The tobacco companies are arguably the world's best at making something lethal appear appealing. The industry has long marketed its deadly products by associating tobacco use with beauty and freedom.

However, tobacco use is neither liberating nor glamorous. It is addictive and deadly.

Despite seeing the number of smokers in China drop by 0.45 percent from 2003 to 2010, the country's tobacco industry handed over taxes and profit of 513.11 billion yuan ($75.46 billion) to the national coffers in 2009, a year-on-year increase of 12.2 percent.

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The sector is challenging the government's obligations under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and its resolve to save lives.

The tobacco industry continues to lure new customers and retain existing customers by making it as hard as possible for smokers to quit.

That's why today, on World No Tobacco Day, it is appropriate to salute the government's new initiatives and ask: What more can we do to help smokers quit the habit?

World No Tobacco Day 2011 is designed to highlight the framework's overall importance, stress signatories' obligations under the treaty and promote the essential role of the Conference of the Parties and WHO in supporting countries' efforts to meet those obligations.

Since May 1 China has banned smoking in all indoor public and work places as required by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. But it also needs to ban all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

By enforcing the WHO convention, the government can reduce the toll of fatal and crippling heart attacks, strokes, cancers and respiratory diseases caused by smoking.

Western countries have worked hard to take smoking in hand and we can learn a lot from them.

According to WHO, tobacco health warnings that appear on cigarette packages are among the strongest weapons against tobacco use. The organization recommends that tobacco health warnings contain both pictures and words.

WHO statistics found pictorial warnings are used in more than 12 countries. Australia's parliament will vote later this year on packaging graphics that depict rotting teeth and diseased eyes.

This is an attempt by the government to lower smoking in Australia by 10 percent in the next decade. If approved, the antismoking law will also make Australia the first nation to outlaw tobacco branding.

Also, cigarettes sold in the United States will be required to carry pictorial warnings from 2012.

In our country the government's ban on smoking in all indoor public places is left unheeded to a large extent. To please smokers, cafes and restaurants keep their smoking areas.

Our smoking ban should not be allowed to become the butt of jokes.

(China Daily 05/31/2011 page8)