The Korea Association of Smoking and Health and Gallup Korea announced the results of a survey, Thursday, on 1,512 adults over 20 nationwide; 745 men and 767 women, with regard to smoking. The results showed that the number of men smoking has dropped 14.8% to 55.1%, which when applied to the estimated 11.97 million male smokers, means 2.53 million have quit smoking.
Chairman Kim Il-sun chair said the fall was the highest worldwide, explaining that it came from the stronger anti-smoking policy of the government since the end of last year, and the anti-smoking public relations activities conducted by the media. He added comedian Lee Ju-il, suffering from lung cancer, had a considerable impact with his anti-smoking messages.
Age wise, the decrease rate of adults in their 50s carved the largest with 29.3%, followed by 24% of smokers in their 20s, 23.8% in their 30s and 19.2% in their 40¡¯s.
With regard to women, despite a drop among smokers in their 30s and 40s, there was a 22.5% hike overall.
As to reasons for stopping, 72.9% said because of the health risk, 24.8% said people around them disliked smoking, 9.3% for throat pain and 8.9% because they caught a disease.
(Kim Dong-seob, dskim@chosun.com)
