OTTAWA - The smoking rate for women aged 25 and older fell to 15 per cent last year from 18 per cent in 2007, a new report from Statistics Canada shows.
Overall, the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey indicates 18 per cent of Canadians reported smoking either every day or occasionally, a percentage which has remained roughly the same since 2005.
Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society, said he's concerned about the slowing of the decline in smoking.
He blamed the widespread availability of inexpensive contraband cigarettes, and noted that higher tobacco taxes are the most effective way to reduce smoking.
"These cheap cigarettes, which may be 80 to 90 per cent off, are having an adverse impact on how fast smoking rates are declining," he said in an interview Thursday from Ottawa.
The contraband cigarettes are undermining gains made through smoke-free laws, bans on retail displays and controls on advertising, Cunningham said.
He urged the federal government and the provinces of Quebec and Ontario to take stronger action to get the contraband situation under control.
The survey also showed that nearly half of young adults aged 20 to 24 and 31 per cent of teens aged 15 to 19 reported having tried little cigars or cigarillos.
In the 30 days prior to being surveyed, 12 per cent of the 20-to-24 age group and nine per cent of the 15-to-19 age group had tried them.
"So these flavoured little cigars, which come in flavours such as ice cream, peach and candy and fruit and cherry and so on, are a huge problem," Cunningham said. "Ten years ago, they essentially didn't exist in the market."
He praised a government bill to ban them which was passed in the House of Commons in June and urged the Senate to do the same as quickly as possible.
The annual sample size for the monitoring survey is 20,000 people.
