Cartoons lure children to smoke

While Beijing plans to restrict smoking, cartoon characters are promoting it
While Beijing plans to restrict smoking, cartoon characters are promoting it
NOT KNOWN

At 10p a go, the cigarette-grabbing game appeals to all budgets. With pictures of Mickey Mouse and English-language songs featuring Winnie-the-Pooh, the arcade-style machines outside some Beijing supermarkets also appeal to children and young women.

“We don’t let kids play by themselves, but some parents let their kids play for them,” a shopkeeper in Maquanying, a Beijing suburb, said. “Playing” involves manoeuvring a mechanical arm to pick up a packet of cigarettes.

Accepted as cheap, harmless fun by shoppers, the machines remind Chinese health officials and tobacco control experts of the scale of the challenge to wean the world’s top tobacco producer and consumer off an addiction that kills more than a million citizens a year.

“This is very scary,” Xiaofeng Liang, the deputy director