Figures reveal Tassie suburbs’ shocking smoking statistics

Two Tasmanian suburbs hold the dubious record for the country’s worst smoking rate. See where they are and how many residents are lighting up.

Forty per cent of Bridgewater and Gagebrook residents smoke, the worst rate in the country. Picture: iSTOCK

SOME Hobart suburbs’ smoking rates are as high as national smoking rates were in the 1970s.

Bridgewater and Gagebrook hold the country’s worst smoking rate at 40 per cent — about the same as the national rate was during the 1970s when three in four Australian men and one in four women smoked.

Figures released yesterday — ahead of today’s World No Tobacco Day — by Victoria University’s health policy think tank, the Mitchell Institute, show two in five Bridgewater and Gagebrook adults smoke daily and one in five Tasmanians from those suburbs will die of a preventable illness caused by smoking.

The stats show Australian smoking rates have seen a steady decline since the 1970s, now at 14 per cent nationally.

Figures also showed smoking rates were higher in remote areas than near cities. But Mitchell Institute health policy lead Ben Harris said Bridgewater and Gagebrook were exceptions.

“Parts of Tasmania are caught in a time warp, where large parts of the state have smoking rates that lag between 18 and 40 years behind the rest of the population,” Mr Harris said.

The data showed Kingborough as the area with the fewest smokers — around 12.8 per cent.

Hobart was second best with 13.3 per cent, while the West Coast was the second highest at 27.1 per cent — a figure similar to the national smoking rate in 1992.

The statewide smoking rate grew by 1.9 percentage points last year to 17.9 per cent.

Announced in this month’s State Budget, the Government committed $1.1 million a year to support its Healthy Tasmania Five Year Strategic Plan, which targets issues such as smoking.

The Minderoo Foundation, formerly the Australian Children’s Trust, will today launch a campaign calling for Australia’s legal smoking age to be lifted from 18 to 21.

The campaign will run for one month in Tasmania and will coincide with the Tobacco 21 Bill due to be read for a second time in parliament in August. Polls show the Bill has support from 73 per cent of Tasmanian voters.

Minderoo Foundation’s Eliminate Cancer adviser Bruce Mansfield said 95 per cent of smokers started before the age of 21 and “history tells us if they get to 21 without smoking, they are far less likely to start”.

Health Minister Michael Ferguson said the State Government had made laws dealing with underage supply the “toughest in the nation”.