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An annual survey of smoking among year 10 students has found Maori 14 and 15 year old girls are three times as likely to be daily smokers than girls and boys of other ethnicities.
Action on Smoking and Health says that’s disappointing, given that overall daily smoking rates have fallen below 3 percent for the first time since the survey started in 2000.
About 20 percent of the 30,000 students who completed the survey were Maori.
It found 8.8 percent of Maori girls and 5.4 percent of Maori boys were daily smokers in 2014, compared with 1.7 percent of non-Maori.
That still represented progress on 2013, when 10.1 percent of Maori grirls and 6.8 percent of Maori boys were daily smokers.
In all about 16 percent of Maori girls and 10 percent of Maori boys said they were regular smokers.
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