Smoking & Health

Cancer is a major cause of death in Australia, responsible for around 36,000 deaths each year. The most common causes of cancer deaths are not necessarily the most frequently occurring cancers. While lung cancer is the fifth most common type of cancer, it is the leading cause of cancer death in Australians.

More than 85 per cent of lung cancers relate to tobacco smoking.

Incidence

Smoking represents Australia's largest preventable cause of death, being responsible for the ending of around 18,000 lives per year. This includes deaths from heart disease, stroke and various other methods linked directly to smoking. Approximately 7,000 of these deaths are due to lung cancer alone.

Although smoking rates have declined over the last sixty years, they are still unacceptably high. From the peak rates in the 1940’s when about 70 per cent of men smoked, they have declined to around 25 per cent and continue to fall. Interestingly, smoking by women peaked in the 1970’s and has declined at a slower rate than men's smoking. Men and women between the ages of 18-29 display the highest smoking rates at around 30 per cent.

One in four adults (24 per cent) smoked in 2001; 22 per cent were regular daily smokers and 2 per cent smoked less often than once a day. Almost half of all adults (49 per cent) reported that they had never smoked regularly, while the remaining 26 per cent reported they were ex-smokers.

More males than females were current smokers (28 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively), and for both males and females the prevalence of smoking was higher in younger age groups than in older groups. Around 36 per cent of males and 28 per cent of females aged 18-34 years smoked compared with 7 per cent of males and 5 per cent of females aged 75 years and over.

Smoking doesn’t just cause lung cancer

Smoking is also a leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a slowly progressive disease of the lung characterised by a gradual loss of lung function. Emphysema, chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive bronchitis, or a combination of emphysema and chronic bronchitis are forms of COPD.

Smoking is a major cause of heart disease, stroke, and a wide variety of other health problems. The vast majority of deaths caused by smoking occur through development of heart disease and lung cancer, followed by chronic bronchitis, stroke, peripheral vascular disease and other circulatory diseases, and cancers other than lung cancer (such as bowel cancer).

Why do people smoke?

Given that most people are fully aware that smoking can kill them, why is it that young people continue to take up smoking? Why don’t smokers simply stop?

Most smokers take up the habit while in their teens or when they start working. Many young people are influenced by the behaviours of their peers and role models. Strategic advertising by tobacco companies has also been linked to these behaviours.

There are some myths and fallacies also associated with smoking that also influence take up rates. Younger people have described their feeling that smoking was supposed to give confidence, make them feel like adults, and help them cope with stress and anxiety associated with schooling, relationships, education, and so on. Younger women sometimes take up smoking in the belief that it will help them lose weight or make them more attractive.

Quit Victoria says that although young people may falsely think that smoking only causes problems for old people, the bad news is that you’re more likely to smoke heavily and less likely to quit if you start smoking from an early age. Not surprisingly, these “early smokers” are more likely to develop serious health problems from smoking.

Reference: Foundation 49