Youth smoking continues to fall

Good news from the latest survey of Year 10 students by ASH.

Since 2001, the following changes:

• Number who have ever smoked gone from 65% to 18%
• Number of regular smokers gone from 25% to 5%
• Number of daily smokers gone from 14% to 2%
• Number of Maori daily smokers gone from 26% to 5%

A lot of the change has been in just the last ten years. The daily Maori smoking rate for Year 10s has gone from 18% to 5% and for all Year 10s from 7% to 2%.

It is very hard to kick smoking once you start. So having fewer kids start smoking is a very good thing.