Aust, school smokers spend $37M. a year

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 36

Aust, school smokers spend $37M. a year

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney

Australian secondary schoolchildren spend about sAust3o million ($37.2 million) a year bn cigarettes, an extensive survey of teen-age tobacco and alcohol use has found.

' More than 23,000 pupils aged between 12 and 17 were questioned in the survey, published in the “Medical Journal of Australia.” It found that more than 500,000 of Australia’s 1.2 million schoolchildren had smoked in the last year and almost 100,000

smoked every day. Almost one million had drunk alcohol in the last year and 8000 drank liquor every day. The survey found that of those aged 12, 23 per cent of boys and 14 per cent of girls had drunk alcohol in the last week. That figure rose gradually to 56 per cent for boys and 49 per cent for girls at the age of 17. The survey’s authors criticised state arid Federal Governments for allowing advertising to target youth, while only diverting a small proportion of the tax revenue gained from teen-age

cigarette and liquor consumption to preventive education. The Federal Government took sAustB.s million ($10.54 million) in tax from the sAust3o million ($37.2 million) spent by schoolchildren on cigarettes and state Governments took varying amounts. “It is clear from these figures that Governments in Australia gain much revenue from children of school age who consume tobacco, and they are presumably profiting from teen-agers who consume alcohol as well,” the report said.