Male smokers who think cigarettes make them more masculine may be disappointed after nearly 68 percent of people surveyed said tobacco leaves nothing but a bad smell, the Beijing-based China Youth Daily reported on Monday.

About 67.7 percent of 5,482 respondents said in an online survey that they felt male smokers smelled awful while 39.8 percent considered them dirty, the newspaper said.

In contrast, fewer than 10 percent of respondents said cigarettes made a man look more masculine and tough - like characters in TV dramas and movies, the report said.

The act of lighting up also hurts the image of females - 73 percent agreed that women looked emaciated and immoral with cigarettes.

The survey also found that 41.5 percent felt female smokers had bad skin and 39.6 percent said they also smelt bad, the report said.

The survey was conducted just days after Beijing ruled early this month that all government offices, schools, museums, hospitals and sports venues in the capital will be smoke-free areas while restaurants, bars and Internet cafes will have to separate smoking and non-smoking areas from May 1.

But only 32.2 percent of those surveyed said they knew the new smoking ban was in place. Another 21.8 percent felt the rule might eventually work in the world's biggest tobacco-consuming country.

Company and government offices were the places where smoking was most frequently seen, according to 81.2 percent of those surveyed, which led 65.7 percent to believe salesmen were the biggest smoking group, followed by civil servants, the report said.

Ninety percent of respondents said second-hand smoke compromised the health of non-smokers.

China had more than 300 million smokers, the most in the world, as of May 2007, according to a report released by the Ministry of Health.

China is also the world's largest tobacco producer and consumer, with its tobacco industry accounting for 240 billion yuan (US$34.3 billion) of tax revenue in 2005.

About 540 million Chinese suffer from the effects of passive smoking, and more than 100,000 of them die annually from diseases caused by second-hand smoke.

(Shanghai Daily April 29, 2008)