Cities have a unique role to play in effective tobacco control efforts in China, the “epicenter of the global tobacco epidemic,” according to a research paper published in the current issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Dr. Pamela Redmon, administrative director of the Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science at the Georgia State University School of Public Health, was the lead author of “The Role of Cities in Reducing Smoking in China”. Dr. Michael Eriksen, dean of the School of Public Health and a pre-eminent tobacco control researcher, co-authored the paper.

China is the world’s leading tobacco grower and producer of cigarettes, and more than one million smokers die from smoking-related diseases in the country every year. The tobacco industry in China is state-owned and the government benefits financially from the production and sale of tobacco products. However, the central government has recently shown some support for tobacco control efforts.

The study reviewed a program that supported tobacco control efforts in 17 Chinese cities and found that such “bottom up” approaches can be highly effective.

Other co-authors of the study were Dr. Jeffrey Koplan of the Global Health Institute at Emory University and Dr. Wang Kean of the ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development in Beijing.

To read the full study, go to: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/10/10062/html