NEWS: [The Age] - 8/04/2005 'Australians are a bunch of quitters'

[hoptis]

This article caught my eye as someone who quit smoking last Friday after a pack a day for the last third of my life (seven years), went on the patches and everything seems to be going well.

Also the number of people smoking cannabis is going down, while the number of people taking E is going up (hurrah! ). News which prompted Tony Abbot to proclaim that the government is "winning the war on drugs!". 8)

Australians are a bunch of quitter
By David Wroe
Canberra

Australia's smoking rate has hit an all-time low with barely one in six adults smoking daily. A decade ago it was one in four.

The anti-tobacco lobby hailed yesterday's finding by the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare as evidence there is no limit to how low the cigarette smoking rate can go.

Use of illicit drugs, particularly cannabis, has also fallen according to the institute's national drug survey for 2004, prompting Health Minister Tony Abbott to claim the Government was winning the "war on drugs".

"Our smoking rates are dropping to ever-lower levels and we are starting to win the war on drugs. Very good news," he said.

Alcohol consumption had risen slightly, but there was a small drop in the rate of teenagers binge drinking, he said.

The proportion of the population who drank on a weekly basis rose from 39.5 per cent in 2001 to 41.2 per cent last year - that's almost 6.8 million Australians.

Then there are the 1.5 million who drink daily and 5.5 million less frequently than weekly.

The survey of more than 30,000 Australians aged 12 and over found the slice of the population who smoked daily fell by two percentage points between 2001 and 2004, to 17.4 per cent - equal to 200,000 fewer Australians smoking.

Almost 3 million smoked daily and a further 530,000 sporadically.

Quit Victoria executive director Todd Harper said the figures were consistent with Quit's data and showed vigilance by governments could push the rate down even further. "A lot of people keep thinking we're going to hit the wall . . . but what this data shows is there's no sign we're reaching that point," he said.

Parliamentary secretary for health Christopher Pyne attributed the drop in smoking to education campaigns, health warnings on cigarette packs and bans on smoking in restaurants.

The drop was most striking for men, from 21.1 per cent to 18.6 per cent. For women, it was 18 per cent to 16.3 per cent.

About 96 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds said they had never smoked a cigarette.

The percentage of Australians who said they had used marijuana in the past year fell from 12.9 to 11.3 per cent.

Almost one in five teenagers had used marijuana in the past 12 months.

Illicit drug use generally fell. The exception was ecstasy use, which rose from 2.9 per cent of the population to 3.4 per cent.

More than 100,000 teenagers have tried ecstasy.

- With AAP

From The Age

 

[lorenzo_benzo]

Health Minister Tony Abbott to claim the Government was winning the "war on drugs".

What a load of crap, they are just causing a bigger problem, by decreasing supply all they do is raise prices the end result is just higher crime. If a pill costs 5 bux more, i doubt it will effect anyone drematically and cause them to quit. For me i didn't quit drugs, i just went to prescriptions.

 

[lostNfound]

the day these dinosaurs stop calling it 'the war on drugs' and realise its a not fucken war, i'll be a happy man.
never was a war and never will be.
What makes Tony Abbot think they are winning the war on drugs just because cannabis use has gone down.
It's one drug of many.
I just thought it was funny that they manage to add on the end the rise in ecstasy without a comment followed by Mr.Abbot saying how they will beat it, or some other nonsens like that.
Someone really needs to realise they need to take a new approach and understand that it is a fact of life that will always be there.
Drugs are a problem for some
But for others they are a recreational activity and nothing more
For others who have a keener interest, they almost become a hobby, learning and understanding what they are and what they do to us.

That aside, I think it's great everyones quitting smoking though.

 

[ShantiBoy]

Found this today with regards to the issue of politicians quoting stats. An interesting slant on the political spin doctors.

"To what extent might the apparent reductions be attributable to non-response error? The response rate to the 2004 survey was only 46%, it was 50% in 2001, and 56% in 1998.

A plausible explanation for at least part of the apparent reduction in smoking and illicit drug use is selective non-response. Maybe persons with stigmatised behaviours to report (and smoking is increasingly stigmatised) tend to avoid participating in the survey. That being the case, the lower the response rate to the survey, the lower the prevalence estimates will be.

This fall is response rates to household surveys follows an international trend, and presents a real challenge for researchers and governments. How low does the response rate need to get before household surveys are no longer useful?

There are methods of estimating the extent of non-response error (e.g., comparing early versus late respondents and demographic characteristics of respondents versus non-respondents). It would be nice to see these methods applied to the national data before the politicians get too excited."

Quoted from Kyp Kypri PhD
Senior Lecturer in Population Health, University of Newcastle

 

[aunty establishment]

^ Short post: I agree with that to some extent.

Long post: My personal belief is that the increased anti-drug atmosphere of the past few years is driving down reported drug consumption. Remember that the way these surveys are executed is by someone bailing up on your doorstep, effectively saying "Hi, can I come into your house and find out whether you take drugs or not?"

However I think it's more a case of people misrepresenting within the interview than with non-response rates. Response rates, particularly door-to-door, have been steadily declining over the last decade as the sample becomes more over-researched. This is the case for _all_ research topics.

 

[fcuking_in_heaven]

War War War is all the fucking politicians want.

 

[phase_dancer]

My personal belief is that the increased anti-drug atmosphere of the past few years is driving down reported drug consumption.

I've been hearing this more and more lately. It seems the War on Drugs may be having considerable impact on the accuracy of these studies, as more people are now stating either that they wouldn't' take part in such a study for fear of retribution, or worse, that they wouldn't fess up to everything they might be asked.

But how do you produce figures to support or refute this? Unless of course someone does a survey on "public willingness to answer drug surveys honestly "

 

[eccitude]

Who are the "Australian Institute of Health & Welfare", and who funds them?

Usually these 'institutes' are nothing more than political lobby groups who fund 'research' to give them the answers they want.

 

[ayjay]

HR evaluation

Really - this study tells us nothing about drug-related harm, and hence the impact of drug use on society.

Furthermore, even the suggestion that the survey indicates drug use is down is misleading.

Let's assume that people responded to the survey truthfully, and that these responses actually are a representative cross-section of the Australian population (pretty dubious given the above comments). The survey indicates that ecstasy use is up in young people, and that alcohol use is up in young people. So maybe less pot smoking across the population, more pills & grog amongst young people. It wouldn't be too radical to suggest that the potential for harm may actually have increased.

Also - as someone mentioned above, this survey doesn't pick up changes in prescription drug use. If a large chunk of the population ends up medicated on benzos and anti-depressants, I don't think this is really a sign of a healthy society. The survey doesn't even report on this.

And finally - from a public health perspective, the people who are statistically most likely to be fucked up in our society can't be defined purely in terms of substance use. Socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, education all have an impact (see recent articel in SMH about Aboriginal women in prison - http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/10/1113071840494.html?oneclick=true ). Simply measuring levels of use, without considering impact or function of use, or confounding factors, is largely meaningless. At best, it provides some base-line info for further studies.

Anyway - that's my rant. There's a few gaps in the above but hopefully you get the picture

 

[deano]

What a load of crap, they are just causing a bigger problem, by decreasing supply all they do is raise prices the end result is just higher crime. If a pill costs 5 bux more, i doubt it will effect anyone drematically and cause them to quit. For me i didn't quit drugs, i just went to prescriptions.

Thats exactly what I did, I still have the same addiction, its just now moved to a legally prescribed drug. The way they do those surveys doesn't really guarantee an accurate result.

 

[DnaCorruption]

my personal unreasonable opinon (well unreasonable to the govt) i demand we leagalise Ecstasy.
Mdma on a script (or even better - over the counter) would == me in heaven.....