Huge improvement in youth smoking rates

The latest ASH survey of Year 10 students shows what a huge improvement there has been from 2008 to 2017 with youth smoking rates.

• The proportion who have never smoked has gone from 60.7% to 82%
• The proportion of regular smokers gone from 11.9% to 4.9%
• The proportion of daily smokers gone from 6.8% to 2.1%

So regular smoking has dropped by 58% and daily smoking by 69%.

This is very important as if you don;t start smoking as a teenager, you are far less likely to take it up later.

Still a lot of variation by gender and ethnicity in terms of daily youth smokers:

• Pakeha 0.9%
• Pacific boys 3.2%
• Pacific girls 3.9%
• Maori boys 4.3%
• Maori girls 6.3%