Release Date: Wednesday 9 April, 2003

REDUCING SMOKING RATES A BLUE CHIP INVESTMENT IN AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE

A leading public health expert has called for a major rethink of attitudes to tackling smoking in Australia. Speaking at the opening of the 2nd Australian Tobacco Control Conference in Melbourne this morning, Michelle Scollo, co-director of the VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control, said that smoking was a major driver of health system costs.

"Funding for tobacco control should be regarded not as a cost but as an investment in protecting the viability of the health care system," Ms Scollo said. "Treating the myriad of health problems caused by smoking related illness is an enormous drain on our already stretched health system," she said. "In addition, illnesses, disability and early deaths caused by smoking are costing Australian businesses more than $3.5 billion a year in lost productivity and market opportunities." "We must remember that we are talking about a problem that is causing the deaths of more than 50 Australians every day, many of them in middle age." "While current strategies at the state and national level have had some promising impact in recent years, substantial reductions in the burden of costs on business will not be achieved without more commitment and greater levels of funding now." In her keynote speech, Ms Scollo outlined a range of other benefits that could be expected to flow from reduced smoking rates in Australia,
including:

* less respiratory illness, improved school attendance for children,
and productivity for parents;
* more money in individual households, allowing greater savings and
earlier transition to home ownership; and
* fewer households losing breadwinners at the peak of their income
capacity.

Ms Scollo says governments would be making a blue-chip investment in Australia's future if more funding was made available to help smokers to quit and for treating tobacco dependence. Ms Scollo says that highly successful tobacco control programs, such as those in Massachusetts or California which commit between $4 to $10 per head, provided commercially realistic funding for education campaigns to reach all sectors of the community. In the United Kingdom, treatment of tobacco dependence is a major plank of the government's efforts to modernise the National Health System. Around 370 delegates from Australia and overseas are attending the 2nd Australian Tobacco Control Conference in Melbourne this week. The conference continues until Friday.

For more information please contact Zoe Furman on (03) 9635 5517 or email zoe.furman@cancervic.org.au