Tobacco Facts 2002

Tobacco Facts 2002
Public Health Intelligence Occasional Report No 2

Date of publication: May 2002

Tobacco Facts provides the latest adult and youth smoking prevalence data. Also provided is information regarding the quantity of tobacco products released in New Zealand.

It includes brief points about the health effects of tobacco smoking and selected New Zealand information about youth smoking.

Summary

Tobacco smoking is by far the leading cause of preventable deaths in New Zealand. The addictiveness of tobacco makes stopping difficult. As most smokers start during their teens, reducing disease and death due to tobacco requires discouraging young people becoming smokers.

Although survey data indicates little change in prevalence and the number of cigarettes smoked per smoker, data regarding overall cigarette consumption per capita continues to decline.

The combined decreases in prevalence together with possible decreases in number of cigarettes smoked per smoker (not reflected in the survey results) are likely to underlie the decreases in overall cigarette consumption.

Total tobacco consumption continues to decline, as indicated by ‘tobacco products released’ and ‘annual tobacco returns’ data.

The decline in the prevalence of adult tobacco smoking has slowed, with only a slight decrease during the 1990s.

Sustained decreases in smoking prevalence are found only for older age groups and Europeans.
In 2001, a quarter of adults were cigarette smokers.
Smoking is particularly common among Mâori males and females and Pacific males.
Among those aged less than 30 years, smoking is more common among females than males.

No further decreases in the average number of cigarettes consumed per adult smoker are evident from survey data since 1999.

Adult cigarette smokers smoke an average of 12 cigarettes per day.

Smoking among 14–15-year-olds declined between 1999 and 2001.

In 2001, 16 and 22 percent of male and female secondary school students respectively were at least weekly cigarette smokers.

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