Secondary school student's use of tobacco and e-cigs 2022-2023

This report presents the smoking and vaping use data, including trends over time, of the 2022–23 Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) survey. Over 10,000 students aged 12 to 17 years participated in the survey between March 2022 and July 2023.

The report includes statistics on:

• tobacco and e-cigarette use
• use by age and sex
• susceptibility to smoking and vaping
• behaviours relating to the use of tobacco cigarettes, other tobacco products and e-cigarettes.

In Summary

This study found that following a substantial decline in smoking since 1996, smoking among Australian secondary school students is at its lowest rate in 2022/2023. Significantly lower prevalence of smoking was observed between 2017 and 2022/2023 across all recency periods (i.e., lifetime, past year, past month and past week smoking). Older students showed more evidence of a recent decline in smoking compared to younger students, who showed more of a plateau or small decrease between 2017 and 2022/2023.

However, the study did find a concerning increase in susceptibility to smoking among Australian secondary school students who have never smoked. This increase in susceptibility to smoking between 2017 and 2022/2023 was evident for both younger and older students.

Since 2017, there have been large increases in lifetime and past month vaping among Australian secondary school students overall and among both age groups, with ever vaping increasing from 14% to 30%, and past month vaping from 4% to 16%. One in six Australian secondary school students vaped and/or smoked and, among this group, dual use of tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes was not uncommon. 

You can read more and download the full report here.