1.6 Prevalence of smoking—secondary students

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1.1 A brief history of tobacco smoking in Australia

1.2 Overview of major Australian data sets

1.3 Prevalence of smoking—adults

1.4 Prevalence of smoking—young adults

1.5 Prevalence of smoking—middle-aged and older adults

1.6 Prevalence of smoking—secondary students

1.7 Trends in the prevalence of smoking by socioeconomic status

1.8 Trends in prevalence of smoking by country of birth

1.9 Prevalence of tobacco use among Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders

1.10 Prevalence of smoking in other high risk sub-groups of the population

1.11 Prevalence of use of different types of tobacco product

1.12 Future smoking rates?

1.13 International comparisons of prevalence of smoking

Acknowledgments

References

More than 80% of smokers become addicted to nicotine as teenagers.44, 45 According to the NDSHS (2004), the average age of initiation of tobacco use among those who had ever smoked was 15.9.20 An estimated 22,077 Australian school children progressed from experimental to established smoking behaviour in 2004–05.[5]

National surveys of smoking patterns in Australian secondary students have been coordinated by the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer (within the Cancer Council Victoria) at three-yearly intervals since 1984.47-54 These data are reported in this chapter since they provide the most detailed consistently collected statistics available.[6]

The prevalence of smoking among children increases with age. Table 1.5 shows that in 2005,54 smoking was very much a minority behaviour among 12-year-olds, but that by the age of 17, 19% of males and 17% of females had smoked in the previous week. Over the survey period the difference in the proportion of male and female students smoking in the past week has reduced considerably. In 2005, a similar proportion of males and females were smoking in each age group except for 16-year-olds, among whom significantly more females than males had smoked.

Reflecting patterns reported for adults (Section 1.3), smoking among secondary students declined during the 1980s but stalled during the first half of the 1990s. Between 1996 and 2005 a significant fall in smoking prevalence was seen in all age groups and the prevalence rates recorded for 2005 are the lowest since the survey series began in 1984—see Figure 1.4.

The return to a downward trend in smoking among teenagers coincides with the launch in 1997 of the high profile, media-led and nationally coordinated National Tobacco Campaign.55 Although not specifically targeted at children, there is evidence that teenagers were well aware of the campaign,56 and that the program's success in reducing adult smoking rates appears also to have had the unintended but welcome effect of reducing smoking in younger age groups as well.52 Other tobacco control activities over the same period, for example increased tobacco taxes, publicity surrounding the introduction of smokefree environments, and stricter enforcement of regulations relating to sales to minors and smoking in public and other places, are also likely to have contributed to downward pressure on smoking rates among secondary school students.

A limitation of the data series reported in this section is that school students are required to remain in formal schooling only up until the age of 15, meaning that smoking prevalence measured among 16- and 17-year-olds attending school is not fully representative of all teenagers, particularly earlier in the survey period. However, with school retention rates increasing since the beginning of the study period, and teenagers now being strongly encouraged to remain in school until the completion of Year 12 or its vocational equivalent,57 the most recent figures seem likely to reflect more accurately smoking prevalence rates among older teenagers than in the earlier years. Even so, it is probable that smoking rates reported for the two older age groups in Table 1.5 at least to some degree underestimate overall prevalence in 16- and 17-year-olds. Teenagers who are committed to school, and have high academic aspirations, are less likely to smoke.58 Conversely, the transition to the workplace may subject some school-leavers to higher levels of peer smoking behaviour if they pursue a semi-skilled or unskilled vocation. Workers in blue collar occupations are more likely to be smokers (Section 1.7.2). In the National Drug Strategy Household Survey conducted in 1998,18 they were also more likely to report that they worked in an environment without restrictions on smoking (see Chapter 9 for a summary of unpublished data from this survey).