Estimating adolescent cigarette consumption in Japan.

We estimated the cigarette consumption among Japanese adolescents based on the data which was obtained from a 1990 nationwide school-based questionnaire survey of smoking prevalence among high school students. Cigarette consumption for adolescents was estimated using the data on current smokers' rate and cigarette consumption per day. Participants were 57,189 high school students (aged 13-18 years) including 4666 current smokers. The estimated adolescents' consumption was calculated at 3.5 to 4.3 billion units in 1990. The proportion of adolescents' consumption to the total sales was 1.1% to 1.3%. The corresponding tax amounted to between 21 and 25 billion yen in 1990. The difference between the total sales and the crude cigarette consumption for adults has increased gradually over 20 years. Logically, some part of this increase should be attributed to cigarettes consumed by adolescents. The increase in this difference seemed to keep pace with the increasing number of cigarette vending machines. These results indicate that a considerable amount of cigarettes were consumed by adolescents in 1990.