Smoking rates fall to historic low across Australia despite the rise of illicit tobacco

Smokers are increasingly using illicit tobacco, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s national drug survey has found. Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Smokers are increasingly using illicit tobacco, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s national drug survey has found. Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images smoking rates fall to historic low across Australia despite the rise of illicit tobacco Long-running AIHW survey shows daily rates of smoking dropped to 5.6% last year – down from 8.3% two years ago Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Daily smoking rates have fallen to a historic low and are tracking well ahead of national targets, while vaping rates have stabilised, according to the largest nationally representative survey on tobacco use. But those who do smoke are increasingly using illicit tobacco, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) National Drug Strategy Household Survey also found. Daily tobacco smoking among those aged 14 and above dropped to 5.6% in 2025, down significantly from 8.3% in 2022–23, the data shows. The federal government’s National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030 had aimed for a national daily smoking prevalence of less than 10% by 2025, and now has a target of 5% or less by 2030. The Australia" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="166328" data-entity-type="organization">Cancer Council Australia’s CEO, Jacinta Reddan, said the data also showed more than two-thirds of Australians aged 14 and above had never smoked – which was a historic high. More than 17,500 people aged 14 and over across the country took part in the survey, held from June to December 2025. Of those who reported that they smoke, 34% said they had recently used illicit tobacco, up from 16.7% in 2022-23. Just over 22% of smokers said they had purchased branded illicit tobacco – without plain packaging and graphic health warnings – in the previous three months, while one in six said they smoke unbranded products (tobacco or cigarettes sold loose, often in plastic bags). More than half (57%) of those who purchased branded illicit tobacco reported buying it from a tobacconist. There have been previous reports that rising illicit use indicated Australians were not quitting smoking tobacco. Many of the reports were based on wastewater data provided to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which reported overall nicotine use, including from vapes, pouches and smoking cessation products. The AIHW found overall nicotine use was declining. The proportion of people using any nicotine in 2025 fell to 15.2%, from 17.4% in 2022-23. Australia" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="166328" data-entity-type="organization">Cancer Council Australia praised some of the work done so far to bring smoking rates down. “Plain packaging, taxation, advertising restrictions and sustained public education on the harmful effects of smoking, which still kills 66 Australians every day, have seen smoking drop to among the lowest in the world,” Reddan said. The Public Health Association of Australia president, Prof Caroline Miller, said: “We’ve got a decreasing proportion of the community who are smoking, and that’s a real trend that we’re observing across multiple surveys including state-based surveys.” She said the AIHW drugs survey “is the best in the business, because it’s used the same questions for decades, and is extensive with a sample size of more than 17,000 people”. Miller said the findings mean that tackling illicit tobacco “requires an enforcement and regulatory response, not a tax cut”. Lobbyists with ties to the tobacco industry along with economists and some politicians have argued that the high prices of legal cigarettes is driving people to the illicit market, and that the tobacco excise needs to be cut to curb this. Prof Becky Freeman, a tobacco control expert with the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, said reducing the excise would not work. “illicit tobacco is a problem,” she said. “But if you’re smoking illicit tobacco right now and it’s so cheap and easy to buy from your friendly neighbourhood tobacconist, why would you pay more for legal ones even if the price does come down? “It doesn’t make any sense, especially when there’s still room for those illicit products to get even cheaper. I don’t think people realise just how inexpensive it is to manufacture illicit.” Freeman said more funding was needed for enforcement, and there needed to be changes to the way tobacco was sold, including stronger licensing schemes and a reduced number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco. “To me, this data suggests the time is right to change how we sell this product,” she said. “There’s no longer a need to have 40,000 retailers across the country selling it. We could just limit smoking and cigarette sales to a handful of retailers who can handle the tremendous responsibility of selling a highly dangerous, addictive and highly taxed product.” Fewer retailers would make enforcement easier, she said. The survey also found that current vaping among 18-to-24-year-olds fell from a high of 20.6% in 2022–23 to 14%, while daily vaping remained stable across all age groups. This differed from previous surveys which reported rising vaping rates. But illicit nicotine pouches and traditional snus, captured for the first time in the data, were gaining ground with younger Australians, with 8.4% of 18 to 24-year-olds using pouches and 3.8% using snus in the past year. The chair of Cancer Council’s national tobacco issues committee, Alecia Brooks, said tackling the growth of those products would require a combination of enforcement and prevention measures. Explore more on these topics Health smoking Tobacco industry news Share Reuse this content