Cigarettes giving way to fitness
THE number of smokers is dropping as More Victorians put down their Cigarettes and pick up the pace with exercise.
THE number of smokers is dropping as More Victorians put down their Cigarettes and pick up the pace with exercise. The latest research in the Victorian Population Health Survey 2006 shows people are smoking less and exercising More, which is good news in the face of high obesity and diabetes rates. Health Minister Daniel Andrews yesterday released the new survey, which revealed a 7 per cent rise in non-smokers since 2001 while the number of adult smokers had dropped 4 per cent in the same time. Mr Andrews said government reforms such as banning smoking in pubs and the workplace had helped reduce the number of adult smokers. He said that More people giving the smokes the flick, coupled with increased rates of physical activity, were steps in the right direction for a healthier population. "Since 2002 Victorian women have increased their physical activity by almost 10 per cent," Mr Andrews said. "There has been an encouraging increase of almost 5 per cent for men doing sufficient physical activity to achieve health benefits. "We know that physical activity is a major benefit in reducing a range of diseases and conditions, including car- diovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers, obesity and falls among the elderly." But anti-smoking group Quit said the Brumby Government should not be too quick to claim credit for the results, and that the Government could be doing More to battle smoking. Quit executive director Fiona Sharkie said the anti-smoking organisation's own data showed the number of young people smoking had decreased too. "It's just getting lower and lower, which is good because there's less and less leaving school with a smoking habit," Ms Sharkie said. "That said, we still have some one in five adults (about 700,000) who do smoke and that leads to 4000 deaths every year from smoking." But what the Quit boss really wants to see is the Government introducing bans on cigarette displays and packaging without any branding. "That's the next horizon for us in Victoria, bans on displays and plain packets with the government health warning," Ms Sharkie said. "These results are good but we can't relax. When we get them (smoking rates) below 10 per cent we can relax a little bit, but we're at the pointy end now."