Survey suggests that more kids than ever in Japan think cigarettes stink

Cigarettes at one time were the hallmark accessory of any cool kid in school who dared sneak off to the bathroom to share a stolen smoke with a pal.

Kids will always be kids, and whether they genuinely enjoy the rebellious activity they’re engaging in or not will often make a point of doing it just to stand out from the crowd. But according to a recent survey taken in Hokkaido, almost 50% fewer high school boys smoke today than 17 years ago.

In the survey, male third-grade students were given statements regarding health and tobacco usage and asked whether they were true or false for them. In response to the statement, “I have smoked within the last month,” just 2.9% answered in the affirmative. Considering that it is illegal for any person under the age of 20 to buy cigarettes in Japan, that statistic is still a little concerning, but when we compare it to the 50% of teen boys who admitted to smoking in a national survey conducted back in 1996, this generation are positively angels.

Whether it’s the price of the cigarettes themselves, the constant warnings of their harmful effects on the human body or just the fact that they’re no longer fashionable, it would seem that smoking is suddenly not so cool in school.

The survey was carried out between last December and January of this year, with some 2,471 high school and 1,248 junior high students’ responses collected. While 2.9% of the high school boys surveyed admitted to having taken a sneaky lungful within the past few weeks, just 1.7% of girls said the same. Of the middle school students asked the same question, only 0.9% of boys and 0.6% of girls said that they’d smoked within the last month.

Whatever the reason for this enormous drop in the popularity of smoking among school kids, we can probably all agree that it’s great to see young people wising up to what is essentially a pointless activity that costs a lot of money and smells bad. Either that or they’re just much, much better at lying that they used to be.

Source: Hamster Sokuho

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