The law that bans smoking in indoor public places in China took effect on Sunday. However, analysts already are predicting that the vaguely defined rules will not have a significant effect on the country’s extremely high tobacco consumption.

In a survey conducted by the Chinese Government, smoking is associated to more than a million deaths in China every year. It is by far the greatest health threat the country is battling with today. At present, around 30 million people in China smoke, and that is roughly 300 million people.

Towards the end of March, the Health Ministry released the amended guidelines of their anti-smoking law. The smoking ban expanded the places where people are not allowed to smoke. The ban now covers places like restaurants and hotels.

The state media, however, pointed out that possibility that the smoking ban will not render effective. Many experts say that there is a great chance that people and store owners will not honor the said smoking ban because the punishments for violators were not clearly stated.

China’s National Office of Tobacco director, Dr. Yang Gonghuan, said that she acknowledges the flaws in the smoking ban but she remains hopeful that people of China will become more aware of the dangers of smoking.

China has missed the January 9, 2011 WHO set deadline to ban tobacco smoking in public places. Many reports surfaced that the delay may be caused by the fact that the government raises high revenue from the government-owned tobacco industry.

A new report indicated that cancer rates in the US are continually dropping by at almost one percent per year. Moreover, the same study found out that cancer-related deaths are also going down by 1.6 per cent annually. This trend was observed between 2003 and 2007.

The researchers also noted that this is the first time they observed a decrease in the death rate of women with lung cancer. Lynn Ries, co-author of the report, said that the decline we are seeing right now is caused by women quitting smoking.

The report was conducted by several researchers from different groups; one of which is the American Cancer Society. The report was published online on the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Thursday.

Unfortunately, even though there is a notable decrease in cancer rates among adults, the same is not true among children. In fact, there are increasing numbers of diagnosed cancer patients in children. Ries, however, pointed out that death rates among children decreased. She also said that the reason for the rise in the occurrence of cancer among children is still unclear.

If there are changes in variables among women and children with cancer, the numbers remained the same among men. The report said that there could have been a decrease in cancer diagnosis among men, only that the statistics of prostate cancer has raised.

Ries said that this report was particularly difficult to organize because cancer is not just one disease. There are different kinds of cancer and some of them increase in number, while others decrease. She also said that men and women follow different kinds of trends in terms of cancer diagnosis.