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China: Underage smokers reach 15 million

According to the 2008 report on tobacco control by the Ministry of Public Heath, there are 15 million underage smokers in China and the number is rising.

Roughly 40 million of the country's 130 million children aged between 13 and 18 have tried smoking, 60 million are exposed to the harms of secondhand smoke and 15 million are addicted to nicotine.

The number of youths that have tried smoking and who smoke increases annually. Male students are the main smokers among school children, and in big cities, the number of female students who have tried smoking or who smoke is increasing, the report said.

According to the report, 67 percent of those that had tried tobacco products did so before they were 13 years old, a 15 percent increase from 1998.

China has an estimated 350 million smokers, about a quarter of its population and one-third of the world's smokers. It is also the world's largest tobacco production and consumption country, the report said.

Tobacco adverts were partly to blame for the rising rate of young tobacco addicts because they target youths by associating smoking with independence and sex appeal.

Also, indirect advertisements, such as tobacco firms sponsoring sporting events, are three times more likely to influence children than adults, the report said.

Smoking scenes in TV series or films were also blamed. The Beijing-based non-profit organization, the Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, submitted a formal complaint to the State Administration of Radio Film and Television last July, criticising TV series for showing too many scenes with characters smoking. Think Tank found that 36 percent of Chinese TV dramas made in the past two years showed actors smoking in an average of 30 scenes, with one appearing at an average interval of 12 minutes.

It is estimated that by 2025, two million people will die from tobacco related diseases every year.

Source: The Shanghai Daily, 17th July 2008
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