Australia's youth smoking rate hits record low: study

Smoking among Australia's youth has reached a record low, with researchers attributing the steady decline to tighter regulation of tobacco products.

An Australian study, published in the Journal of Public Health Research and Practice on Thursday, found 3.4 percent of Australian adolescents, aged 12 to 17, smoked daily.

This compares with the latest state data from New South Wales (NSW) in 2014, which put the figure closer to 6.7 percent for heavy, light or occasional' smokers of the same age.

In 1996, 23.5 percent of adolescents in NSW were classed in that category.

Over the past 20 years, the Australian government has adopted several anti-smoking measures, including heavily taxing all tobacco products, pulling tobacco advertisement from television and film and introducing smoke-free environments.

In 2012, Australia introduced plain packaging for all tobacco-related products, in a world-first designed to make smoking less appealing to impression young kids.

Despite the positive results, however, lead author of the new study Anita Dessaix, from the Cancer Institute NSW, said Australia should not let its guard down.

"Significant progress has been made, but further action is required to achieve continued declines in smoking by Australian adolescents by preventing uptake and aiding quitting," Dessaix wrote in the paper.

"Constant vigilance is needed to address new and innovative tobacco marketing strategies."

She said Tobacco companies were always exploring new ways to lure in young kids in an attempt to make them lifetime smokers.

"On average, for every extra hour that young people spend on the internet daily, their exposure to smoking in video games increases by 8 percent," Dessaix said. Endit