This photo provided by KT&G Corp. shows its flavored tobacco products.
SEOUL, Sept. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — Flavored tobacco products make it easy for people to start smoking, while influencing them to continue smoking, a study showed Tuesday.
Kim Hee-jin, a professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of Public Health, conducted a survey of 10,030 people from 13 to 39 years of age.
Among them, the number of smokers stood at 5,243, of which 77.2 percent used flavored cigarettes, up more than 12 percentage points compared to the 2016 figure.
By gender, the flavored tobacco usage rate stood at 75.9 percent for men and 78.4 percent for women.
The share of flavored cigarette users in the group aged from 13 to 18 stood at 85 percent, higher than 80.1 percent for the group aged from 19 to 24 and 74.5 percent for the group aged from 25 to 39.
At 67.6 percent, more than two-thirds of those who had smoking experience said that flavored tobacco exerted influence on their first try, more than two times higher than others who said flavored tobacco did not have any influence.
As for the primary reason for using flavored tobacco products, the group aged from 19 to 39 cited ‘taste,’ followed by personal taste-suiting flavor. The group aged from 13 to 18 cited taste, followed by curiosity and personal taste-suiting flavor.
Those who start smoking with flavored cigarettes were 1.4 times more likely to continue smoking than others who started smoking with non-flavored tobacco.
In addition, the likelihood that they would continue smoking with flavored tobacco was 10.9 times higher.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
