3 per cent increase in 15-19 age group, StatsCan reports
More teenagers in Quebec are turning to smoking - a troubling new development that raises questions about whether the provincial government has gone far enough to curb tobacco use among youth, experts say.
The latest survey on smoking by Statistics Canada shows that in Quebec, one in five teens age 15 to 19 lit up last year - an increase of three per cent from 2008.
By comparison, the national smoking rate for that age group declined to 14 per cent from 15 per cent.
What’s more, 11 per cent of Quebec children up to the age of 11 said that they were exposed to second-hand smoke at home, compared with five per cent for the whole country.
“Something is attracting teenagers to smoking,” said Marc Drolet, a spokesperson for the Quebec division of the Canadian Cancer Society.
“There was a downward trend for the past 10 years, and now for some reason, the trend has probably reversed. Unfortunately, we are now the Canadian champions in that (smoking age) category.”
Drolet conceded that the government has taken some strong anti-smoking measures to date, like banning it in bars and restaurants. But he urged Quebec to do more to curb subtle marketing campaigns by tobacco companies aimed at youth.
Karine Rivard, press attaché to Health Minister Yves Bolduc, defended the government’s anti-smoking initiatives and said that more were planned for this year.
She noted that Quebec has banned the sale of single cigarillos with grape and other flavours that had been popular with some teens.
“The government intends to continue to intensify the fight against tobacco,” Rivard said. She declined to describe some of the proposed anti-smoking measures.
The survey did contain some good news, however. The prevalence of tobacco use in an older age group of Quebecers - 20 to 24 - dropped to 25 per cent last year from 31 per cent for the corresponding period in 2008.
Smoking is considered the main cause of avoidable cancer globally, killing more than 5 million people each year.
Tobacco use has been linked to 85 per cent of cases of lung cancer and is responsible for 30 per cent of all cancers, according to the Canadian Cancer Society. In Quebec, 7,400 Quebecers received a diagnosis of lung cancer last year and 6,500 died from that illness.
The Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey is carried out semi-annually and is based on a survey of more than 9,000 respondents. The latest survey was for the months of February to June 2009.

RICHMOND, Va. — The International Trade Commission has ordered U.S. customs officials to bar imports of import of counterfeit cigarettes bearing the trademarks of Philip Morris USA, the nation’s No. 1 tobacco company said Thursday.
Philip Morris, owned by Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., said in a statement that the order will help stop Internet-based vendors from illegally importing cigarettes made abroad without trademark owners’ permission and selling them in the United States. The company estimates more than 800 million cigarettes were sold to U.S. consumers by Internet sellers in 2008.
In March 2008, Philip Morris USA filed a complaint with the commission as part of an effort to end the trade of counterfeit, stolen and untaxed or under-taxed cigarettes. The company said Internet-based cigarette vendors are violating U.S. intellectual property laws and the Lanham Act.
The federal government and many states have raised cigarette taxes in recent years, driving up their overall cost to consumers. So-called gray-market vendors typically import counterfeit cigarettes and smokes intended for foreign markets and sell them to consumers more cheaply than legitimate products in part because they’re untaxed.
Gray market cigarettes are made with different materials and under different quality-control procedures than cigarettes sold in the U.S. and may not display the required health warnings, Philip Morris said in the complaint. Consumers also may be “disappointed and/or confused” by the differences between the gray market cigarettes and those Philip Morris sells in the U.S., it said.