Seoul City to Reduce Smoking Rate Through TV Programs and Anti-Smoking Songs

Development of Non-Face-to-Face Smoking Cessation Services... Expansion of Experiential Smoking Cessation Programs for Youth

A scene from the MBC program "I Live Alone" showing the recording process of Seoul City's "No Smoking Song."

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] Seoul City announced on the 18th that, riding on the trend of decreasing adult smoking rates, it will emphasize the importance of quitting smoking through public broadcast TV programs and launch a large-scale promotional campaign.

According to Seoul City, the '2019 Community Health Survey' released last month showed that the smoking rate among adults aged 19 and over in Seoul decreased by 1.9 percentage points from 18.6% in 2018 to 16.7% in 2019. In particular, the male smoking rate in Seoul sharply dropped by 3.5 percentage points from 34.4% to 30.9% during the same period.

Seoul City analyzed that efforts such as expanding smoke-free zones on school routes and creating a 'citizen-participatory smoke-free environment,' along with actively promoting 'visiting smoking cessation support services,' have fostered a voluntary smoking cessation culture in civil society.

Accordingly, to flexibly continue the current downward trend in smoking rates, the city decided to vigorously promote smoking cessation to the public. In connection with TV programs, it plans to candidly show participants attempting and maintaining smoking cessation, and encourage smokers to actively join the campaign by reinforcing their will to quit through smoking cessation songs.

Additionally, the city plans to operate the current youth smoking cessation services, which are mainly centered on public health centers, as an 'experiential smoking cessation program' through cooperation among community institutions, expanding services to help smoking students maintain cessation for six months upon participation.

Seoul City especially plans to develop a unified 'Seoul-style non-face-to-face smoking cessation clinic and counseling protocol' at the city level, as various smoking cessation services including non-face-to-face services are being attempted by autonomous districts due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, Gwangjin District has developed a 'smoking cessation app' that provides popup notifications guiding users to smoke-free zones within the district through location tracking, while Seocho District delivers behavioral reinforcement items and nicotine replacement products by courier to registered smoking cessation counseling clients to help them maintain cessation.

Na Baek-ju, Director of the Seoul City Citizen Health Bureau, said, "We will actively develop and expand non-face-to-face smoking cessation services for smokers classified as high-risk groups in response to COVID-19," adding, "We will also strengthen efforts to block youth smoking initiation to protect vulnerable groups and overall reduce Seoul’s smoking rate."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.