- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fourteen
percent of teens aged 13 to 15 smoke worldwide, but two-thirds of them
want to quit, a survey released on Wednesday finds.
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- A quarter of all kids who smoke started by the age of
10, the report, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
, the National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization and the
Canadian Public Health Association found.
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- The Global Youth Tobacco Survey of 13- to 15-year-olds
at 75 sites in 43 different countries, the West Bank and Gaza Strip found
that developing countries have the highest rates of teen smokers.
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- More than one-third of the students surveyed in Chile,
Russia, Ukraine and Northern Mariana Islands said they were current smokers.
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- The survey, published on the Internet at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/global/GYTS.htm,
found 17.7 percent of the U.S. teens questioned smoke, but 55.8 percent
of them said they wanted to quit.
-
- "Overall, 68.4 percent of students indicated that
they wanted to quit smoking immediately," the CDC, whose report is
published in the September issue of the journal Tobacco Control, said in
a statement.
-
- "Of major concern is the fact that so many young
people around the world are exposed to cigarette smoking in their homes
and in public places. Nearly half the students reported that they were
exposed to second-hand smoke from others in their home," the statement
added.
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- "Overall, 60 percent of students were exposed to
second-hand smoke in public areas."
-
- A second study published in the same journal found that
second-hand smoke raises the risk of heart disease by 47 percent.
-
- And a third study in the same issue found that it takes
only a few weeks or months of smoking for a teenager to become addicted.
Overall, 40 percent of teens who try even a few cigarettes become addicted,
it found.
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- The World Health Organization says 10 million people
are expected to die each year from smoking-related illnesses by the year
2030, with 70 percent of these deaths in developing countries.
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