Seeing through the Smoke: Tobacco monitoring in New Zealand

Seeing through the Smoke: Tobacco monitoring in New Zealand

Public Health Intelligence Occasional Bulletin No. 26

ISBN 0-478-28363-6 (Book)
ISBN 0-478-28364-4 (Internet)
HP 4103

Date of publication: May 2005

Tobacco is a major cause of health loss for New Zealanders, contributing to approximately 18 percent of all deaths in the early 2000s. It is also a major cause of health inequality, accounting for substantial proportions of the difference in life expectancy between ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

Yet were it not for New Zealand’s tobacco control programme (TCP), the toll would be higher still. The TCP has contributed to a halving in tobacco consumption and a reduction in adult smoking prevalence by one quarter (from 32 percent to 24 percent) over the past quarter century.

An important component of the TCP is the ongoing monitoring of tobacco control interventions, tobacco industry activities and tobacco products and their use. Such monitoring forms part of the wider mandate of the Ministry of Health to monitor and report on the health of New Zealanders and the risks to health to which we are exposed.

Public Health Intelligence (PHI), the branch of the Ministry charged with this responsibility, intends to publish a series of reports over the next few years reviewing the state of health risk monitoring in New Zealand.

The first report, Food and Nutrition Monitoring in New Zealand, was published in October 2003 and was well received. The current (second) report, Seeing through the Smoke: Tobacco Monitoring in New Zealand, fulfils a similar purpose for the tobacco control community.

The authors of this report have carried out a comprehensive review of the history and current state of tobacco monitoring in New Zealand. In brief, they find that while good use is being made of most existing data sources, some are still underexploited.

Furthermore, monitoring lacks co-ordination and still has deficiencies and duplications in some areas. Ways of addressing these remaining information needs and inefficiencies are suggested and prioritised.

These recommendations are addressed to both Public Health Intelligence itself and the wider tobacco control community. A concerted effort by all health sector stakeholders to implement these recommendations could lead to significant improvement in the monitoring of the supply, consumption, use and health impact of tobacco over the next two to three years.

Document availability

You can download this report below in Word and PDF formats. It is not available in hard copy.

Seeing through the Smoke: Tobacco monitoring in New Zealand (Word, 360 kB)

Seeing through the Smoke: Tobacco monitoring in New Zealand (PDF, 658 kB)

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