Children now begin to smoke as early as age nine

In a low-income city in Wales, Merthyr Tyfdil, the average age adolescents begin smoking is 12. Weekly smoking is reported in 19% of boys aged 15 years, and 28% of girls aged 15 years in 2004. Many parents initiate their children into smoking, not only by being smokers themselves but also by giving their children cigarettes because they see it as funny and entertaining. Parents are unable to notice that the earlier their child beings to smoke, the more likely they are to become addicted, and the more difficult it will be to stop this habit later in life. Disturbing stories of 9-year-old Welsh boys smoking because they like the way it makes them feel and relatives giving toddlers cigarettes because the find it entertaining are circling Wales with no end in sight.

Smoking is the single largest cause of avoidable ill health and early death in Wales and yet still causes an estimated 6,000 deaths each year. In 2012 legislation in England will be put into effect that forces shopkeepers to keep cigarettes under the counter, in an attempt to make teenagers less likely to go into the store and purchase them because there is no visual reminder within the store. There is also debate occurring over whether or not manufacturers should be forced to put the cigarettes into plain packaging so that the health hazards will be the main focus of the packaging. Wales may not be passing this legislation like England yet, but they are not far behind.

This issue is not only present in Wales, but also in many other countries around the world some of which include Indonesia, Greenland, Hungary, Israel, and England. In Indonesia, 25% of children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, 3.2% of which are active smokers. There is even a reported case of a baby starting to smoke at 18-months-old and reaching up to 40 cigarettes a day by the time he’s two years old. Indonesia, however, is very unlike the United Kingdom. Tobacco companies have no restrictions and can advertise as much as they want to on television and billboards, making Indonesia the third largest tobacco consumer in the world. Despite this, some bills have been passed in Indonesia in an attempt to control the amount of advertising from tobacco companies, but because of extreme opposition from the tobacco companies these bills have not gotten very far. Tobacco companies are even allowed to sponsor scholarships and concerts aimed at children, putting children at an even greater risk for starting smoking.

Ukraine seems to have an even greater problem. 17.4% of 11-year-old girls and 41.7% of 11-year-old boys have tried cigarettes before. The prevalence of smokers of Ukrainian boys has risen from 28% in 2005 to 50% in 2010. Until the early 2000s there were no government documents present that focused specifically on tobacco-related problems. Smoking was only just banned in January of 2011 in healthcare and educational facilities, and on public transport. There are laws, however, that allow for these areas to have designated smoking rooms. Ukraine may have banned tobacco advertising on television, the radio, and on outdoor billboards, but tobacco companies are still permitted to sponsor and promote. Warning labels on cigarette packages also only cover 30% of the package and are text-only. Smoking prevalence among Ukrainian men is one of the highest in the world and Ukrainian male life expectancy is much lower than Western Europe. Perhaps more regulation is needed to prevent children from beginning to smoke in the first place and to prevent the prevalence of Ukrainian child smokers from rising even further.