Health Update: Sports v smokes

PARENTS who want to prevent their children from smoking should encourage them to take up sport. A survey of 11,000 US children published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that those involved in school sports were less likely to be regular or heavy smokers.

Involvement in sports gives children greater self-confidence and more awareness of the health risks of smoking, say researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.