A Taipei City councilor said yesterday that 6,500 school students, some as young as 10, had been caught smoking by school authorities over the past 30 months.
Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) said that there are more than 234,600 students at Taipei junior and senior high schools, so that on average, at least seven students under the age of 18 are discovered smoking on school grounds each day.
"This figure could very well be just the tip of the iceberg," Wang said.
He said that schools had not reported all cases of students caught smoking and many students may be smoking away from school grounds, so the real level of underage smoking could be much higher.
Wang asked the city's Education Department to spend the next two months working out ways to solve the problem. He also asked that the total ban on smoking on campus be rigorously enforced to prevent students from imitating teachers that smoke.
He said that between the start of 2001 and June this year, nearly 70 percent of the 127 public and private schools in Taipei had reported students smoking alone or with their classmates in restrooms, stadiums or other sites on school grounds.
He said more than 90 percent of the students who smoke get their cigarettes from convenience stores, grocery stores or even betel nut vendors, and that only a few get their cigarettes from their friends or from home.
Wang criticized government agencies for failing to uphold the law, saying that only NT$470,000 in fines had been issued to 157 shops over the past 30 months for selling cigarettes to youths under 18.
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