Access to tobacco is recognised as one of the environmental risk factors for young people taking up smoking.
Participants in the Health Promotion Agency’s (HPA’s) Youth Insights Survey (YIS) of Year 10 students were asked whether they thought they could get cigarettes or tobacco from anyone in their family/whanau or home, from their friends, or from a shop.
Methodology
Participants in the 2012 YIS were asked whether they thought they could get cigarettes or tobacco from anyone in their family/whānau or home, from their friends, or from a shop. Responses to these questions were compared by smoking status (current smokers: those who smoked at least monthly, compared with never smokers), susceptibility to taking up smoking, ethnicity, gender and school decile status. When looking at the differences by ethnicity, gender, and school decile we have controlled for smoking status. This means that we take into account whether or not a respondent smokes, to ensure that any differences found are not in fact due to smoking status. In addition, when looking at access from family/whānau we controlled for family smoking status (whether none, one, or more than one family member or caregiver smoked), and when looking at access from friends we controlled for close friend smoking status (whether or not some of the respondents’ five closest friends smoked).
Further analyses were undertaken to examine changes over time in perceived access to tobacco from family/whānau or home and from friends, as these questions were also asked in 2010.
Only those group and time differences that are statistically significant (p<.05) are reported.
Key Results
- Only a minority of young people thought they would be able to access tobacco from their family/whānau or home, friends, or from a shop such as a dairy. Of these, friends were perceived as the most likely source of tobacco, followed by a shop.
- Current smokers, compared with those who had never smoked, were more likely to perceive that they would be able to access tobacco from their family/whānau or home, from their friends, or from a shop.
- Respondents were less likely to think they would be able to access tobacco from family/whānau or friends in 2012 compared with 2010.