It can be an addictive habit that's difficult to give up. But now a new report suggests the number of those succeeding is growing.
The study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says Australians are smoking less than they were 20 years ago.
The federal government agency also found that non-smokers are being exposed to less second-hand smoke and the number of people starting has dropped dramatically.
Tim Beard from the Institute says there are a myriad of reasons to explain the changes.
"It's become financially-prohibitive for some people - especially young people - who might otherwise be taking up smoking to buy a packet of cigarettes now that they're close to $20 a packet. Also the fact that there are a lot of campaigns - including plain packaging - that's been cited in the research as making a significant difference to the smoking rates.But also just a greater public awareness over time that smoking is not a healthy habit to get into or to start in the first place, or to take up as a young person, and then that's flowing through to the adult population", he told SBS.
The research found that the overall daily smoking rate is down to an all-time low of just 13% - making Australia's one of the lowest rates in the world.
And it showed fewer high-school students, adults - including pregnant women - are smoking regularly.
Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults daily-smokers fell by seven per cent, but that result is about half the drop recorded by their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Mr Beard says the disparity can be attributed to a number of factors.
"There are a lot of links between remote communities and behavioral risk factors, including smoking, but also things like risky alcohol consumption, also healthy eating habits and things like that. So (there are a) range of factors that are relevant to that trend," he says.
The Chief Executive of the Cancer Council of Australia, Sanchia Aranda, says more needs to be done to help people in remote communities stop smoking.
"There's a stronger cultural norm and more group behaviours that are more difficult. Whereas in the non-Indigenous communities, smoking has become much more socially unacceptable and that helps to keep driving down the smoking rate at a faster rate," she says.
Professor Aranda says - on a national level - smoking will not become a thing of the past anytime soon.
"Sadly not and certainly not in terms of a problem. So even at about 13 per cent smoking across the board we still know that two-out-of-three smokers will die of a smoking-related illness and that we still see 15,500 of the 37,000 preventable cancers in Australia directly related to smoking. So it's a big issue for us moving forward and it's not something we can become complacent about and think that the problem is being solved."
The aim of the federal government's National Tobacco Strategy is to bring the smoking rate to 10 per cent of the population by 2018.
The Cancer Council says a new campaign encouraging Indigenous smokers to quit is one among many working hard to tackle the problem.
With AAP
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