Students in the Corona era were found to be able to buy alcohol and cigarettes more easily than in the past.
Today (28th), the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) released the 'Adolescent Health Behavior Survey Statistics' that surveyed about 60,000 middle and high school students last year.
According to the survey, adolescents were able to purchase alcohol and cigarettes more easily than before the Corona era.
For 'easiness of purchase', a measure of how easily alcohol and cigarettes are available in a month, alcohol increased from 63.5% in 2020 to 71.3% in 2021 and cigarettes from 67.0% to 74.8%.
For middle school students only, cigarettes increased by more than 10%, respectively, from 39.4% to 55.1% and from 36.1% to 48.5% in the same period.
In particular, both alcohol and cigarettes were found to be more readily available to female students than male students, which is presumably because it is difficult to determine the age of female students wearing masks.
An official from the health authorities explained, "As a result of analysis by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was found that wearing a mask had a large impact."
Meanwhile, youth smoking remained at the same level as last year, and the number of adolescents who responded that they had smoked regular cigarettes on at least one day in the past month was 4.5% last year, which was not significantly different from the previous year (4.4%), but the current use of e-cigarettes was slightly higher. appeared to increase.
In the case of youth smoking, in 2020, the first year of the Corona 19 epidemic, compared to the previous year (6.7%), the use rate of e-cigarettes increased.
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