Europe 'worst' for teen smoking

2006-02-17 09:19

Paris - Europe may be leading the effort to stamp out smoking in public places, but it has the highest incidence of teen smokers in the world, a study says.

Nearly 18% of Europeans aged 13 to 15 are smokers, more than twice the global average of 8.9%, according to the paper, published online on Friday by the British medical weekly The Lancet.

Next is the region of the Americas, with 17.5%, followed by Africa (9.2%), the Western Pacific (6.5%), the Eastern Mediterrenan (5.0%) and Southeast Asia (4.3%).

When other tobacco use was factored in, such as chewing tobacco and snuff, the Americas came top with 22.2%, followed by Europe, with 19.8%; the global average was 17.3%.

The authors say they were surprised to see an apparently narrowing gap between boys and girls.

In the Americas, more girls smoke than boys, and there is only a small difference between the genders in Europe - 19.9% among boys, and 15.7% among girls.

Tobacco toll

In contrast, the smoking rate among boys is three times that among girls in the Western Pacific, a region that includes China, and the same applies to Southeast Asia.

Past calculations that the annual death toll from tobacco could double to 10 million by 2020 "may be a conservative estimate", said lead author Charles Warren of the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"The true toll from tobacco use could be even greater, (given) high rates of non-cigarette tobacco use and high rates of smoking among young girls."

The data come from questionnaires filled in by 747 000 students in 9 900 schools in 131 countries and the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The students completed their questionnaires in the classroom, but confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed, say the researchers.

The survey did however lack some gaps in its coverage, namely a number of countries in western Europe as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

- AFP