[Intl-tobacco] Australia: Smoking dives to world low: Wooldridge (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Smoking dives to world low: Wooldridge
by DARREN GRAYCA
Source: The Age, Thursday, 6/14/01

Australia is set to become the first country in the world to slash adult
smoking rates to under 20 per cent, federal Health Minister Michael
Wooldridge will claim today.

Dr Wooldridge will tell the National Tobacco Conference in Adelaide that
the latest official figures show that 20.3 per cent of Australians smoke
at least once a week.

But the figures relate to smoking rates in November last year - and Dr
Wooldridge and anti-smoking activists believe rates have since fallen
below 20 per cent.

This is in part because of the massive uptake of the anti-smoking drug
Zyban since it won taxpayer subsidisation from February. In its first
three months since listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, 164,000
scripts have been written for Zyban, costing taxpayers about $40 million.
Its annual cost had been estimated at $10 million.

Last night a spokesman for Dr Wooldridge said: "The minister would expect,
given that Zyban has recently been added to the PBS (Pharmaceutical
Benefits Scheme) and that we are continuing our anti-tobacco campaign,
that today that figure would be under 20per cent, which would make us the
first country in the world to achieve that level."

Dr Wooldridge will tell the conference that cutting smoking rates benefits
the entire nation. "Each percentage point reduction brings enormous
benefits for our community, with many lives saved, improved quality of
life, reductions in passive smoking, as well as social and economic
benefits - involving families, friends, colleagues and workplaces," he
says in the speech to be delivered today.

The research on adult smoking rates has been done for the government by
the Centre for Behavioral Research in Melbourne. It confirms that smoking
rates in Australia have fallen considerably in the latter half of the
1990s.

In 1995, 24.5 per cent of adults were classified as smokers, dropping to
20.3 per cent last November.

While the Australian national adult smoking figure might lead the world
for countries, some individual states in America have adult smoking rates
below 20 per cent. In California the rate is 18.7 per cent and in
conservative Utah it is 13.5 per cent. (By contrast, the figure in Nevada
the rate is 31.5 per cent.)

 Meanwhile, a report to be released today by the Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare on drug use highlights the declining smoking patterns
in Australia.  In 1996, Australians aged over 15 years smoked an average
of 2017 cigarettes a year, well down on the 1986 average of 2710
cigarettes.

The report said that in 1998 one-third of Australian smokers
unsuccessfully tried to quit.