No drop in daily youth smoking

10 April 2013

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) NZ

No drop in daily youth smoking

The Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Year 10 smoking survey shows youth smoking has not decreased.

The number of Year 10 students smoking each day was 4.1 per cent in 2012, with daily youth smoking not dropping for the first time in the survey’s 14 years.

ASH says government spending cuts in tobacco control and inadequate tax increases are hampering ability to reduce smoking rates.

The government’s anti-tobacco mass media campaign is carried out by the Health Promotion Agency, created last year from the merger of the Health Sponsorship Council and the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand.

The budget provided to the agency to deliver mass media campaigns has fallen dramatically from $8.2 million in 2008 to $5.1 million in 2012.

“We’re seeing the stark reality that youth smoking rates do need strong messages behind them to keep smoking rates falling,” said ASH director Ben Youdan.

“A big concern is that with reduced mass media campaigns, goals like reducing youth smoking and larger targets, including the government’s goal of a smokefree

New Zealand by 2025 becomes that much more difficult,” said Mr Youdan.

Ethnic and socioeconomic differences in youth smoking remain with one in nine Maori students still smoking compared to one in fifty New Zealand European students, and one in a hundred Asian students.

9.2 per cent of students from low decile, 4.3 per cent from medium decile schools and 1.9 percent from high decile schools were daily smokers in 2012.

The biggest drops in youth smoking were in 2000 and 2010 when the government introduced significant unannounced tobacco tax increases.

-ENDS-

© Scoop Media