Why we need tobacco sales data for good tobacco control

Gartner, Coral E; Chapman, Simon F; Hall, Wayne D; Wakefield, Melanie A

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb03389.x

Topics

Good-quality data on tobacco sales are vital for evaluating tobacco control interventions

The prevalence of smoking in Australia is among the lowest for high-income countries. In 2007, 17.9% of Australians aged 14 years or older were current smokers, compared with 23.6% in 1998. Yet tobacco remains Australia’s leading risk factor for premature death and disability, accounting for 7.8% of the total disease burden,1 nearly twice the combined burden caused by alcohol (2.2%) and illicit drugs (2.0%).

1 School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD.
2 School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.
3 Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, VIC.

Correspondence: c.gartner@sph.uq.edu.au

Acknowledgements:

Coral Gartner is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) postdoctoral research fellowship.

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