“Resilient Young Smokers” - A Proposed Study in Determining Young Adult Smokers’ Responses Towards Anti-Smoking Initiatives in Australia

Abstract

Although cigarette smoking rate has declined consistently in the past four decades in Australia, the smoking habit remains popular among some groups. From a marketer’s vantage point, this slowed reduction portrays the less effective implementation of anti-smoking campaigns in Australia. Ideally, each anti-smoking intervention ought to break the chain of marginal utility and lead to a sharp or stepped decline of smoking prevalence. This paper explores the inadequacies of fear factored anti-smoking campaigns and some prevailing reasons why young adult smokers continue to smoke. This paper begins with a review and categorisation of the different reasons of why young adults continue to smoke. These reasons draw on addiction, stress, habit, social-economic factors, self-identity and peer pressure. The rationale for studying these anti-smoking initiatives is to evaluate if these initiatives address the issues of smoking amongst young adults. This paper is significant for formulating effective anti-smoking messages and policy developments in Australia.