How are we travelling with smoking? Is it a habit on track to burn itself out?

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 1991, 24 per cent of the population aged 14 years and over smoked daily.

This rate was more than halved to 11 per cent in 2019.

Since then, the prevalence of daily smoking for Australians aged 18 and over in 2021–22 was 10.1 per cent, and 9.7 per cent among people aged 15 years and over.

That’s according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ ‘Smoker status’ dataset, which pools data from the National Health Survey and other national surveys.

Looking good, right?

Not as good as we might have thought.

A new study has revealed that one in five Australian smokers (21 per cent) would prefer to still be smoking in the next 1-2 years. That is, they aren’t actively thinking about quitting, regardless of the cost of cigarettes or the grisly health messaging on packets.

So you’re thinking, well, at least 80 per cent of smokers want to give up … but that’s not right either.

The study, led by researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland, found only 59 per cent would prefer to quit smoking all together.

The remainder would either prefer to switch to a lower harm alternative (12 per cent) or are uncertain. Meaning they’re probably not thinking about it much at all.

An international investigation

The study looked at smoking in four wealthy Western countries.

In total, 8642 smokers from the US, Canada, England and Australia “who identified as smoking at least weekly”, were surveyed in the 2020 International Tobacco Control Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey.

There were 1213 participants surveyed from Australia.

Participants were asked “if they preferred to continue to smoke or to quit with or without an alternative nicotine product over the next 1–2 years”.

Co-author Professor Ron Borland, from the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change in the School of Psychological Sciences, said the study yielded some interesting results, both for Australia and more broadly.

Professor Borland said the researchers were surprised that only 57 per cent of all smokers surveyed across the four countries wanted to quit all forms of nicotine in the medium term.

The remainder was split between those preferring to switch to an alternative and 21 per cent continuing to smoke or being uncertain.

The professor says

“These results pose a challenge for tobacco control efforts, especially as we also know that most of those who would want to quit, have failed multiple times, and many are unlikely to succeed even with current approved help,” Professor Borland said.

He said “new approaches may be needed to try to steer people away from smoking”.

This was because there is “an increase in alternative products in many parts of the world, giving rise to more choice”.

He said it was notable that “in England, which has a more liberal approach to the use of vaping, including encouraging smokers to try them, that a preference for alternative products was stronger (19 per cent).

The desire to quit all nicotine was least common (47 per cent) among the four countries studied.

He said the study raises questions about the viability of current approaches to reducing smoking.

“It’s clear that there are still people who aren’t actively trying to quit,” he said.