1.12 Future smoking rates?
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With the prevalence of smoking declining among Australian schoolchildren and continued cessation occurring among the population of smokers, it is reasonable to assume that levels of smoking will continue to fall in future decades.120 Moreover, as smoking is increasingly seen as a minority behaviour, obstacles to its further regulation are likely to become less important as time goes by.120 This has prompted some speculation that smoking could disappear in Australia by about 2030,120, 121 much as snuff use did in the 1700s.121
Perhaps a more pragmatic approach is to examine smoking behaviours in population groups in Australia with significantly lower than average patterns of smoking.120 One such group is medically trained personnel. Surveys on smoking rates among medical students in Sydney122, 123 and Australian general practitioners and GP trainees124, 125 have shown a prevalence of 3–4%. On the assumption that doctors are more informed about, and more often encounter the health consequences of tobacco use than most other occupational groups in the community, this may indicate the lowest "baseline" smoking rate that can be reasonably expected in a fully informed population.120 Dentists are also confronted with the oral effects of tobacco use, ranging from bad breath through to cancers of the mouth. Prevalence of smoking among Australian dentists matches that of GPs.126 The challenge remains to reduce smoking prevalence and its corollary of death and disease in those subpopulations in Australia among whom smoking continues to be widespread. For further information, see Chapter 9.
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