The Philippines ranks 15th out of the 23 countries in the Western Pacific with youth smokers, according to a report by the World Health Organization.
The WHO’s Global Youth and Tobacco Survey (GYTS) 2005-2014 says that 13.7 percent of students aged 13 to 15 years surveyed in the Philippines admitted to being tobacco users.
The Philippines has every one in five boys who smoke, similar to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Mongolia.
The survey was conducted in the past 23 years in Western Pacific among 122,000 students from ages 13-15, representing over 65 million youth in the region.
The report said that monitoring the youth’s usage of tobacco was crucial in the Western Pacific, as the tobacco industry continues to target young people.”
The effects of the tobacco epidemic are shown in higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic respiratory disease in adults, resulting in premature disease and death.