Teenagers are more likely to start smoking during the summer vacation, with having friends who are smokers being the biggest influence on them taking up smoking, followed by having a parent who smokes, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said in a warning to protect children’s health.
Citing a 2021 government study, the agency said 7.2 percent of senior-high school students, including those enrolled in vocational schools, smoke cigarettes, adding that the risks of adolescent tobacco use increase with age.
According to the study, junior-high school and senior-high school students from families with one or more parents who smoke are 5.5 times and 2.8 times more likely to smoke respectively than those from families without smokers, it said.
Warning: Smoking can damage your health Photo courtesy of Freepik
The research showed junior-high school students and senior-high school students with smoker friends are 20.9 times and 12.5 times more likely to smoke respectively than those without.
The study additionally revealed that 3.9 percent of junior-high school students and 8.8 percent of senior-high school students used e-cigarettes last year, up from 4.4 percent and 11.7 percent the previous year, the agency said.
More than half of adolescents had their first experience with tobacco use out of curiosity, including 54.5 percent of junior-high school students and 50.2 percent of senior-high school students, it said.
The most often reported reason for smoking is to relieve stress, the agency said.
People who started smoking as teenagers are about 20 percent more likely to develop a chronic pulmonary condition later in life and smoking is an increasingly costly habit, it said, adding that a pack a day amounts to NT$45,000 per year.
Young people wishing to quit smoking should apply for tobacco-use cessation services offered by 2,700 clinics and hospitals in partnership with the HPA around the nation, the agency said.
Parents should take extra care during the summer vacation to prevent their children from picking up smoking, HPA Director-General Wu Chao-chun (吳昭軍) said.
Picnics, trips and sports are some activities families can engage in to steer adolescents away from tobacco use, he said, adding that positive reinforcement works better than punishment in disciplining children.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS