BEIJING, April 28 -- Male smokers who think cigarettes make them more masculine may be disappointed as nearly 68 percent of people said in a survey that tobacco leaves nothing but a bad smell, China Youth Daily reported today.
About 67.7 percent of 5,482 respondents said in an online survey by the newspaper from April 22-24 that they felt male smokers smelled awkward while 39.8 percent considered them dirty, the Beijing-based newspaper said.
In contrast, less than 10 percent of respondents said cigarettes can make a man look more masculine and tough like characters in TV dramas and movies, the report said.
The act of lighting up also hurts the image of females as 73 percent agreed that women looked emaciated and perverted with cigarettes. The survey also found that 41.5 percent said female smokers usually have bad skin and 39.6 percent said these women also smell bad, the report said.
The survey was conducted just days after Beijing ruled early this month that all government offices, schools, museums, hospitals and sporting venues in the capital will be smoke-free areas while restaurants, bars and Internet cafes will have to separate smoking and non-smoking areas from May 1.
However, only 32.2 percent of those surveyed said they knew the new smoking ban was in place. Another 21.8 percent felt the rule could eventually work in the world's biggest tobacco-consuming country despite 90 percent expressing support for it, the report said.
Company and government offices were the places where smoking was most frequently seen, according to 81.2 percent of the surveyed, which led 65.7 percent to think salesmen were the biggest smoker group, followed by civil servants, the report said.
Ninety percent of respondents said second-hand smoke will compromise the health of non-smokers, the report added.
China had more than 300 million smokers, the most in the world, as of May 2007, according to a report released by the Ministry of Health.
The country is also the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming country, accounting for more than a third of the global total on both counts, the ministry's report said.
The tobacco industry has been the biggest tax source since 1987, which accounted for about 240 billion yuan (31.4 billion U.S. dollars) of tax revenue in 2005.
About 540 million Chinese suffer from passive smoking and more than 100,000 of them die annually from diseases caused by second-hand smoke.
Among passive smoking victims, about 180 million were children younger than 15, the ministry's report said. The World Health Organization estimated that about 700 million children worldwide suffere from passive smoking.
(Source: Shanghai Daily)
