The revelation that one in six of 11-year-old children within the EU is smoking has led to a renewed call for an increase in the price of cigarettes.
Prof Luke Clancy, chairman of Ash and director general of the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society, said yesterday that easy access to tobacco, exposure to advertising and weak tobacco control efforts were environmental factors encouraging young people to start smoking.
"Since price is the single most important factor in preventing children from starting smoking, we missed a great opportunity to increase the price of cigarettes in the last budget, at a time when the workplace ban suggested Ireland was getting serious about tobacco control."
He said higher cigarettes prices were extremely effective in preventing young people from starting smoking and reducing the number of cigarettes they smoked.
"Advertising bans, which need to cover all types of tobacco promotion from branded ashtrays to billboards, are a particularly effective way of helping the young to avoid tobacco," Prof Clancy added.
The survey was carried out by the EU anti-smoking campaign Help, For a Life Without Tobacco, which undertook a survey on behaviour among adolescents in 35 European countries.
Prof Clancy said there had been a dramatic increase in cigarette smoking among those aged between 11 and 15.
Most people began to experiment with tobacco products in young adolescence, but what was shocking was that one in six 11-year-olds had tried at least one cigarette.
"If these children do not manage to quit, one-in-two will die as a result," he warned.
He said reducing smoking among young people was a crucial task for tobacco control.
Nineteen per cent of schoolchildren in Ireland were current smokers, while 41 per cent of children in the 11 to 17-year-old group said they had smoked a cigarette.
