2.9 Best estimate of recent tobacco consumption in Australia

Show / hide chapter menu

So, how much tobacco really has been recently consumed in Australia?

2.9.1 Total per capita tobacco consumption among adults

Accurate estimates of total consumption in Australia would take account of both the number of tobacco products levied for excise and customs duty and estimated sales of contraband cigarettes and illicit tobacco. Estimates of total tobacco consumption taking into account both official tax receipts and best available estimates of counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes and chop-chop in Australia are presented in Table 2.25 below.

It seems that the total number of tobacco products consumed in Australia fell sharply over the first few years of the decade. This corresponded with increased quitting activity around the start of the new millennium, the extension of smokefree policies in public places in most states and territories, and the reform of tobacco taxes between November 1999 and February 2001. The change to a per stick system of levying duty together with the imposition of the GST triggered very large increases in the price of large cigarettes packs and moderate rises in the price of smaller pack sizes—see Chapter 13 for further details. Falling cigarette sales appear to have been only marginally offset by increased use of smoking tobacco and cigars. Even taking into account a possible increase in use of contraband cigarettes and chop-chop, in the three-year period between 1998–99 and 2001–02, total sales fell by about 18%. Total per capita sales fell by about 20%. Based on these estimates, per capita consumption appears to have fallen by only a further 1% in the three years between 2000–01 and 2004–05.[29]

2.9.2 Tobacco consumption among Australian students

While tobacco consumption among the population as a whole has recently reduced by almost 20%—from about just under 2500 to just under 2000 cigarettes per day—the reduction among Australian secondary-school students appears to have been even more dramatic.

As outlined in Section 2.3.5, over the three years since 2002, the number of cigarettes smoked among weekly 16- and 17-year-old-smokers declined by about 30%. As outlined in Chapter 1, the percentage of secondary-school students reporting smoking at least once weekly also declined dramatically between 1999 and 2005, both among the older and the younger age groups.

Table 2.26 sets out per capita reported consumption of cigarettes by secondary-school students in Australia between 1984 and 2005. Per capita consumption is calculated by taking the total number of students enrolled in secondary schools in each year in which surveys of smoking were conducted, and dividing this figure by an estimate of the total number of cigarettes smoked in that year by all students. The total number of cigarettes smoked in each year is calculated from self-reported numbers of cigarettes smoked by those who indicated that they had smoked at least once in the last week. The resulting figures for each year (the average number of cigarettes smoked per year, per student) could be thought of as an index of overall youth smoking that combines consideration of both smoking prevalence and reported consumption.

As can be seen from Table 2.26 and Figure 2.14, per capita cigarette consumption across the whole population of secondary-school students has declined dramatically. Secondary-school students in Australia in 2005 on average are smoking about 58% fewer cigarettes than they were in 1996.