160,000 children start smoking every year says charity

Almost 160,000 children start smoking every year in the UK – enough to fill around 5,200 classrooms, a charity warned.

The 157,000 children aged 11 to 15 who take up the habit every year could also make up 14,000 junior football teams, according to Cancer Research UK.

The charity, which wants plain packaging for tobacco, says eight out of 10 people start smoking before they are 19 and more must be done to prevent them starting.

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Almost a million under-15s – more than a quarter (27 per cent) of all children – have tried smoking at least once .

Among 12-year-olds, 1 per cent were smoking regularly in 2009, another 2 per cent smoked occasionally and 2 per cent said they used to smoke. A year later in 2010, as 13-year-olds, 3 per cent of children smoked regularly, 2 per cent smoked occasionally and 4 per cent used to smoke.

Jean King, Cancer Research UK’s director of tobacco control, said: “Far too many young people start smoking every year. We must act to bring this number down.

“The tobacco industry spends a great deal of money on designing cigarettes and their packets so they seem glamorous, appealing, fashionable and attractive in an effort to recruit more customers.

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“Our research has shown that selling all cigarettes in standardised packs will help reduce the appeal of smoking and give children one less reason to start smoking.”

Jim Richardson, 56, from Prudhoe in Northumberland, started smoking when he was about 15 and was diagnosed with advanced and inoperable lung cancer in 2010.

The father of four who runs nurseries and after-school clubs said: said: “I would hate to think that any of the hundreds of children we have looked after might ever go through what I have because they were tempted by one glitzy packet attempting to make smoking look cool.”