Shock findings: How vaping impacts teen smoking rates in Australia

The progress made by former chief health officer Jeannette Young in cutting smoking rates in Queensland is at stake as a new study exposes an inconvenient truth about vaping. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Former chief health officer Jeannette Young’s tireless work in cigarette controls is at risk of going up in smoke, with new research showing that it’s a misconception that vaping is pushing down smoking rates in teenagers.

The study – published on Monday in the Medical Journal of Australia and conducted prior to the current policy approach on vaping – analysed population-level data from more than 170,000 students aged 12-17 surveyed between 1999 and 2022-23 as part of the Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) survey.

Researchers compared smoking trends from 1999-2009, when vaping was rare or non-existent in Australia, with those from 2010-2022-23 when e-cigarettes emerged, becoming widely used.

They examined five key behaviours: ever, past year, past month, past week, and daily smoking.

Co-author Becky Freeman said: “Yes, smoking rates are falling but they are falling more slowly than they were before vaping became common.

“That’s a real concern given how much progress had been made prior to e-cigarettes becoming available.”

Lead author and Daffodil Centre statistician Sam Egger said that while smoking had continued to decline after 2010, the rate of decline slowed significantly across all five behaviours from 2010 onwards, coinciding with the emergence and rise of vaping in Australia.

The study challenges a common misconception that if vaping was truly causing more teens to smoke, youth smoking rates would be going up.

“We often hear that if vaping caused teens to smoke, we should be seeing smoking rates rise,” Mr Egger said.

“But that’s a misunderstanding.

“If vaping is leading more teens to smoke, we wouldn’t necessarily see smoking rates rise.

“We’d more likely see smoking rates continue to fall, but at a slower pace than before vaping became available.”

The study showed that 13.2 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds had tried smoking by 2022-23.

But if the pre-2010 smoking trend had continued, that number would have been just 5.8 per cent.

Dr Young advocated for tough anti-smoking laws during her time as CHO, and reduced the smoking rate to 9 per cent.

She was appointed the state’s top doctor in 2005 and held the role for 16 years.

This study is the first in Australia to examine whether the rise of vaping may have affected teen smoking at the population level.

The findings reinforce the team’s 2024 results from the Generation Vape study, which showed that adolescents who had vaped were more likely to go on to try smoking than those who had not.

Co-author and Cancer Council public health committee chair Anita Dessaix said: “These results reinforce what many public health experts have feared: vaping isn’t helping kids avoid smoking, it appears to be derailing our progress.”

Originally published as Shock findings: How vaping impacts teen smoking rates in Australia