As a celebration of good health, the Olympic Games present an excellent opportunity to promote positive lifestyle changes like giving up smoking and creating tobacco-free environments. Longer, healthier lives and a cultural shift towards healthy lifestyles will be the lasting legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. WHO and its partners in the Bloomberg Initiative are working to raise awareness of health issues through the Olympic spirit to help bring such a legacy into being.
WHO strongly supports this creation of smoke-free environments in the Spirit of Olympism. On May 1st of this year, Beijing put into force regulations to create smoke-free environments in Beijing which ensure that the Beijing Games will be 100% smoke-free. The Olympics also ban tobacco promotion, advertising and sponsorship and no tobacco products are sold in the venues. This year alone, tobacco will needlessly kill a million Chinese people. It is no wonder then that China, the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and the Olympic Cities have taken measures to protect people from harmful smoke and to save lives.
There is no safe level of tobacco smoke and second hand smoke can and does kill people who have never smoked in their lives. Smoke-free places are safer, more pleasant and also help smokers to give up smoking. Quitting is the best thing a smoker can do for his or her health.
The highest attainable standard of health for all is our goal.
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