Aqi: Cadre Smoking Ban and Tobacco and Alcohol Culture

Aqi: Cadre Smoking Ban and Tobacco and Alcohol Culture Phoenix City Aqi The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued a "Notice on Matters Related to the Ban on Smoking by Leading Cadres in Public Places...

Phoenix City Aqi

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly issued a "Notice on Matters Related to the Ban on Smoking by Leading Cadres in Public Places", which explicitly prohibits smoking in the offices, passages and bathrooms of party and government agencies, and requires leading cadres to ban smoking in public no-smoking places. This is a matter that benefits the country and the people, improves the environment, and changes society. It is an important measure to eliminate bad habits and resist corruption. Get it right and do it well.

Smoking harms your own health, harms the health of those around you, pollutes the environment, and is also a trigger for corruption. Data shows that China is the world's largest tobacco producer and consumer, with 350 million smokers, accounting for 35% of the world's smokers, and 6% of its male citizens. Seventeen years ago, 1.2 million people died from smoking-related diseases every year.

I was once a member of the Chinese smokers. I have been among the smokers for nearly half a century and have some contact and understanding of the cigarette culture of my motherland. Cigarettes are a spiritual product that are used to refresh and relieve worries. Of course, cigarettes have great side effects on health in China. In culture, it has long been a tool for making friends. This is where my smoking history began. After graduating from college, I started working as a technician in the team. Before starting work, the master worker would give me a cigarette to express his respect and welcome. As a new technician, I must not refuse. It would be disrespectful to only smoke other people's cigarettes. I would often buy a pack of cigarettes to share with my co-workers, and naturally we became friends, and I officially became a smoker.

During the three difficult years, there was also a problem with the supply of cigarettes. The simple Qianmen brand cigarettes that cost three cents and two cents were not available, and the gold leaves that cost two cents and six cents were not available. At that time, the hierarchical supply system emerged. In addition to meat and oil, cadres at the bureau level and above could also buy good cigarettes. At that time, I had just reached the position of engineer. Because we were slightly different from ordinary people, the workers called us sugar bean engineers. We could only buy Pisces cigarettes for eight cents a pack. I didn’t know what kind of weed roots they were made of. At that time, people in Shaanxi nicknamed them three-ball cigarettes: I just lit them. I destroyed the ball, smoked it until it burst (exploded), and lit it again (Shaanxi dialect). During this period, I made many determinations to quit smoking, and even threw lighters and cigarettes downstairs in public, asking everyone to supervise them, but failed every time. During the Cultural Revolution, a confusing era of reality and illusion, cigarettes became the closest comrade to relieve worries and sorrows, and were indispensable spiritual food for thinking and explaining problems. I spent many long years in the cadre school where I was sent to work and received re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants. In the hut filled with the smell of tobacco, cigarettes brought me closer to the poor and lower-middle peasants. Practice has proved that cigarettes do play a very important role in people's interactions. It can make people more approachable, make strangers become friends, resolve conflicts, and enhance friendship. These are the roles that cigarettes have played in historical progress.

After the 1980s, amid the tide of reform and opening up, the cigarette business flourished. Tobacco and alcohol have been divorced from the original meaning of folk exchanges and are like wild horses running wild, exerting infinite energy in the market economy and money and power transactions. When enterprises go to the government to approve projects, and local government officials go to higher-level governments to handle matters, it has become an unwritten rule to send them cigarettes and alcohol. When you propose a project that requires approval from a higher-level department, and the leader says that you need to study it, smart people will immediately understand that it requires tobacco, alcohol, and alcohol. According to the custom that tobacco and alcohol do not separate families, giving tobacco and alcohol can be used as gifts. But in the new era, giving cigarettes and wine is no longer the traditional way of offering a cigarette and a glass of wine, but rather giving cigarettes and wine boxes. The brands of cigarettes and alcohol are no longer the former Qianmen and Erguotou. The lowest is Greater China, as well as Yunyan, Hongtashan, Wuliangye, and Maotai. Foreign cigarettes and wines such as Marlboro, 555, Red Label, Black Label, and Remy Martin have also joined the ranks. Sometimes, Panda brand cigarettes used by central leaders can also be seen. Recently, four trucks were loaded with gifts and boxes of gift wine seized from a general's hometown. The prices of good tobacco and good wine have skyrocketed again and again. Nowadays, some cigarettes cost more than 1,000 yuan per carton, and a bottle of Maotai costs more than 3,000 yuan, which is equivalent to or more than the food expenses of ordinary people for a month. I remember a story circulated during the 1989 Democracy Movement: At that time, a carpenter-turned-vice-premier went to the students gathering in Tianjin to talk to the masses. He sat unconsciously on the steps, took out Chinese cigarettes from his pocket and smoked while chatting. A student suddenly asked, how much does a pack of Prime Minister's cigarettes cost? How many packs do you smoke a day? Is your monthly salary enough to smoke? He was speechless, so he interrupted and said, "Let's not talk about this, let's talk about resuming classes!" The deputy prime minister dared to talk to students during the June Fourth Movement and was very close to the masses. This story only reflects the popularity of free cigarettes at that time and the level of dissatisfaction among the people. The trade of tobacco and alcohol does not end there. Some people receive too many gifts of tobacco and liquor, and they cannot consume them either for themselves or as gifts to friends. A new industry of recycling tobacco and liquor has emerged at the historic moment. Some small shops purchase tobacco and alcohol as gifts from officials' homes at low prices, and then sell them at the original price to the people who use the public square to give gifts. In this way, a vicious circle of "washing out tobacco and alcohol" was formed, realizing the essence of corruption.

Smoking and toasting cigarettes are folk customs and cannot be restricted or eliminated by administrative regulations. But I believe that 99% of the high-end cigarettes smoked by leading cadres come from public funds. Smoking is strictly prohibited in party and government agencies, and cadres take the lead in banning smoking, which means that the channel for providing cigarettes at public expense has been eliminated. Although sending two cigarettes will not result in administrative penalties, a thousand-mile dike breaks in an ant nest. The first step for some cadres to become corrupt is to start from "not distinguishing between tobacco and alcohol" and move towards not distinguishing between public and private affairs. As I write this, I suddenly think of a limerick circulated among the masses that satirizes cadres for drinking:

Drinking every day, getting drunk every day, so drunk that my wife is back to back. My wife went to the Disciplinary Inspection Committee, and the Disciplinary Inspection Committee said that she only enforced discipline and did not care about drunkenness. My wife went to the party committee, and the party committee said it was wrong whether she could drink or not.

This reflects how dissatisfied the masses are with the tobacco and alcohol abuse of the cadres. The ban on smoking for cadres echoes the eight regulations on party and government agencies proposed last year and is a further step forward in the party's work style and clean government. I believe that many large state-owned enterprises in China, although not government agencies, are also important breeding grounds for tobacco and alcohol abuse, and should also be included in the scope of rectification.