China Tries to Kick the Habit

BEIJING: In a country where cigarettes account for 10 percent of government revenues, 1,500 anti-smoking activists attend the 10th World Conference on "Tobacco or Health" here this week. One big issue: how to get some of the dollars from the massive U.S. settlement distributed worldwide especially in China, the world's single largest producer of cigarettes, which has 320 million smokers and 2,000 deaths every day from smoking-related illnesses. The U.S. does brisk business in the worldwide tobacco trade. The New York Times reports American tobacco companies are funneling billions of dollars worth of cigarettes each year into foreign black markets.