Children sign on to help stub out smoking
A girl signs a no-smoking pledge.
A group of children and students were honored as smoking-control volunteers on Saturday.
They promote not "taking the first puff," the knowledge of the harm of smoking, persuading family members not to smoke at home and encouraging parents and grandparents, who are smokers, to quit.
It is part of a campaign of building a smoking-free family, which encourages more adults to quit smoking in order to ensure children's healthy growth, said officials from the Shanghai Health Promotion Center.
Children and students receive certificates for smoking-control volunteers.
To build Shanghai into a non-smoking city, the first step is to build non-smoking families, officials said.
According to a survey conducted by the center in 2021 of some 6,000 secondary school students, 75.6 percent of students interviewed said they had been exposed to second-hand smoking in the past seven days. Outdoor public places was where they suffered the highest exposure.
Exposure to second-hand smoking is 39 percent at home, 49.8 percent at indoor public venues, 61.8 percent in outdoor public places and 21 percent on public transport.
To further regulate smokers, the city is banning smoking in all interior public venues, while encouraging people to only smoke in designated areas outside to reduce harm to non-smokers.
Students pose in front of cartoons created by children on smoking-control.
