Young Chinese less keen to smoke

Smoking among male teenagers in China has been declining over the past 25 years, according to a story on News-Medical.net citing research from Saint Louis University and Chongqing University.

Two-thirds of Chinese men become daily smokers before they turn 25 years of age, with the vast majority starting the habit when they are between 15 and 20 years of age.

Females were not included in the study because fewer than four percent of them smoke.

“Even though the smoking rate remains high in China, over the last 25 years the rate of adolescent males starting to smoke has gotten smaller by an average of one percent a year,” said Jin Huang, Ph.D., one of the paper’s authors and assistant professor of social work at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice.

“Our findings suggest over the long term we might see reduced smoking rates in China.”

The paper, published in the February 3 online edition of the International Journal of Public Health, found that male’s born in 1996 were less likely to start smoking than were those born in 1970.

Researchers studied some 2,400 males between the ages of 15 and 20 who were listed in the China Health and Nutrition Survey. They surveyed those who did not start smoking before age 15 from four different neighborhoods that ranged from less populated rural areas to large, industrialized cities.

The News-Medical story is at: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20160211/Saint-Louis-University-research-finds-that-Chinas-smoking-rates-may-start-to-decline.aspx.