Beijing's Teen Smoking Rate Drops in 2021

On the 22nd, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other organizations released the third monitoring results on tobacco use among youth in the city. In 2021, the percentage of middle school students in the city who have tried smoking and currently smoke is 7.1% and 1.1%, respectively, which decreased by 4.0% and 2.1% compared to 2019. Among middle school students, 45.4% reported having a parent who smokes.

Xinhua News Agency file photo.

This year's World No Tobacco Day falls on May 31, marking the 36th anniversary of the event. The theme for China's No Smoking Day is "No Smoking for the Growth of a Healthy Generation". To encourage the active participation of all members of society in the creation of a smoke-free environment and to promote the idea of "rejecting tobacco and becoming a smoke-free new generation" among children and adolescents, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Beijing Health Education Association, the Dongcheng District Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Dongcheng District Youth Health Center jointly held a promotional event for World No Tobacco Day at Beijing No. 27 Middle School on May 22.

At the event, the prevalence of tobacco use among young people in this city was released. The third citywide monitoring of tobacco use among young people, carried out jointly by the Municipal Health Commission and the Municipal Education Commission, showed that in 2021, the rate of middle school students who had tried smoking and currently smoked was 7.1% and 1.1% respectively, a decrease of 4.0 and 2.1 percentage points from 2019. The proportion of middle school students who were refused tobacco sales due to their age was 28.7%, up 11.4 percentage points from 2019. The proportion who had used e-cigarettes and currently used e-cigarettes was 8.7% and 1.6% respectively, down 2.3 and 2.2 percentage points from 2019. However, the proportion of those who had heard of e-cigarettes increased by 6.4 percentage points from 2019, reaching 94.6%.

According to a recent survey of junior high school students, 45.4% reported having at least one parent who smokes, while 18.8% reported having a friend who smokes. The rates of exposure to secondhand smoke in outdoor public places, indoor public places, at home, and on public transportation were 53.1%, 39.5%, 30.5%, and 15.3%, respectively. These rates are consistent with those reported in 2019 and have all decreased.

According to reports, the third monitoring of youth tobacco use in the city covered 60 middle schools from 10 districts, including junior high, regular high and vocational high schools. The investigation utilized a multi-stage stratified cluster probability sampling method, which resulted in 7,956 valid questionnaires obtained.

The 2023 Beijing Anti-Smoking Campaign School Tour kicked off at the event venue. The touring activities are scheduled to last for two weeks and will cover over 100 schools in the city's 16 districts and economic and technological development zones.

The Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention has created a series of educational exhibition boards focusing on the harmful effects of smoking (including e-cigarettes), secondhand smoke, and thirdhand smoke on the health of young people. The boards provide detailed information on the harmful components of tobacco smoke, the dangers and addictiveness of smoking, and the main marketing tactics of the tobacco industry. The campaign aims to increase awareness among primary and secondary school students in the city about the dangers of tobacco and to instill a sense of avoiding smoking from a young age. The activities were organized to provide students with the opportunity to learn and observe.