A TV drama series has 164.6 smoking scenes and each film features 26.2 on average, with all leading roles smoking.

The survey of China's eight highest rated TV dramas and 10 films from 2001 to 2003 was carried out by the China Smoking and Health Society.

Experts are worried that on-screen smoking has been depicted as elegant or trendy, which can influence teenagers to think favorably of smoking or to want to smoke.

Most of the on-screen smokers were male, particularly businessmen, policemen, gang members and hooligans. Their smoking gestures were glamorized as mature and elegant, while most females were depicted as chic and sexy while smoking.

However, all the scenes ignore the fact that smoking causes many fatal diseases.

The survey for the 16th World No-Tobacco Day on May 31, which has the theme, "tobacco free film, tobacco free fashion, action." World No-Tobacco Day is to raise awareness that tobacco is harmful to health, especially for teenagers' health.

In the United States, a typical adolescent watching 150 films a year will be exposed to about 800 depictions of smoking, according to latest WHO statistics.

Henk Bekedam, the WHO representative in China, said movies are most influential on teenagers, and cigarettes companies have been using movies in marketing promotion.

Young people are three times more likely to smoke after being exposed to smoking depictions and 16 times more likely to think favorably of smoking after seeing their screen idols smoking, he said.

There are 1.2 billion smokers in the world. Five million smokers died of a tobacco-related illnesses in 2002, which means tobacco killed one smoker every seven seconds, according to WHO statistics.

About 250 million children and adolescents, a third of whom live in developing countries, will die of smoking-related illnesses in the future, according to WHO statistics.

Tobacco is responsible for 90 percent of lung cancer cases, 75 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease cases and 35 percent of coronary heart disease cases, according to WHO statistics. The death rate from lung cancer in China has been increasing by 4.5 percent annually since 1990, according to national disease surveillance system.

China's advertising laws, which forbid any form of tobacco advertising in broadcast, TV dramas and press, have been strictly enforced and no tobacco close-ups were found in all the above-mentioned 18 films and TV dramas, according to Cao Ronggui, director of China Smoking and Health Society.

Experts with the society have been recommending a film-rating system to make sure teenagers see less on-screen smoking, Cao said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 30, 2003)