Healthy communities: tobacco smoking rates across Australia, 2014–15

Tobacco smoking is one of the largest single preventable causes of death and disease in Australia, and national smoking rates have been steadily declining due to effective public health strategies. Yet in some local areas, smoking rates remain relatively high. This report presents adult daily smoking rates by Primary Health Network (PHN) areas across Australia. It finds that in 2014–15, smoking rates ranged from 5.4% in Northern Sydney to 23.3% in Western NSW and that regional PHN areas generally had higher smoking rates than metropolitan PHN areas