Only 12.8 per cent of Australians smoking

According to a US Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids story, Australian health officials yesterday reported that Australia’s smoking rate had dropped by more than 15 per cent – from 15.1 per cent in 2010 to 12.8 per cent in 2013 – ‘following the implementation of a landmark law requiring that cigarettes be sold in plain packaging’.

And a story by Harriet Alexander for The Age reporting the same drop in the incidence of smoking seemed to make the point that the smoking decrease had coincided with the introduction of standardized tobacco packaging laws.

Standardized tobacco packaging was introduced in Australia on December 1, 2012.

Geoff Neideck of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which conducts the survey (National Drugs Strategy Household Survey) every two to three years, was quoted in The Age as saying that the results continued a longer trend that had seen smoking rates halved since 1991.