2.0 Introduction
Show / hide chapter menu
A great deal of data exists about consumption of tobacco in Australia. However little of it is available in a consistent format covering extended periods of time, and much of it is difficult to interpret.
The Australian Tobacco Marketing Advisory Committee[1] compiled very useful data on tobacco production, processing, manufacturing and duty clearances in the reports it released annually from 1966, but these ceased when the organisation was wound up in 1994.1
Data have been collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for more than a century on the quantity and value of numerous commodities manufactured in factories around the country. Information about tobacco products manufactured in Australia was published in a variety of formats over the years.2 Data on the quantities of tobacco manufactured were included in reports published monthly until 1997,3 quarterly until June 2004,4 and then electronically.5 However this source of data by itself was of limited usefulness as an estimate of consumption as it included tobacco products bound not for home consumption but for export and it excluded tobacco products imported to Australia for local consumption. In any case estimates for manufactured tobacco products are no longer included in ABS publications.5
Data on the amount (weight) of tobacco product on which excise and customs duty was paid was included in various publications produced by the ABS over the years6, including Overseas Trade Bulletins published until 1977—see Table 2.3. Data on excise and customs duty payments on tobacco products between 1978–79 and 2002–03 have been requested and purchased by researchers on various occasions from the bureau's International Trade Section.7 The ABS ceased collecting this data in 2003. Details about tobacco excise and customs duty now must be requested from the Australian Taxation Office, which is restricted by legislation in the information it can release, and is less well equipped than the ABS in dealing with requests from researchers.8
Apart from these official sources of data relevant to production and sales of tobacco products, it is also possible to generate estimates of tobacco consumption from data collected in various surveys.
Triennial household surveys conducted for The Cancer Council of Victoria[2] between 1974 and 20019-18 have asked smokers to estimate the number of packets of cigarettes they purchase each week, however the survey was not repeated in 2004
or 2007.
Surveys conducted every three years to evaluate the impact of Australia's National Drug Strategy19 [3] 20-22 asked smokers to nominate within specified ranges the number of cigarettes they smoke each day but, for most of the earlier surveys, these categories were too broad to enable meaningful analysis of trends over time.
Additional surveys conducted for the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to evaluate the National Tobacco Campaign (NTC) between 1997 and 200523-26 have asked smokers to estimate numbers of cigarettes smoked each day. The NTC surveys provide a wealth of useful data on reported consumption among various categories of smoker, however, because the Campaign only commenced in 1997, this survey provides information only on very recent trends in reported consumption. It should be noted that estimates of consumption by smokers based on self-report data tend to be significantly lower than those calculated using duty payments and other objective sources.
The ABSs Household Expenditure Survey conducted every five (now six) years27 also provides several interesting snapshots of households with any expenditure on tobacco, generating data about the number and characteristics of such households and the average reported amounts spent.28 Quarterly and annual national accounts data provide estimates of the amount spent nationally on tobacco products.29 Because the price of tobacco has increased greatly over time,30 both household expenditure and national accounts data need to be carefully re-adjusted if they are to be used as estimates of consumption.
From time to time, various business-sector organisations compile statistics concerning production and sales of cigarettes based on a mixture of official data and figures obtained from tobacco companies. International databases such as ERC Statistics International Plc's The World Cigarette Market31 and Euromonitor International's Global Market Information Database32, 33 are extremely interesting. However generally data is available only to those who subscribe to the entire data service. Little is documented about sources, assumptions and estimation techniques underlying figures included in these databases, so it is difficult to know whether data is being collected in a consistent way from year to year.
All the data known to be publicly available relevant to estimating trends in tobacco consumption in Australia are set out in the tables and figures below. The limitations of each data set are discussed further in Section 2.6. Unfortunately no single source provides a valid and reliable and consistently measured estimate of tobacco consumption over the entire 50-year period since health authorities first raised alarm about the dangers of smoking. As discussed in Sections 2.7 and 2.8, estimating consumption and making comparisons between countries and within countries over time is increasingly difficult as illicit tobacco sales become a growing problem worldwide. Notwithstanding these difficulties and limitations, the best estimates of recent consumption available at the time of writing are set out in Section 2.9. Factors driving reductions in consumption are discussed in Section 2.10.
[1] Known until 1989 as the Australian Tobacco Board
[2] Known until 1995 as the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria
[3] Launched after a Special Premiers' Conference in 1985 as the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA), the impact of the Strategy has been monitored in surveys in 1985 and three-yearly since 1988.
Copyright © 2012 The Cancer Council. All rights reserved.