Croatian children start smoking cigarettes, as well as untested substitutes for tobacco products, at an increasingly early age, which considerably contributes to the development of a wide range of diseases, director of the Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ) said at an event marking Croatian Anti-Smoking Day in Zagreb on Wednesday.

The national Day Without Tobacco Smoke is marked on the first day of Lent, which falls on 22 February this year. On that day most people think of giving up something that they enjoy during the year, which is an opportunity to decide to quit smoking, it was said at the event, organised by the HZJZ.

HZJZ Director Krunoslav Capak called for a national anti-smoking campaign, welcoming the recently adopted strategy against addiction, including addiction to nicotine.

He warned that smoking contributes by 15-20 percent to the development of different forms of cancer, adding that the only greater health risk is posed by improper diet and obesity.

Capak pointed out the fact that most cafes in Croatia still allow smoking because at the time of adoption of the law restricting the use of tobacco products concessions were made to different lobbies.

“We need to look to the countries where smoking prevalence is less than five percent and which have declared themselves tobacco-free zones,” Capak said.

In Croatia, 25 percent of men and 19 percent of women aged 18 and above smoke, “but the question is to what extent they answered the survey questions truthfully, because the impression is that this number is much higher,” he said.

Capak drew attention to the fad of vaping and using smokeless tobacco, which he said looks attractive to young people, but is still insufficiently researched.

Young people in Croatia are starting to smoke at an ever younger age and an increase has been observed in relation to other European countries, Capak said.

Epidemiologist Dijana Mayer highlighted the increase in the use of e-cigarettes among young people. The latest survey has revealed that 13 percent of students aged 16 years said they used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days.

The trend of using conventional cigarettes is stable at 17-20 percent, depending on age and gender, with boys smoking slightly more often than girls, Mayer said.

Croatia is still among the top three EU countries when it comes to smoking among young people aged up to 18 years, which is deplorable, she added.

Mayer said that e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products pose a new threat to cardiovascular health, even though they are advertised as safe. “It can be said that they are less dangerous than conventional cigarettes, but not that they are not harmful at all.”