Even though political debate on plain packaging rages, new Cancer Council figures show Victoria’s smoking rates are lower than ever.
Young people are more likely to smoke than older people. Photo courtesy of Kanaka Menehune via Flickr
Smoking Stats
- 15.3% of Victorians are regular smokers, a figure well down on the 21.2% recorded in 1998.
- Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 light up the most.
- 19.3% of young Victorians are regular smokers.
While there has been a rapid drop in young people smoking from the 27.4 per cent in 1998, they still remain the largest age group of smokers.
Professor Melanie Wakefield is the author of the Cancer Council study.
“Younger people are much more likely to smoke than older people,” Professor Wakefield said.
However, she said it’s not all bad news for young Victorians.
“In this younger group we are seeing an increase in the percentage of young people who have never taken up smoking,” she said.
Who doesn’t smoke?
Maxine Duffield, 22, has never smoked a cigarette. She said it has a lot to do with education.
“I’m studying physiotherapy so I see the bad end of all the crap that comes out of your lungs after smoking so that plays a part in why I don’t.”
“But I was never among that smoking culture in high school so that played a part in me never taking it up,” she said.
Who does smoke?
Adam Knox, 22, is a regular smoker and he said it was the peer pressure in high school that made him start smoking at age 16.
“It seemed adventurous as a kid, the people who went off to the oval to smoke at school were cool so I wanted to hang out with them.”
He said he smokes around two packs a week and at this point only a great price increase would make him quit.
Photo from the cancer council’s proposed plain packaging
Professor Wakefield said factors such as graphic warnings on packets and a number of tax increases on tobacco, which lead to a rise in the price of cigarettes, have helped bring the number of young people smoking down.
However, Mr Knox said the graphic warnings had no effect on his smoking habit.
“You see the pictures on cigarette packets and they seem like special effects in a movie, I know that does happen but it doesn’t make me associate myself with those effects when I smoke,” Mr Knox said.
Quit Executive Director Fiona Sharkie said young people need to realise the negative effects are very real.
“Smokers are kidding themselves if they think they can get away with smoking because the health effects have been exaggerated. Almost all smokers will get emphysema, while a quarter of all deaths from smoking are from emphysema.”
However, Ms Sharkie said that campaigns to get people to give up are working.
“When we talk to people who have recently quit smoking they will nominate the price of cigarettes and anti-smoking television campaigns as the most important factors in helping them make the decision to quit, helping them on their quitting journey and helping them remain quit,” Miss Sharkie said.
Mr Knox said that if cigarettes were a lot higher in price he and his peers simply would not be able to afford to keep smoking.
As to whether the proposed plain packing laws would tempt him to quit he said: “No, there’s not a chance, if anything it would make me want to smoke more. It’s ludicrous that so much money would be wasted on it [plain packaging]. They are already hiding cigarettes away so plain packaging would make no difference.”
