A REPORT has revealed a “disturbing” trend around 16 and 17-year-old girls smoking in the ACT, despite declining statistics around Canberra secondary students. 

The ACT Health report titled “Tobacco use: secondary students” was released today (May 31) on On World No Tobacco Day.

Acting chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman says it reveals some worrying statistics and particularly raises alarm bells around teenage girls.

She says the battle is not over and the difference in smoking between boys and girls in the ACT is stark, with the report revealing that 23 per cent of boys smoke compared to 35 per cent of girls.

“On the question of having smoked in the ‘last year’, ‘last month’ and ‘last week’, older girls consistently reported higher levels of smoking than older boys across all of those categories,” she says.

“The 2017 data for all secondary students surveyed also showed that 10 per cent of girls had ‘ever used roll your own tobacco’ compared to 6 per cent of boys.”

Dr Coleman says this data suggests that anti-tobacco initiatives need to be ramped up to target girls in particular.

“Another major concern is the insidious marketing of e-cigarettes, which are currently not regulated under federal tobacco advertising and plain packaging legislation,” she says.

“The horse has bolted on these products touted as ‘nicotine-free’. In fact, many of these e-products contain unlabelled nicotine.

“What’s really disturbing is how these products are clearly targeting young people with packaging that’s attractive to the teenage market in particular.

“These products are advertised as enticing with promotions such as berry, candy cream and blueberry lemonade fruit pop flavours.”

There is some good news though, according to Dr Coleman, who says there’s been significant decreases in the prevalence of smoking in ACT teenagers 12-17 years over time.

“This is most obvious in the ‘ever smoked’ category for all age groups, which dropped from 56 per cent in 1996 to 14 per cent in 2017,” she says.

“ACT data for this indicator also compared favourably with the national estimate of 18 per cent.”