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China has 15 million underage smokers: Health Ministry

China said on Monday the country had 15 million underage smokers - nearly four times the total population of New Zealand - and the number is rising. Around 40 million of the country's 130 million children aged between 13 and 18 had tried smoking, according to a Health Ministry report on tobacco control emailed to AFP on Monday. Fifteen million had become addicted to tobacco, the report said.

"The number of youths in China that have tried smoking and who now smoke increases year after year," the report said, without giving comparative figures. Between 66% and 68% of those that had tried tobacco products had smoked their first whole cigarette before they reached 13, according to the report, a 15% increase from 1998. "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 growing," the report said.

Just 2.6% of Chinese women between 15 and 69 smoked, the World Health Organization said, quoting a 2002 national survey, but the smoking prevalence among young girls aged 13 to 15 is higher at 4.1%. "It would be tragic if these young girls started smoking in larger numbers. So far, Chinese women have been spared of the tobacco epidemic, so we hope that is not going to change," Sarah England, head of the WHO tobacco control program in China, told AFP.
China has about 350 million smokers, about a quarter of its population and one-third of the world's smokers, according to official statistics.

Tobacco advertisements were partly to blame for the rising rate of young tobacco addicts, the report said, because they targeted youths by associating smoking with independence and sex appeal. Despite being banned on television and radio, and in newspapers and magazines, adverts were still prevalent on the Internet, on billboards and in sponsored events, England said.

Easy access to tobacco products was also to blame, with the three top-selling cigarette brands in the country costing less than CNY5 (less than $1) a packet, the report said. More than 90% of the young smokers also said they had never been refused tobacco products in shops, despite a ban on selling tobacco to under 18s. Total tobacco-related deaths in China come to one million a year, the WHO said.

China has already taken some steps in controlling tobacco consumption. Smoking in public places in Beijing, the Chinese capital, was severely restricted on May 1, with restaurants, bars and hotels having to separate into smoking and non-smoking areas. Other cities across China, including Shanghai, are considering similar moves.

The initiative, partly instigated by a pledge to host smoke-free Olympic Games in August, came as a surprise in a city where restaurants and bars are notorious for the cloud of smoke that envelops every customer as they walk in. Stop-smoking clinics are also now available, England said.

Source: www.lloyds.com, 2nd June 2008
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