World No Tobacco Day 2022: Children in UP start smoking at around age 9; survey reveals...
Zee News
World No Tobacco Day 2022: The survey found that children even younger than that -- about seven-year-old girls and eight-year-old boys -- initiate smoking bidi.
New Delhi: A recent Global Youth Tobacco Survey-4 (GYTS) for Uttar Pradesh has found that children are just around nine-and-a-half years of age when they initiate cigarette smoking. Children even younger than that -- about seven-year-old girls and eight-year-old boys -- initiate smoking bidi. An appalling figure of six years and eight months is the median age of initiation for children of urban areas into smoking bidi. Girls are less than seven years of age when they are initiated into smokeless tobacco use.
GYTS, a component of the Global Tobacco Surveillance System, is a standard for systematically monitoring tobacco use (smoking and smokeless) among youth and tracking key tobacco control indicators.
In the state, GYTS-4 was conducted as part of a national survey by the International Institute of Population Sciences under the Union Health Ministry.
A total of 3,501 students from across 37 private and public schools participated in the survey. Of these, 2,855 students aged 13 to 15 years were considered for the result.
As per GYTS-4, 23 per cent of students (22 per cent boys and 24 per cent girls) used a tobacco product.
