24 October 2011

Cancersticks Inc

'Social and health costs of tobacco smoking in Australia: level, trend and determinants' by Azizur Rahman & Ann Harding in (2011) 6(4) International Journal of Statistics and Systems 477-489 is a reminder of why we might want to shape the use of trade marks in plain paper packaging of tobacco products.

The authors state that -
In this paper, a major health related issue tabacco smoking in Australia has been addressed. Findings reveal that tabacco smoking is the largest single cause of death and a key risk factor for some deadly diseases in Australia. The overall social and economic costs of tabacco smoking are huge, and rapidly increasing over time. Although the trent in smoking is slowly decreasing during recent decades, the current adults smoking prevalence rate is about 23 per cent. More than a quarter of households in Australia have weekly expenditure on tabacco products and nearly one in each ten households spent more than 50 dollars per week for smoking. Specific socioeconomic characteristics such as households with unemployed reference person, hacing two or more unemployed persons, and in renting dwellings have significantly higher smoking expenditure. The demographic attributes show that more males are smoker than females and smoking rate is higher among younger aged adults for both sexes.
They conclude -
Findings have revealed that smoking rate is higher among younger aged adults for both sexes and then it decreases with increasing at middle to older age. The men smoking rate is higher than the women smoking rate among all age groups. Besides, the trend of adult smoking is slowly decreasing in Australia during recent decades, and the current prevalence rate of tobacco smoking is about 23 per cent. In addition more than a quarter of households in Australia have weekly expenditure on tobacco products, and nearly one in each ten households spent more than 50 dollars per week for smoking.

The smoking expenditure of Australian households increases with increasing levels of weekly income up to 1000 dollars and then decreases with increasing income. It is noted that more than a half of the Australian households have total income between one and a thousand dollars per week. The renter households have higher smoking expenditure than households owning dwelling without or with mortgage as well as other tenure type, and households with unemployed reference person have relatively more smoking expenditure than households with employed reference person or the reference person not in labour force. All levels of smoking expenditure are more common within households having two or more unemployed persons. Moreover smoking is the largest single cause of death and one of a critical risk factor for some deadly diseases in Australia and the overall social costs of tobacco smoking are increasing over time. So, more effective and multistage policy can be developed and implemented for reducing social and health costs of Australia. It is important that the potential new policy (such as actions of social awareness) could not only target at national and/or state levels, but also it could be initiated at local levels.

Finally, future research will generate small area tobacco smoking estimates in Australia, because the estimates of health related characteristics including the youth and adults smoking behaviours are not very common at small area levels due to the lack of enough sample information in small geographic areas.