More Asian governments are taking steps to confront the health and social costs of rampant smoking, the Voice of America reported May 28.

Bhutan, for example, last year banned all use of tobacco products, and Singapore has one of the world's lowest smoking rates thanks to tough government controls.

Smoking is still widespread in other parts of Asia, but the South Korean government has helped spur a drop in smoking by raising tobacco taxes, a first step in countering heavy marketing by the tobacco industry to Asian smokers. "What is happening in developing countries is that the tobacco industry is having a lot of success, they are getting more and more people to smoke and that's where the fight is right now," said Burke Fishburn, head of the World Health Organization's Manila office on tobacco control.

While China alone accounts for a third of all smokers in the world, the plan by multinational tobacco companies to shift their focus from the U.S. and Europe to Asia has met some unexpected challenges.

"The makers of the Marlboro Cowboy cigarettes very much hoped they could ride this Marlboro cowboy into Asia and thought it would be a Wild West frontier and it would be very easily conquered," said Judith Mackay, founder of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control. "I think, however, what they have found in Asia is something quite different -- that there is already a growing and quite stiff resistance on the part of governments."

Most Asian nations have signed the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Even countries like China -- where state-run companies produce one-third of the world's cigarettes -- are realizing that they are spending billions dealing with the health consequences of smoking. China plans to put health warnings on cigarette packs this year, and Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand have all restricted public smoking.