High tobacco smoking rates in people with disability: An unaddressed public health issue

Tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in Australia. In Australia, tobacco use has declined due to population health interventions, such as smoke-free environments legislation and increasing product taxes. However, the decrease is not consistent across the whole of society; there remains significantly higher smoking prevalence among people experiencing social, economic or cultural disadvantage (hereafter, ‘priority populations’). One group with high smoking rates is people with disability who have an Australian daily smoking prevalence of 24.5% for individuals aged 15–64 (compared to 12.6% for those without disability). Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability describes people with disability as those ‘with long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others’.

Smoking rates are consistently higher among people with disability, and these patterns hold across six disability sub-groups (intellectual, physical, psychosocial, sensory, acquired brain injury and other) than among people without disability. Across 21 European countries, people with disability had consistently higher smoking rates than their non-disabled peers. Tobacco-related health burden is inequitably higher among people with disability, who are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness and cancer.