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Video The battle with smoking

Fiona Breen

The Tasmanian Government has declared war on smoking with plans to reduce the state's smoking rate to 10 per cent by 2020.


AIRLIE WARD, PRESENTER: It's getting harder and harder to be a smoker in Tasmania.

The cost of a packet of cigarettes is rising and there are fewer and fewer places people are allowed to light up.

Even so, for 25 per cent of the population smoking is still an important part of everyday life.

But the Tasmanian Government has declared war.

It's widening its campaign to reduce the state's smoking rates to 10 per cent by 2020.

Fiona Breen reports.

VOX POP 1: I've been cutting back a lot lately. I am going to start trying to quit again, but at the moment it's cutting back.

I've cut back; I used to smoke a pack a day so I'm down to about three packs a week now, so I am definitely cutting back.

VOX POP 2: I have been smoking for about two years. I started after my year 12 exams, naturally.

I do realise that there are bad things about it, but because of my age, I'm like its okay, of course I'm invincible!

FIONA BREEN, REPORTER: About 40 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds are lighting up.

More than any other age group in Tasmania.

ROSCoe TAYLOR, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Unfortunately Tasmania's got the worst smoking rates in Australia.

FIONA BREEN: Interstate the number of smokers is dropping. In Tasmania, rates have been steady for years.

That's worrying health professionals and the State Government.

ADRIAN REYNOLDS, ALCOHOL AND DRUG SERVICES: More than 50 per cent of people who start smoking become addicted to it.

Mostly that occurs in adolescence before the young people's brains have matured, before they can really reason as an adult before they can make really well considered decisions about whether to go down this track or not.

FIONA BREEN: A telephone survey of more than 6,000 Tasmanians across the state last November has reinforced the theory that life's circumstances play a big part in smoking rates.

ROSCoe TAYLOR: The income question was asked in the survey and a whole lot of other questions about numbers of people in the family, a lot of other health questions related as well as occupational status, education, those things were all looked at in this survey.

FIONA BREEN: The survey found that the better educated a person was the less likely they were to smoke.

63 per cent of smokers surveyed had secondary education.

36 per cent had a tertiary qualification.

ROSCoe TAYLOR: It seems that the differences are not about which part of Tasmania you live so much geographically as your socioeconomic group that you're in.

And that's where we have to figure out how do we try and target these things.

FIONA BREEN: The head of drug and alcohol services in Tasmania is alarmed at the statistics.

He's involved in a ramped up campaign to reduce Tasmania's smoking rates.

ADRIAN REYNOLDS: Cigarettes or nicotine is rated by many specialists as right at the top in terms of addictiveness.

Certainly, in terms of the proportion of people who start to use this drug and then go on to use it on a daily basis, it is very high.

FIONA BREEN: Teenagers smoking is part of the motivation behind the state's 12 proposed legislative changes to the Public Health Act.

ADRIAN REYNOLDS: The tobacco has clearly targeted young people with its promotional activity to begin smoking when they're most vulnerable.

FIONA BREEN: Restricting the display of cigarettes and the sale, banning smoking near playgrounds and sports fields is taking smoking out of the view of children.

ADRIAN REYNOLDS: We're not saying prohibited at this stage, because we know that brings all sorts of problems.

But making this product less accessible, less popular, if you like, less seductive in terms of the promotions and so on, denormalising smoking will be important for reducing smoking to below 10 per cent, which is what the national preventive health taskforce has set as a target for Australia by 2020.

FIONA BREEN: After years smoking, Roger Joseph gave up the habit in 1994.

But it took him numerous attempts.

ROGER JOSEPH, EX-SMOKER: It's a very simple thing that you try and give up because you know that you really don't want to smoke, but there's always another one in the pack.

FIONA BREEN: It wasn't until his health started to suffer that he was successful. 16 years on, the cravings are still there.

ROGER JOSEPH: I am still addicted.

16 years that I haven't had a cigarette and I can still wake up in the morning feeling as if I've smoked a cigarette, having dreamt of them.

So you're always a smoker. It just gives you that hit, that little high.

Your body craves the nicotine and there's no escaping it.

FIONA BREEN: He supports moves to limit the places people can smoke, but he wants more one on one support for people trying to quit.

Things are changing.

The State Government is employing two addiction specialists in the south, another will be recruited for the north.

Specialised addiction nurses have also been employed to support a grassroots anti-smoking campaign.

They're encouraging health professionals like physiotherapists, GPs and nurses to use a new online guide to help them approach their clients about their smoking habits.

SPECIALIST ADDICTION NURSE: A is for asking patients whether they smoke or not, B is for providing brief intervention to people who smoke and the C is offering cessation support.

ADRIAN REYNOLDS: The model was developed in New Zealand and it's a simple model that we're encouraging and teaching all health practitioners to adopt in providing smoking cessation support to their parents.

FIONA BREEN: Funding for Quit Tasmania has increased.

It already gives out nearly 5,000 quit kits a year.

It's preparing for rise in demand. It's also appointed a new quit line adviser ready for the onslaught.

The next move is likely to target social networking sites.

ROSCoe TAYLOR: People are using the internet, social media, Facebook and all of that.

We have to figure out a way of reaching people possibly through those media now.

FIONA BREEN: None of these moves are convincing Jane Rankin Reid to give up. A smoker since the age of 14, she's tried it all.

JANE RANKIN REID, SMOKER: Look I find it one of the most unsympathetic medical causes there is.

I am supposed to take my tobacco money and go and buy unsubsidised products which aren't tested.

Some of them give us allergies, others have huge side effects, we've seen some of the problems, you know I have debates with doctors about addiction versus choice.

It's really, really difficult to give up.

FIONA BREEN: She believes smokers are unfairly targeted and marginalised.

JANE RANKIN REID: I think we have to be more sympathetic. It's an illness; it's an illness that's still available to us over the counter.

There is not a doctor in this town that hasn't gone through a med school which is heavily subsidised by smoker's taxes, you know.

FIONA BREEN: Will Jane Rankin Reid try again to give up?

Probably, but in the mean time she is saying give smokers a fair go.

(Jane Rankin-Reid took part in this story as a journalist who has done extensive research on smoking and is about to publish a book on the issue called "Mind if I smoke" - not as a token smoker. She participated because she has concerns that bans on smoking in Hobart's city centre are marginalising smokers.)

7.30 Tasmania