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Tobacco and Indigenous Australians
There are now about 300,000 Aboriginals (referred to as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities, or ATSIC) living in Australia. That represents around 2.5 per cent of the Australian population. Apart from the mentally ill, they are the heaviest users of tobacco in the country, more than twice as likely as other Australians to smoke daily. That doesn’t just contribute to their poor health. It is the main and most preventable cause of premature death in the Indigenous Australian population. Indigenous Australians die of pneumonia at 17 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians. While just 17% of Australian are smokers, one out of every two Indigenous Australians aged 15 years and over smokes tobacco. They make fewer quitting attempts and are less successful in quitting than other Australian smokers, and the percentage who smoke has remained pretty much the same for more than 10 years. The cost in years is dreadful. Two out of every three deaths within the Indigenous population before the age of 65 years can be attributed to smoking related illnesses, like heart, stroke and vascular diseases; compared with 1 in 10 for the non-Indigenous population. Australia boast one of the longest life expectancy rates on the planet. Men can expect to see 77 years, women 83 years. Not ATSIC peoples: their men live on average to 56 while indigenous women average just 63 years. That’s 20 years lost to smoking related diseases like heart, stroke and vascular diseases (three times the rate of the non-indigenous population). Indigenous Australians are nearly four times more likely to die from diseases of the respiratory system. Not only do more Indigenous Australians smoke, they also smoke more cigarettes per week than other Australian smokers. Indigenous Australians who smoke average 125 cigarettes per week compared with 108 cigarettes per week smoked by non-indigenous Australians. Alcohol and petrol have been banned from remote Aboriginal communities because of the devastating effect of alcoholism and petrol sniffing on the health of Indigenous Australians. Cigarettes are a greater and more pervasive threat which cannot be dealt with so easily, given that it effects not only remote communities and the young, but impacts the all age groups and is as rife in the cities and towns as in the bush. Targeted education and support programmes, designed in conjunction with the Indigenous Community and implemented by local people are a possible approach to attacking the problem, but so far, no research has been conducted into the most appropriate way to tackle it. It is encouraging, however to see that about 1/3 of ATSIC peoples are ex-smokers ~ it can be achieved! |
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This intel was contributed by David Rich
David Rich
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May, 2012
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