Another great drop in youth smoking

The Herald reports:

Smoking among young teen students appears close to being stubbed out, a new survey suggests.
New research announced by Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa today indicated that, for the first time, fewer than two per cent of Kiwi teens aged 14 to 15 now smoked daily.
The data, from a survey of 29,000 Year 10 students carried out each year by Action for Smokefree 2025 (ASH), showed just 1.9 per cent smoke on a daily basis.
“That’s a dramatic drop from the 15.2 per cent of students 20 years ago who said they smoked on a daily basis,” Salesa said.

Excellent progress indeed.

The full data is at ASH. Key details:

• Year 10 never smoked at 81% (in 2002 38%)
• Year 10 regular smokers at 5% (in 2002 23%)
• Year 10 daily smokers at 1.9% (in 2002 13%)

However while the decline has been constant up until 2017, the data for 2018 shows much the same as 2017. So they may have hit a wall of the hard core remainers.

They also found that e-cigarette use was almost entirely confined to those who already smoked. It is not a gateway into smoking, but a gateway from smoking.

Of non-smokers, only 0.4% use e-cigarettes daily. However for regular smokers 14% use e-cigarettes daily.