to sales to the machinery of manufacturing to imports and exports. In 2010, according to data compiled by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, it cranked out 2.78 trillion cigarettes. The taxes and profits this throws off amount to more than 7% of central government revenues. In Yunnan, the country’s main tobacco-producing province, it’s more like 92%. “Money is at the center of the problem when it comes to resolving to ban smoking in public,” says the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, a non-profit agency that operates under the auspices of the ministries of Health and Civil Affairs. “Governments are addicted to the economic gains generated by the tobacco industry.” The bottom line for Macau’s casinos and their world-beating US$45 billion casino market last year may have been 3.7 million smokers, quite possibly more, and this isn’t counting Hong Kong and Taiwan and the city’s other major sources of visitation. Design for Evasion The Macau restrictions that took effect 1st January 2013 allow casinos to designate up to 49% of their gaming areas for smoking. All six concessionaires applied for the space in an initial range of 34% to 49% of the floors of 44 casinos. Within days it was clear that what the government had in fact instituted was a giant loophole with some regulation around the edges. Adult Smokers % of population Male % Female % (millions) (millions) Eastern Europe 55 31 – – Laos 1.3 31 – – Indonesia 53 30 57 3 Myanmar 7.1 30 51 11 Central Europe 28 27 – – Western Europe 89 25 26 22 China 270 24 45 2 Philippines 15 24 40 8 S. Korea 10 24 41 6 Japan 26 23 35 11 Cambodia 2.2 21 42 3 Vietnam 14 20 41 2 Thailand 10 19 37 2 World 1,000 18.7 32 6 Malaysia 4.1 18 37 2 Taiwan 3.4 17 32 3 Australia/NZ 3.7 16 17 15 N. Africa/ME 51 16 29 4 United States 39 15 16 14 India 120 13 22 3 Singapore 0.43 12 22 4 Sub-Saharan Africa 38 7 13 2 Source: University of Washington, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation In Focus