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The article explores tobacco control in China as of 2018, focusing on whether or not tobacco crop substitution could aid the cause. Additional topics discussed include how China sets a quota for tobacco leaf production to ensure revenue to the state, the health impact of China's transition to a developed country and world economic power, and social conditions for farmers in China. The WHO (World Health Organization) and the United Nations Development Program are also noted.

In China, approximately 20 million farmers produce the world's largest share of tobacco. Showing that income from crop substitution can exceed that from tobacco growth is essential to persuading farm families to stop planting tobacco, grown abundantly in Yunnan Province. In the Yuxi Municipality, collaborators from the Yuxi Bureau of Agriculture and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health initiated a tobacco crop substitution project. At 3 sites, 458 farm families volunteered to participate in a new, for-profit cooperative model. This project successfully identified an approach engaging farmers in cooperatives to substitute food crops for tobacco, thereby increasing farmers' annual income between 21% and 110% per acre. (Am J Public Health. 2012;102:1660-1663.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]