Only 8.4% (and falling) of Australians over 18 years now smoke daily. Just three percent (also falling) of senior high school students at least smoke weekly, a similar situation that exists in the USA, the UK  and Canada. A recent editorial in the American Journal of Public Health stated “By any measure, youth smoking [in the USA] has nearly ceased to exist”.

Smoking has long been banned in Australia on all public transport, in indoor workplaces including bars, clubs and restaurants, many stadiums and an increasing number of outdoor café dining and coffee areas do not allow smoking. The map below shows a tiny percentages of Australian homes allow smoking inside.

Proportion of non-smokers who report living in a household where: a smoker smokes inside the home; a smoker smokes outside the home; or there is no smoker in the household, 2019, by state/territory. Source

Some local governments have banned smoking in outdoor shopping malls. Smoke-free stadiums are now commonplace. I went to an open-air night time Paul Kelly concert 10 years ago at Taronga Park Zoo where stage announcements directed smokers to go to a section way up the back and away from the crowd. I took a look and it was empty.

In 2008, I co-authored a highly accessed and cited paper on markers of the denormalisation of smoking and the tobacco industry. In it we catalogued a wide range of ways that the identity of smokers has been spoiled from the days when smoking was considered convivial, sophisticated and dripping with the multitude of positive semiotic signification purposefully bestowed upon it by marketing, advertising and smart packaging. In 1992, the single most common feature sought by those advertising for housemates was being a non-smoker. In 2004, only 2% of people using Australia’s largest dating site declared they were smokers.

Denormalisation works ‘‘to change the broad social norms around using tobacco—to push tobacco use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice to being an abnormal practice’’. When smoking loses its public and political charm, when most people don’t smoke, when 90% of remaining smokers regret ever having started and when parents who hope their kids will grow up to smoke are as rare as rocking horse shit, governments know they have a huge mandate to introduce policies that will drive it down, as has been happening since the 1970s.

Rise and fall of vaping?

Over the last few years, I’ve often heard people remark that they seldom see people smoking these days. In recent years vaping seemed to be something we saw much more often, mostly because of the ostentatious look-at-me clouding plumes and the frantic rapid hand-to-mouth frequency of puffing. But after October 1, 2024 when the Commonwealth government outlawed vaping sales from anywhere but pharmacies, vape prices skyrocketed and many small illegal retailers have likely been understandably fearful of the large fines. Many “recreational” vapers may have reduced or stopped smoking. I pass 22 tobacconists and “convenience stores” on my daily walk. Last week I saw not a single customer in any of them on four walks.

No airline allows vaping on board, and train stations make regular announcements warning about platform vaping being banned. Most Australian governments have banned the use of vapes in all areas where smoking is not allowed by law.

So the last bastions of public smoking and vaping today remain some open air spaces like streets, parks, beaches.  But how often now do we even see smoking and vaping these days? Curious about this, for three consecutive mornings this week I set out to count how many people I saw smoking or vaping while I walked through two inner west suburbs.

On each of the three walks, I walked around 12,000 steps from around 7.45am -10am.  I wanted to quantify a strong impression that we don’t often see people smoking or vaping in public these days.

In each hand I carried a thumb-click mechanical digital counter. One for people smoking or vaping and the other for people not doing so (see photo below).

My route took me through the hipsterville shop, restaurant and café high streets of Enmore and Newtown at a time when many were on their way to work, waiting at bus stops, entering Newtown railway  precinct, having their morning coffee or like me, walking for exercise. Those with nicotine dependence can often be seen dosing before getting on trains and buses and lighting up immediately on alighting. So I spent 30 minutes counting commuters entering and leaving Newtown station, wanting to include what I predicted might be a visibly higher rate of smoking or vaping there.

It’s easy to see someone smoking. They are either actively drawing on a cigarette or holding one in their hand or lips. Vaping is similarly easy to spot, although if someone is hiding a vape in a closed hand or keeping it in a pocket between pulls, this would cause underestimates of its prevalence.

But I was not trying to estimate smoking or vaping prevalence. My objective was to try and count the prevalence of actual smoking and vaping in an outdoor setting in the way that an ordinary person might observe people around them as they moved normally on their passage through streets. I was not in any way trying to count smokers and vapers (so including those who might have vapes in their pockets), but rather active smoking and vaping.  Where I came to a situation where a group of people were gathered such as at pedestrian crossing or a bus stop, I stopped too, to carefully check each person I could see. I did not count children in school uniform on the way to school, or infants with parents.

In total I saw 3529 people over the three days observations. Of these, just 38 (1.1%) were smoking.  I saw just 3 (0.09%) people vaping. Only one was smoking at a table outside a café. Those smoking or vaping were so scarce that some small patterns could be discerned. With few exceptions, those smoking looked 70+. There were two spots on my route where I saw at least one smoker on each day. Some at those spots were also begging for change.  Of the very few younger people (teens, 20s) who were smoking, nearly all had “attitude” (goths, punks). Several were south and east Asian men.

These data are only a street epidemiological snapshot of what was happening in two Sydney suburbs on three (sunny) mornings across two hours. But the daily percentages were very similar. My thumb clicking the “not smoking” counter risked giving me repetitive strain injury, while my thumb recording smoking and vaping nearly went to sleep. Smoking and vaping have not vanished from public sight, but they both look decidedly endangered.   

I’m planning to gather the same data across different locations and at different times to see if there is a range.