Depiction of smoking in manga comes under fire

I can't find the English-language version of this story, so I'll link to the Manga News Service summary:

Research conducted by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare found there was some 8.7 smoking scenes in an average boys' manga, leading some health officials to accuse the comics of encouraging smoking. The health ministry's research group studied five boys' comics magazines with high circulation figures that were sent to elementary, junior high and high schools:

Titles released from 94-02 were looked at and 426,350 pages were examined in the National Diet Library. 1608 pages were found that included smoking scenes and 7328 places on those pages. Broken down to the individual magazine, 1 of the five examined contained as many as 15.6 smoking scenes. There were only 0.2% of smoking scenes containing a message cigarette were bad for the body.