Pupils at an elementary school in Hefei, Anhui province encourage community residents to quit smoking as soon as possible. [Photo by Fu Jun/For China Daily]

Banning smoking in public places will help reduce tobacco-related deaths and illnesses.

Xu Guihua, the executive deputy director of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, said she was very happy when the State Council published the draft of a national law to control tobacco use.

On Nov 24, the State Council's legislative affairs office officially publicized the draft of a law that bans the smoking of tobacco products in indoor public areas and restricts smoking in outdoor public spaces to designated smoking areas.

The draft also prohibits all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as well as certain smoking scenes in films and TV shows.

And for the first time, it requires graphic health warnings to cover half of every Chinese packet of tobacco.

In the same week, Beijing authorities also passed a new law, making all indoor public places in Beijing 100 percent smoke-free from June 1, 2015.

Xu said that studies have shown that since 1999, the negative impacts of the industry on Chinese society, including medical treatment costs, have surpassed the tobacco industry's economic benefits, and it is important to control tobacco use through strong legislation and strict enforcement.

The country's lack of strong laws and poor enforcement of laws that do exist, as well as the lack of graphic health warnings, and controls on advertisements and sponsorship are the main reasons why China lags behind much of the world in tobacco control, Xu said.

"If the draft national regulation is adopted, this will represent unprecedented progress towards China meeting its obligations under the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and most importantly dramatic progress toward reducing the epidemic of tobacco-related illness and preventable death in China", said Bernhard Schwartlander, WHO representative in China, in a press release.