Our position on smoking
Smoking is a major cause of heart attack, stroke and peripheral vascular disease and is the largest single preventable cause of death in Australia, killing over 15,000 Australians a year. 

If current smoking patterns persist, then by 2025 there will be about 10 million deaths a year globally from tobacco, 3 million in developed and 7 million in developing countries.

We support the World Health Organization's criticism of tobacco industry efforts to conceal the health effects of smoking and for deliberately casting doubts on the links between smoking and health. This has hampered government anti-smoking efforts and probably impeded individual assessment of the health risks of smoking.

We promote a reduction in smoking as a leading priority in the promotion of cardiovascular health.

Our policy is to use advocacy and education to:

• discourage smoking, especially its uptake by children
• encourage and assist current smokers to stop smoking
• prevent involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke.

For more information on the economic and health impacts of tobacco smoking and the our tobacco control policy, please refer to our smoke free resources page. You will also find references for the above statistics on our resources page.