Professor Ma Jun from the Teenager Health Research Institute of Peking University has disclosed in a report entitled "Strategies on Banning Smoking among Teenagers" that China will print warning images such as a cankered lung, a skull and blackened teeth on the cigarette boxes before October 2010.
According to Ma, 21.8% of the junior school students they surveyed have tried smoking even before they entered junior middle school, accounting for 22.5% of the total smokers, and the average age for smokers has dropped to as young as 10.7 years old.
Ma says that China joined the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in October 2005, and according to the stipulation of the Convention, the member countries should make a clear policy on the price, packaging, selling and advertising of tobacco within their respective countries.
