Young Vietnamese smoke too much

Young Vietnamese are unfit, smoke a lot and consume a lot of alcohol, according a Tuoitrenews story citing a national report on the young released on Wednesday at a conference in Hanoi.

The conference, aimed at sharing international experiences in designing youth development policies, was co-hosted by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the United Nations Population Fund in Vietnam (UNFPA).

The ministry and the UN agency had worked together to compile the first national report on Vietnamese youth with the aim of making initial assessments of the impacts of policies on education and training, labor and employment, and healthcare, said Vu Dang Minh, general director at the Department of Youth Affairs at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

According to the report, as of 2014 there were more than 25 million Vietnamese citizens between the ages of 16 and 30, accounting for 27.7 percent of the country’s total population.

Minh outlined some of the suggestions offered at the conference, among them a need for a program to improve the physical fitness of youths and schemes for reducing risk behaviors and consequently lowering smoking and drinking rates.

Vietnam is on its way toward amending the Law of Youths with a new approach based on their rights, according to Nguyen Van Tuyet, vice chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Culture, Education, Adolescents, and Children.