Inspired by today's news:
The daily smoking rate plunged from 15.1 per cent to 12.8 per cent between 2010 and 2013, according to the largest and longest-running national survey on drug statistics.
Most people are now 16 before they smoke their first full cigarette, up from 14 in 2010, and 95 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds have never smoked.
Public health experts say the findings of the National Drugs Strategy Household Survey vindicate plain-packaging laws, which tobacco companies recently claimed to have boosted cigarette sales by leading to a price war....
The survey of nearly 24,000 Australians was conducted between July and December 2013, before the new 12.5 per cent tobacco tax.
Update: the website for the Survey itself gives us more detail -
- People aged 40–49 were the age group most likely to smoke daily (16.2%).
- People aged 18–49 were far less likely to smoke daily than they were 12 years ago, but over the same period, there was little change in daily smoking by people aged 60 or older.
- Proportion of 12–17 year olds who had never smoked remained high in 2013 at 95%, and the proportion of 18–24 year olds who had never smoked increased significantly between 2010 and 2013 (from 72% to 77%).
- Younger people are delaying the take up of smoking—the age at which 14–24-year-olds smoked their first full cigarette increased from 14.2 in 1995 to 15.9 years in 2013.
- Smokers reduced the average number of cigarettes smoked per week; from 111 cigarettes in 2010 to 96 in 2013. Smokers aged 50–69 continued to smoke the largest number of cigarettes per week on average (about 120), nearly double the number for smokers in their 20s (about 75).
- About 1 in 6 smokers had smoked unbranded tobacco in their lifetime although only 3.6% currently smoked it, declining from previous years.
4 comments:
I said no my blog. One of the reasons these people are so wrong all the time is that they never venture out from Catallaxy.
They cannot debate anything so they stay writing complete cobblers at Catallaxy and of course the ignorami
do not know any better.
If we take today as an example Sinclair doesn't understand the difference between a tax and a price on carbon.
Dear Catallaxy anonymous:
the link you provide complains mainly about how the UK body is reporting the findings, and complains that there is no evidence that plain packaging was the reason a long established decline continued.
In fact, however, Sinclair Davidson was getting excited earlier this year about how the policy was a "disaster" because he believed industry figures that they were selling more. (Not to mention an often repeated idea in threads there that teens would think plain packaging would make it "cooler" to smoke.)
The survey results indicate that smokers are smoking less, and teenagers are taking up less.
No one knows about how the industry got its figures together - I believe no one has seen the report.
The long term independent survey technique clearly shows that the Catallaxy crew were wrong.
No, you dont get it, I know you cant admit that, the data is coming from 2010, when was PP introduced?
And no you dont get it, you couldnt even be bothered looking at the actual data until I posted a link.
You dont even see the relationship between the SMH article you posted and my link.
Tell me honesy one, what is the trend for smokers ex 1993, tell me honest one, what does the data show from 2010 - 2013 then reference this to PP introduction which was when....?
Then honest one, do the math relevant to the date PP was introduced, suprisingly, nothing really changes, the tren remains constant.
You do see that dont you?
You seem very agitated by the fact that survey evidence shows smoking rates are going down, rather than increasing, as the industry and Catallaxy and the Australian were all claiming earlier.
You also probably missed my post in which I argued that it was always going to be hard to weigh the various factors that have lead to declines in smoking - and that that it does not matter to do so as long as rates are going down.
I suspect, based on this survey, that the effect of plain packaging may have worked faster on teen take up than I expected. Can I prove it? No. Does it matter? No.
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