Chinanews, Beijing, Sept 29 – As a member of the international community, there is a need for China to fulfill its obligations by completely abolishing cigarette ads. The abolishment also serves national interest and is in the interest of the common people, too, the Workers Daily reported.In reality, however, China has met with a lot of obstacles in achieving this goal. The main reason, according to industrial analysts, is because cigarette production is a lucrative business. On September 1, China Enterprise Confederation and China Enterprise Directors Association jointly publicized the ranking list of top 500 Chinese enterprises, ten of them being involved in cigarette making. Hence, somebody said the top 500 ranking list has a "strong smell of smoking". Due to the lucrative business and fierce competition, cigarette manufacturers want to promote their business through advertisements.In 2006, over 290 billion yuan of tax revenues came from cigarette industry. In order to maximize tax gains, local governments did not strictly ban cigarette ads.To a large extent, China's failure to ban cigarette ads has a lot to do with the ineffectiveness of local governments in this aspect. In order to protect local interest, many local governments have turned a blind eye to the ban. Some media, prompted by the large advertising fees, have helped cigarette makers to evade state regulations and put their ads on public media, said Zhang Yifang, a protagonist of cigarette ban.Compared with the economic interest brought by cigarette industry, the hazardous effect that the industry brings to society is far more severe. Not long ago, the Ministry of Health published the country's first report about China's efforts to control smoking. According to this report, China now has 350 million cigarette smokers and 540 million passive smokers. At present, the number of male smokers aged 15 or above has accounted for 66% of the male population of the same age group. At present, about 12% of the death are related with tobacco smoking and by 2025, the ratio will rise to 33%. The human efforts and medical costs paid to smoking have far offsetted the economic gains. Cigarette smoking has hindered social development and impaired the health of the Chinese people.