Children taking up cigarettes

More teens are smoking in Beijing, where the number of primary and middle school students picking up the habit has more than doubled from previous years, a survey has found.

The survey, conducted by Beijing's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) every two years since 2005, recently polled nearly 40,000 students across the capital on their smoking behavior last year.

The poll showed 17 percent of students at the primary and secondary level picked up cigarettes last year, up from 7 percent in 2005.