The rising medical costs linked to tobacco-related illnesses and deaths, along with the aging of the Chinese population, may cripple the China's social security system in just two decades, an official
Tobacco-linked deaths have been on the rise over the past decade and are expected to reach a peak between 2025 and 2030, a time when China is set to overtake Japan as the world's most aged society, said Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The combination of the two will put a severe strain the country's social security system, Liang said.
According to research by Hu Angang, a professor at Tsinghua University, health care and other smoking-related costs exceeded the tobacco industry's economic gains by 61.8 billion yuan in 2010.
Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world. It kills nearly six million people worldwide each year, including over 600,000 who die from exposure to second-hand smoke.
In China, it kills over one million people each year, where nearly 30 percent of adults, or more than 300 million, smoke. Another 740 million people are exposed to second-hand smoke annually.
(China.org.cn July 14, 2012)
