Smoking

Introduction

Smoking remains one of the leading preventable causes of death and disease in Australia. The health impacts of smoking include cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and many other conditions affecting most body systems.¹ Compared to adults who have never smoked, Australian current smokers die on average 10 years earlier and develop age-related diseases 10 years earlier.^2,3

Tobacco use contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality for several health conditions, and to health care expenditure:

• In 2024, tobacco use accounted for 7.6% of the total burden of disease (DALY).
• Considered individually, the highest proportions of disease-specific burden attributable to tobacco use were for lung cancer (73.0% of lung cancer burden) followed by COPD (71.0%) and laryngeal cancer (68.9%).⁴ Results for all the conditions linked to tobacco use are available in the Burden of Disease section of this report.
• In 2015–16, the total cost of smoking was estimated at $137 billion, which translates to $27.4 billion based on Queensland’s share of the Australian population. Nationally, tangible costs of $19.2 billion include premature death, hospitalisations, other medical and social costs, workplace absenteeism and tobacco spending. Intangible costs of $118 billion include the value of life lost, pain and suffering.⁵

Tobacco use has decreased significantly over two decades through government initiatives and interventions. Yet these gains may be threatened by increased availability and use of illegal e-cigarettes and vaping devices, and availability of cheap illicit tobacco. The potential for vaping to lead to future tobacco use and dual use of tobacco and vapes are significant concerns. The Electronic cigarettes section of this report provides more detail about the interaction of tobacco and e-cigarette use.

Latest results

Adults

In 2024, 8.9% of Queensland adults smoked daily, 4.3% smoked less often than daily, 30.0% were ex-smokers, and 56.8% had never smoked. Among the 4.3% of Queensland adults who smoked less than daily, 1.4% smoked at least once a week (but not daily), and 2.9% smoked occasionally (less than once a week).

Comparing Queenslanders across different sociodemographic groups showed daily tobacco smoking was (Figure 1):

• 20.1% more likely among males than females (9.8% for males and 8.1% for females)
• 77.3% more likely among adults 45 to 64 years than adults 18 to 29 years
• 4.1 times more likely among adults living in the most disadvantaged areas compared to adults living in the most advantaged areas
• 2.5 times more likely among adults living in remote and very remote areas.

Conversely, never smoking in Queensland was:

• 23.6% more likely among females than males (62.6% for females and 50.7% for males)
• 71.1% more likely among adults 18 to 29 years than adults 65 years or more
• 30.7% more likely among adults living in the most advantaged areas compared to adults living in the most disadvantaged areas
• 32.8% more likely among adults living in major cities than adults living in remote and very remote areas.⁶

Adult smoking cessation

In Queensland, almost two-thirds (65.6%) of adult ever smokers were not currently smoking tobacco in 2024. Among Queenslanders who had smoked, older adults were more likely to have quit smoking than younger adults. This result needs to be interpreted considering smoking-related mortality was higher in the older age groups, and quit attempts are more likely among older smokers.

Figure 1: Smoking status of Queensland adults, 2024

Children and young people

In 2022–2023, 81.4% of Queensland secondary school students had never used tobacco, 10.4% had tried a few puffs of tobacco, 6.3% had smoked less than 100 cigarettes and 2.0% had smoked 100 cigarettes or more.

More than 1-in-10 (10.5%) Queensland high school students had smoked tobacco in the previous 12 months while 2.8% had smoked tobacco in the previous week. The proportion of Queensland school students who had smoked in the past 12 months and the past week did not differ by sex or age (Figure 2).⁷

Trends

Adults

The proportion of Queensland adults smoking daily has decreased by more than half from 2002 to 2024 (53.4% decrease over the period). Over this period, decreases in the proportion of daily smokers was similar for adult males and females, but differed by other characteristics (Figure 3):

• Younger adults had a larger decrease in daily smoking than older adults (66.7% decrease for adults 18 to 29 years and a 30.4% decrease for adults 45 to 64 years).
• Daily smoking among adults in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas decreased by 22.4% while those in the most advantaged areas saw a 68.5% decline.
• Daily smoking in remote and very remote areas has remained stable whereas it decreased in major cities and regional areas.

Data collection was enhanced in 2009 to provide information about ex-smokers and adults who had never smoked, and the calculation of smoking cessation rates. From 2009 to 2024, the proportion of Queensland adults who were current smokers, including daily and less than daily smokers, decreased by 26.4%, due in part to:

• an increase of 8.2% in the proportion of adults who had never smoked
• an increase of 12.6% in the proportion of adults who had successfully quit smoking.

The greatest increase in never smokers was among adults 30 to 44 years (21.2% increase), followed by adults living in major cities (9.4% increase), adults living in the most advantaged areas (8.8% increase) and adults 45 to 64 years (6.8% increase).

Importantly, there were gains in smoking cessation driven by:

• an 18.9% increase in cessation among adults 30 to 44 years
• a 12.5% increase among adults living in the most advantaged areas
• increases of 14.7% among adults living in major cities, 8.2% among adults living in inner regional areas, and 9.7% among adults living in outer regional areas.⁶

Figure 3: Queensland adult smoking trends

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Children and young people

The Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) Survey, conducted by Cancer Council Victoria, has provided national information about the preventive health behaviours of secondary school student since 1984 through surveying students directly within the school environment. A challenging surveying environment following the COVID pandemic period and survey methodology changes mean some caution is advised when interpreting changes over time.

Fewer high school students in Queensland tried tobacco in 2022–2023 than previous years, and current tobacco smoking among this population continues to decrease.

From 2017 to 2022–2023, the proportion of secondary school students who had ever smoked tobacco:

• decreased by 23.1% (from 22.9% to 18.6%) in Queensland
• decreased by 22% (from 17.5% to 13.5%) for Australia.

From 2017 to 2022–2023 the proportion of high school students who had smoked in the past 12 months

• decreased by 39.3% (from 17.4% to 10.5%)
• decreased by 37.9% (from 13.2% to 8.2%) across all Australian high school students.

The decrease in the proportion of high school students smoking in the past 12 months was similar for boys and girls both in Queensland and across Australia.^7,8

National comparisons

The National Health Survey (NHS), conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, provides national information on a range of health conditions and services including modifiable risk factors. Because the NHS uses different methodology, results will typically be similar, but not identical to those from the Queensland preventive health survey. National studies are used to understand how Queensland compares to other Australian jurisdictions. Because population distributions may differ across jurisdictions, age-standardised proportions that remove the effects of age are reported when available.

In 2022, the Queensland age-standardised adult daily smoking prevalence was higher than national results (14.0% compared to 10.6%) and Queensland ranked 8th with the highest proportion of adult daily smokers among the jurisdictions.

The proportion of adults who smoked daily in 2022 had decreased in all Australian jurisdictions since the 2017–18 NHS, but the decrease in Queensland was significantly less than other jurisdictions (5% for Queensland compared to 25% for Tasmania and 31% for the Northern Territory).⁹

Additional information

Data and statistics

Visit the following websites for more information about tobacco smoking:

• Tobacco in Australia
• Summary QPHS results for Hospital and Health Services and other regions can be found within this report at Our regions and more detailed and historical results can be accessed at Queensland Preventive health surveys.

Information and strategies

Visit the following websites for more information about tobacco strategies, legislation and resources to stop smoking:

• The Department of Health and Aged Care - National Tobacco Strategy
• Queensland Health - Smoking laws in Queensland
• Queensland government - Quit HQ
• Cancer Council Queensland - Harmful effects of smoking.

Section technical notes

Counts of people by modifiable risk factors are estimated by applying the indicator prevalence to the relevant estimated resident population (ERP). More information about ERP is available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics:

• National, state and territory population.
• Data on government and non-government students, staff and schools.

Where presented, ratios were calculated using higher precision estimates than in text. Ratios calculated using estimates in text may differ.

Prevalence statistics reported for a time period, such as the previous seven days, should be interpreted as a proportion of the entire population, unless otherwise stated. These should be interpreted independently and not summed.

Data for this section were sourced from:

• the Queensland preventive health survey (QPHS) (See Queensland Preventive health surveys for further information)
• the Australian Secondary School Alcohol and Drugs Survey (ASSAD) (See Australian secondary school students alcohol and drug survey for further information). A smaller sample size (10,314 students nationally) was achieved in 2022-2023 than in past years.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics National Health Survey 2022 (See National Health Survey 2022 for further information).

Figures on this page are interactive

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