A report card on the NT's smoking habit

A report card on the NT's smoking habit

Posted May 31, 2013 19:03:00

A new report finds the Northern Territory's smoking rates are falling, but are still the highest in the country.

Source: 7.30 NT | Duration: 8min 21sec

Topics: health, nt


CLAIRE MACKEY, PRESENTER: Hello and welcome to the program, I'm Claire Mackay. Alcohol has been dominating the headlines lately but another dangerous addiction is doing even more damage. Smoking kills 170 people in the Territory each year and recent research found the social costs are higher than alcohol. Today, a group set up to advise the Government on reducing the Territory's smoking habit released its second annual report. The Tobacco Control Advisory Committee found that while the rate of people lighting up is falling, more still needs to be done. Alison Middleton reports.

ALISON MIDDLETON, REPORTER: These animated characters have a grisly message. They vividly illustrate the dangers of smoking.

SHARON WALLACE, ABORIGINAL MEDICAL SERVICES ALLIANCE NT: There's funerals all the time from people that have died from lung cancer or emphysema. We're losing our mob, you know all too often to smoking-related illnesses and it's something that's so preventable.

DR DAVID THOMAS, NT TOBACCO CONTROL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: It costs about 764 million dollars per year in the NT, smoking, which is somewhat more than alcohol. Now we're not in a sort of like a competition, I mean obviously we need to do a lot to reduce the harm grog causes our community here in the NT, but we need to pay similar sorts of attention to reducing smoking.

ALISON MIDDLETON: This short film was produced by an Aboriginal health organisation in Tennant Creek. It's just one of many measures aimed at getting smokers in the Territory to quit.

DR DAVID THOMAS, NT TOBACCO CONTROL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Smoking rates in the NT are slowly coming down but we still have the highest both Indigenous and non-Indigenous smoking rates in the country.

ALISON MIDDLETON: 24 per cent of non-Indigenous adults in the Territory light up - compared to a national average of 16 per cent. In the Indigenous community, 60 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women smoke.

SHARON WALLACE, ABORIGINAL MEDICAL SERVICES ALLIANCE NT: In north-east Arnhem Land there's up to 70 per cent of Aboriginal people that smoke. It's also been reported that 8 and 9-year-old children are actually openly smoking in north-east Arnhem Land.

DR BRUCE HOCKING, WURLI-WURLINJANG HEALTH SERVICE: It affects people's cardiovascular system and cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of Indigenous people up here.

ALISON MIDDLETON: More than half of Doctor Bruce Hocking's Indigenous patients in the Katherine region smoke. He says they need to want to stop - to be able to quit - but in areas of socio-economic disadvantage people have other priorities.

DR BRUCE HOCKING, WURLI-WURLINJANG HEALTH SERVICE: If you're concerned about where your income is going to come from, if you haven't got a job and you don't see your future as terribly hopeful or bleak then maybe stopping smoking is not the first thing you worry about, so motivation I think can be an issue in people who are disadvantaged.

ALISON MIDDLETON: And without a critical mass of non-smokers - it's hard to kick the habit.

DR BRUCE HOCKING, WURLI-WURLINJANG HEALTH SERVICE: High rates of smoking means smoking can be normalised in your behaviour, normalised in the community and normalised in your friends so it becomes a normal way of behaving.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Australia led the world when it introduced plain cigarette packaging late last year. Now the Commonwealth's being urged to increase the tax on cigarettes.

DR DAVID THOMAS, NT TOBACCO CONTROL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: There have been very few price rises in cigarettes in real terms for the last decade so it's probably about time that we get on with that.

DR BRUCE HOCKING, WURLI-WURLINJANG HEALTH SERVICE: Increasing the price of alcohol does reduce consumption, increasing the price of tobacco does likewise, reduce consumption. But it's only one, there's got to be a number of strategies you use in a situation like this.

ALISON MIDDLETON: The Territory Government recently co-funded these television ads with the Cancer Council. It's being asked to go a step further - and ban smoking in cars when kids are present.

DR DAVID THOMAS, NT TOBACCO CONTROL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: The NT is now the only jurisdiction where kids are not protected in cars from the dangers of second-hand smoke.

ROBYN LAMBLEY, NT HEALTH MINISTER: We are definitely considering it. We'd like to see the evidence around how effective that is, but it is a concern, obviously it's not ideal for adults to be smoking in cars with children but we'll be looking at the evidence before we make a decision.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Opinion is divided over whether fining families would work.

DR BRUCE HOCKING, WURLI-WURLINJANG HEALTH SERVICE: These sorts of top down approaches are really problematic we have the same issue with alcohol here of governments trying to legislate against people drinking, now legislating against people smoking. The most successful programs that are developed around smoking or around any addiction come from supporting the addict to try and give their drug away - forcing them, trying to force them, telling them they shouldn't - I don't know that doesn't seem to work too much really.

DR HOWARD BATH, NT CHILDREN'S COMMISSIONER: I personally don't respond very well to the notion that we have to punish families to get this change. Most of the change that we've got so far around smoking and smoking in pregnancy has come because of education.

ALISON MIDDLETON: The next time you decide to have a cigarette think about who else you're hurting. These ads warn about the dangers of smoking around kids, but there's also concern about the impact on unborn children.

DR HOWARD BATH, NT CHILDREN'S COMMISSIONER: The recent research is suggesting that mum smoking during pregnancy is more harmful than we had previously thought.

ALISON MIDDLETON: More than half of Indigenous mothers and 12 per cent of other mums in the Territory smoke during pregnancy.

DR HOWARD BATH, NT CHILDREN'S COMMISSIONER: In the mainstream community , there's been a dramatic reduction in the number of mums who smoke during pregnancy but unfortunately it's taking longer to get through in Aboriginal communities.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Prisoners are among the biggest puffers - 85 per cent of inmates smoke. But that will change when Territory jails become the first in Australia to go smoke-free.

COMM. KEN MIDDLEBROOK, NT CORRECTIONAL SERVICES: After the 1st of July tobacco will be contraband. It's about introducing healthy lifestyles to prisoners while they're in our custody.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Guards as well as Prisoners will be barred from lighting up. They're being offered Quit classes and nicotine patches. But guards are worried the ban will spark problems.

MATTHEW GARDINER, UNITED VOICE: If everyone is trying to give up smoking they know sometimes people are a bit edgy, a little bit tense at the time. In a situation like a prison where it's a very small, enclosed environment, those pressures are actually multiplied tenfold.

COMM. KEN MIDDLEBROOK, NT CORRECTIONAL SERVICES: Every day in both Darwin and Alice Springs there's an early morning call that alerts prisoners to the fact there's only so many days left for smoking in institutions so look I think we've done ample preparation.

ALISON MIDDLETON: It remains to be seen whether prisoners will stay off the smokes once released.

KATHY SADLER, CANCER COUNCIL NT: In New Zealand where they have introduced no-smoking in prisons, when they return back to their home only 10 per cent of those people stay off the cigarettes and I suppose that's a good result.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Tobacco Action Workers are spreading the anti-smoking message in Alice Springs. They're part of a 100-million-dollar campaign by the federal government to reduce smoking among Indigenous people in town and the bush. The Federal Opposition says the program isn't working, but others think it's making a difference.

DR DAVID THOMAS, NT TOBACCO CONTROL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: One in five Aboriginal people in this country die early because of smoking - we have to be doing something about reducing smoking, this is an important positive step in the right direction.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Those working in the sector say it will take more time to change ingrained habits.

SHARON WALLACE, ABORIGINAL MEDICAL SERVICES ALLIANCE NT: The introduction of tobacco happened hundreds of years ago when Moccasins used to trade with north-east Arnhem Land. It's actually become part of Aboriginal culture almost in the Northern Territory - you know there are dances and that that Aboriginal people in north-east Arnhem Land, Yolngu do, that you know are about smoking tobacco so it is very accepted, so change isn't going to happen overnight.