The analysis
of statistical data clearly supports the necessity of prevention.
The survey titled Global Youth Tobacco Survey was started by
the UN World Health Organization in 1998 in co-operation with
the American based Center for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) and with the UN International Children’s Emergency
Fund (UNICEF). The objective of this worldwide project was to
collect information on the smoking habits of young people. By
2002 surveys were carried out in 97 countries (including 6 European
countries).
Hungary, together with 6 other central-east European countries,
joined to this international survey in 2002. According to Hungarian
data published in 2003, of ten students seven has tried smoking,
and 17.7% of them made this before the age of 10. About one
third of the students smoke and among them every fifth student
is addicted to smoking. More than fifth of students who never
tried smoking can be regarded as susceptible to start smoking.
Almost twice as many non-smoking girls (27.9%) than boys (15.0%)
said that they will probably smoke in the future. In the younger
age-group, in kindergarten children, fortunately not their smoking
habits had to be surveyed as yet, however, the environment containing
tobacco smoke is a significant problem. The passive smoking
prevalence of kindergarten children in Budapest were studied
by the ÁNTSZ Institute in Budapest (1999) . Their results
showed that 39.6% of the kindergarten children are passive smokers,
and in 50.5% of the families there are smokers. In the smoking
families, in the presence of small children the parents regularly
smoke in 29.7% and occasionally in 47.8% of the families.
In families where the parents smoke in the presence of children,
49% of the children must inhale daily the smoke of 6 to 10 cigarettes,
21.2% 11 to 22 cigarettes, and 11.5% even more that 21 cigarettes.
84.2% of the parents replied that they would be happy if their
child were thought in a program how to get protection against
passive smoking.
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