May 31st, 2012

New study exposes teenagers' easy access to cigarettes in China

May 31 was the WHO World No Tobacco Day. The Pioneers for Health Consultancy Center, a China-based non-governmental organization with close collaborative ties to AHPP's Matthew Kohrman, recently conducted an extensive study of stores in Kunming, a city in the heart of China’s tobacco-growing region, that sell cigarettes to teenagers.

• » China Daily article

March 28th, 2012

Exploring China's formidable cigarette industry

How has the cigarette become so integrated into the fabric of everyday life across the People's Republic of China? To get to the heart of this question, a diverse group of experts met Mar. 26 and 27 in Beijing. In an interview, conference lead Matthew Kohrman spoke about the history of China's cigarette industry, cigarettes and society, and the growing tobacco-control movement. Read more »

January 18th, 2012

Kohrman to speak about cigarette factory mapping and policy

At present, the tobacco industry annually produces some six trillion cigarettes worldwide. A third of all these sticks were produced in China last year. During a Jan. 30 seminar, Matthew Kohrman will introduce the Cigarette Citadels project, an innovative application of participatory GIS, and discuss its implications for public health policy and social theory about the state and the politics of life.

• » Cigarette Citadels, Remapping Theory and Policy, Cigarette Factories in and Outside of China
  
• » Cigarette Citadels Project

August 9th, 2011

Kohrman's ground-breaking study of cigarette warning labels

What influence might graphic warning labels have on cigarette sales? Matthew Kohrman is studying that question with experimental methods in Southwest China. Kohrman’s research is generating much-needed data in support of the expansion of China’s warning label system. Among the countries increasingly adopting graphic labels, the United States will require visual warnings on all cigarette packages by next fall.

Stanford Cancer Center News: Smoking cessation in a land of two trillion cigarettes

May 11th, 2011

Give new smoking ban time, suggests China tobacco health expert Matthew Kohrman

Tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable death in the world today, including in China where cigarette smoking is a popular pastime. "The [tobacco] industry in China is run by the Tobacco Monopoly Administration, a central government administrative body created in the 1980s, also known as China Tobacco Corp.," said Matthew Kohrman in a February 2011 interview with NPR's Morning Edition. China nonetheless issued a nationwide indoor smoking ban on May 1. Speaking with Al Jazeera English on the first day of the ban, Kohrman predicted that Chinese citizens will increasingly comply with the ban even if in fits and starts initially. "It all has to do with implementation," he suggested. "It all has to do with changing the culture of smoking and people’s thinking about it—that takes time."

• » NPR: China dependent on tobacco in more ways than one
• » Al Jazeera English: China starts national ban on indoor cigarette smoking