The age at which people begin smoking has fallen considerably in Taiwan and one in four junior high school students have tried cigarettes, according to a reportreaching here from Taipei on Tuesday.

According to the results of a survey released Tuesday by the local health department, the survey, conducted among 22,339 juniorhigh school students, showed that 27.04 percent of the respondentshad tried smoking and that around 6.5 percent were habitual smokers.

The tallies also show that 38 percent of the children lit theirfirst cigarette before the age of 10, with 34.4 percent of them doing it at home.

According to a local health expert, the prevalence of smoking among children is due to the aggressive marketing strategies usedby tobacco dealers, including having actors smoking in movies andTV shows, thus making young people want to imitate them.

Taiwan health authorities will push anti-tobacco education further to include schoolchildren below the age of eight, promotenon-smoking campuses to counter the marketing efforts of tobacco dealers and reduce the chances of young people taking up the deadly habit.

(Xinhua News Agency May 31, 2006)