BEIJING, Feb. 5 -- Smoking is bad for the nation's health.

    The plain truth, corroborated by ever-increasing medical evidence, reiterated by health authorities, and printed on cigarette packages, has failed to prevent our innocent youth from smoking.

    Many young smokers light up their first cigarette in the mistaken belief that puffing away at a cigarette is cool.

    Anti-smoking advocates here in China must envy their counterparts in France. To help implement a nationwide smoking ban coming into force there on Thursday, 175,000 special inspectors and members of the police force will be dispatched to patrol public venues.

    In spite of doubts over the long-term success of the high-pitched French campaign, we admire the French authorities' resolve and sincerely wish their Chinese peers could someday soon, if not today, take off their kid gloves in dealing with smoking.

    When people foolishly believe smoking is cool, it is of little use telling them to stop. What the French did, just like what has been done in our Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, is a good way to drive home the message that smoking kills.

    When smokers risk a fine for lighting a cigarette in public, smoking is no loner cool.

    The forceful bans in both Hong Kong and France actually make smoking in public indecent.

    We cannot expect the same to happen here anytime soon. Not until our country weans itself from the exorbitant profits from tobacco.

    It is a humiliating paradox that while the central government pledges commitment to tobacco control, some local governments count on the health damaging leaves to fill their coffers.

    This is a suicidal addiction that must be eradicated. National policy needs to focus not only on the government-owned tobacco industry's lucrative profits. It must also deal with the effect of smoking on the nation's health and the astronomical medical expanses.

    If our government can help opium poppy growers in the Golden Triangle with alternative crops, they can do the same to help our tobacco growers find practical alternatives.

    This does not appear to be an imperative. But it must be done since we know beyond any doubt that smoking is a serious public health hazard.