On July 22, the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" was launched in Beijing. The theme of the 2022 event is "I am a tobacco control defender and build a healthy China".
On the day of the launch of the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour", a reporter from the Beijing News interviewed Liao Wenke, vice president of the China Tobacco Control Association. He said that in view of the strong plasticity of adolescents, timely tobacco control education, supervision and guidance, the formation of a smoke-free culture, the reduction of the overall number of smokers, will help to achieve the "2030 smoking rate of people over 15 years old smoking rate reduced to 20%" tobacco control target.
16.7% of secondary school students try to smoke
Beijing News: Why carry out the "Tobacco Control Campus Tour" activity?
Liao Wenke: When it comes to tobacco control work, young people are the foundation and the focus. In recent years, the state has paid special attention to tobacco control among adolescents, focusing on tobacco control among adolescents and taking it as an important measure to achieve the goal of comprehensive tobacco control. The China Tobacco Control Association saw the important position of young people in tobacco control, so it tried to carry out such an activity.
Beijing News: Have there been tobacco control activities on campus in the past?
Liao Wenke: There is tobacco control work on campus, and the education department and schools have been doing it. But brand activities like the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" have never been held before.
The China Tobacco Control Association hopes to build the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" into a brand. Tobacco control activities that could previously be called brands, such as the "refuse to smoke the first cigarette" signature activity, the "do not smoke, my health, my fashion" World No Tobacco Day publicity activities, "the monitoring of tobacco footage of popular domestic film and television dramas", etc., have a wide influence.
Beijing News: What is the current proportion of teenagers smoking in the country?
Liao Wenke: The China Tobacco Control Association has not conducted any relevant surveys, but we have always been very concerned about the data and information in this regard. For example, the relevant person in charge of the National Health Commission disclosed that the smoking rate of adolescents reached 6.9%, and the smoking attempt rate reached 19.9%. Another 180 million children have been exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes or in public places.
According to the 2021 Tobacco Epidemic Survey of Chinese Middle School and College Students recently released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of middle school students trying to smoke is 16.7%, of which 23.2% are boys and 9.5% are girls. Compared with 2021 and 2019, the proportion of secondary school students trying to smoke fell by 1.2 percentage points and boys by 2.8 percentage points.
In recent years, the state has paid more and more attention to campus tobacco control, which is also reflected in the data.
Create a "smoke-free culture" to dilute the smoking community with teenagers
Beijing News: What is the situation of tobacco control on campus?
Liao Wenke: Overall, tobacco control on campus is much better than in other public places. Because the country has a series of tobacco control regulations, and students are easier to manage, the effect is naturally better.
Beijing News: Why is the situation of campus tobacco control better, and why should we pay attention to campus tobacco control?
Liao Wenke: Adolescents are an important period for the formation of behavioral habits, and their behavior habits are highly malleable, which is a critical period for tobacco control. Capturing young people and educating, supervising and guiding them on tobacco control can push them away from tobacco and generally stop trying to smoke in adulthood. However, it is very difficult for a person to quit smoking after becoming addicted to smoking. Therefore, from the perspective of tobacco control effectiveness, increasing the intensity of tobacco control work for adolescents, forming a smoke-free culture, and reducing the number of newly added smokers will help reduce the smoking rate of the entire country.
The Healthy China Initiative (2019-2030) sets a tobacco control target of "reducing smoking prevalence to 20% among people over the age of 15 by 2030", which is currently 26%. How did this 6 percentage points fall? How easy is it to rely on smokers to quit? Of course, we must also encourage smoking cessation and guide more people to quit smoking. However, it is easier to achieve less smoking for people who enter the 15+15 age group each year.
We jointly launched the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" activity, the goal is to create a smoke-free culture, block youth smoking, so that non-smoking adolescents gradually dilute the smoking population.
At the same time, we must educate young people to understand the harm of smoking through the way of "small hands holding big hands", and then let children persuade their fathers to quit smoking, and promote the construction of smoke-free families with smoke-free campuses, which also has many successful cases, so it is also a good way to control tobacco. In this regard, we have specially organized a tobacco control brand activity of "persuading dads to quit smoking".
Beijing News: You mentioned smoke-free culture, what does it mean?
Liao Wenke: It is to make our people form a sense that smoking is not only harmful to health, but also a bad habit and behavior. Smoking not only harms your own health, but also harms the health of others. It is your right to choose to smoke personally, but you cannot smoke in public places because it will harm the health of others. Because smoking is harmful, you can't give harmful cigarettes as gifts to others. At the same time, not smoking is a fashionable act, a manifestation of civility and cultivation. Through the education of young people, we must form a smoke-free culture, and only by forming a smoke-free culture will the effect of tobacco control be long-term and lasting.
Go to schools to expand the coverage of tobacco control for teenagers
Beijing News: Why did the China Tobacco Control Association jointly sponsor this "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" activity with the China Education Society and the 21st Century Public Welfare Foundation?
Liao Wenke: The China Tobacco Control Association mainly assists government departments in promoting tobacco control work, and we, together with the China Education Society, hope to expand the coverage of the activities as much as possible, because the "China Tobacco Control Campus Tour" activity needs to enter the school, and cooperation with the China Education Society provides a channel to enter the school to carry out activities. Through the China Education Society to carry out tobacco control lectures, essay collection and other activities in schools, it will promote more solid publicity and education on tobacco control for young people.
Beijing News: What is the difference between tobacco control among teenagers and tobacco control by other groups?
Liao Wenke: First of all, the effect of tobacco control among adolescents is good. Adolescent behavior habits are still in the process of being formed, and they are well controlled and benefit for life. And the adult habit is basically fixed, it is more difficult for him to quit smoking. From the perspective of the work system, the school has a complete education system, which can promote tobacco control education to every student, which is impossible to do with the social tobacco control publicity. From the perspective of working conditions, students who try to smoke face restrictions such as economic independence and regulations that do not allow the sale of cigarettes to minors, and the conditions for tobacco control are better.
The methods and methods of tobacco control education for adolescents need to be improved
Beijing News: At present, what are the difficulties in tobacco control among adolescents?
Liao Wenke: In recent years, the state and schools have paid more and more attention to the publicity and education of tobacco control among young people, but the ways and methods of tobacco control publicity and education are relatively simple and boring, it is difficult to impress students, and it is difficult for students to be willing to accept, so it is necessary to put a question mark on the effectiveness. Therefore, the methods and methods of tobacco control education for adolescents should be improved.
On the other hand, tobacco control is not only a matter of school education, but also the social environment. The Law on the Protection of Minors stipulates that tobacco may not be sold to minors. In reality, this has not yet been fully achieved. On the Internet, minors can also buy tobacco. In film and television dramas, there are still many tobacco shots. This suggests that the environment in which adolescents are kept away from tobacco still needs to be improved.
Beijing News: In addition to traditional tobacco, what harm does e-cigarettes have to teenagers?
Liao Wenke: The attraction of e-cigarettes to teenagers is very large, and the shape and taste of e-cigarettes are diverse, so that many teenagers are addicted in the process of playing. E-cigarettes contain nicotine, and the most prominent feature of nicotine is addiction. After teenagers become addicted to e-cigarettes, they will switch to traditional cigarettes. This is also why the state has repeatedly banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
On the other hand, e-cigarettes are easily ignored by parents, schools, and teachers. Parents and teachers are very sensitive to students' smoking of traditional cigarettes, and feel that this is not good to learn, but not for smoking e-cigarettes.
In addition, there is false publicity in e-cigarette manufacturers, which is also not conducive to tobacco control. From the perspective of tobacco control education, the harm of e-cigarettes cannot be ignored.
Beijing News: In your opinion, in order to complete the 2030 tobacco control target, in addition to strengthening the tobacco control work of young people, what other aspects of work should be done?
Liao Wenke: First of all, we should have a full understanding of the difficulty of achieving this goal, have a sense of urgency, play a good combination of tobacco control, and increase efforts to do a series of work in order to finally achieve the 2030 tobacco control target.
For example, it is necessary to further increase the intensity of tobacco control publicity, and work the methods, methods and effectiveness of publicity. It is also necessary to moderately increase tobacco taxes and tobacco retail prices, and reduce tobacco consumption by raising tobacco prices, which has also been proved effective in practice. The health warnings on cigarette packs should be intensified, and the current phrase "smoking is harmful to health" is not enough. At the same time, the packaging of cigarette boxes in China is now very exquisite, like works of art, which is not conducive to tobacco control. This not only makes smokers ignore the health hazards of tobacco, but also invisibly promotes the atmosphere of gift-giving. From the perspective of building a healthy China, we must take a big step forward in the health hazard warning of cigarette packs. It is necessary to use the health warnings of cigarette packs and increase the publicity that smoking is harmful to health. From the perspective of the whole society, our publicity on the harm of tobacco is also far from in place, often empty, which also needs to be changed urgently.
Beijing News reporter Sha Xueliang
Edited by Chen Jing, Proofread by Zhang Yanjun