Tobacco outlets flood WA’s poor suburbs

Rania Spooner
May 23, 2013
WANews

WA’s poorer suburbs have more tobacco suppliers than affluent areas, research shows.

New research has revealed poorer West Australian suburbs have four times the number of tobacco outlets than those found in their affluent neighbours, prompting calls for tighter licensing regulation.

University of Western Australia researchers studied a cross section of 296 Perth suburbs and 611 regional centres.
They compared the location of all tobacco outlets in WA with the 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage.

Then they applied a per capita approach to avoid distorted results due to geographically larger suburbs.

The first-of-its-kind study was this week published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

UWA’s Centre for the Built Environment and Health associate professor Lisa Wood said her team’s findings were in line with similar studies conducted in the United States.

“What we found was some pretty dramatic differences,” she said.

“Tobacco is as readily available as bread and milk.”

The overseas research suggested buying cigarettes could be an “impulse purchase”, which meant their availability may impact on the number of smokers in a particular area, Professor Wood said.

“People from lower socio-economic backgrounds have a higher smoking prevalence and we already know there’s a whole raft of reasons for that,” she said.

“Some of it is a social cultural thing: more of their family and peers might smoke, some people might be experiencing greater financial or social pressures and there’s a correlation between people’s education levels and their risk behaviour.

“A lot of people recognise that they’re addicted to smoking and many want to give up, but cigarettes are located at the front of the store and they’re in most stores they go to.”

Professor Wood hopes the research has “strong implications” for public health policy.

The Cancer Council WA, which commissioned the study, have called for regulation on the number of outlets that sell tobacco and a reigning in of tobacco licences in the state.

“Clearly we know that people from low socio-economic backgrounds are also those that are more likely to be smoking – we’re trying to look at some of the drivers of that and trying to find out why that’s the case,” said Terry Slevin, director of education and research.

“Is it because of the environment they live in?”

“When you’re trying to give away an addictive behaviour and it’s accessible and available everywhere that you turn makes that much tougher.”

Mr Slevin said the results were a clear indication to government that it was time to re-evaluate licensing in WA.
“The more tobacco licences there are, the more prospects people will be exposed to tobacco and the more prospects of them smoking,” he said.

“It’s about the ongoing process of denormalising smoking tobacco.”

The Cancer Council WA estimates there are about 3900 active tobacco licences in WA.

“Let’s stop growing and let’s start reducing the number of places where people have tobacco in their face when they’re doing their regular shopping,” Mr Slevin said.

Professor Wood’s team are planning to do further studies looking at how their research relates to tobacco illness and disease and smoking prevalence.

They also want to find out whether there is a higher level of tobacco outlets in suburbs or towns where youth smoking is an issue.

Despite large gains in reducing the number of young smokers, she said, public health policy had to stay ahead of the game.

“It’s like a screw and you’ve got to hold it down otherwise it will spring back up with a new generation of young people,” Professor Wood said.