November 27, 2016
Social pressure factor in smokefree target
Understanding why Maori are more likely to smoke is important in any effort to reducing smoking rates.
That’s the word from Lance Norman, the chief executive of Maori public health organisation Hapai Te Hauora, which has just teamed up with two University of Otago research groups to address issues of tobacco control.
He says it’s going to be tough to meet the goal of making Aotearoa smokefree by 2025 without some dramatic moves to bring down the Maori smoking rate from over 38 percent.
It’s not just a health issue.
We know Maori are overrepresented in poverty, family violence, homelessness, so we can’t just be having these initiatives that say to our whanau ‘you need to stop smoking’ when there are triggers out there, that smoking is probably helpful for some of the issues they face in society, so unless we address the underlying issues, it is going to be very difficult to address the addictions based on those issues in the community,” Mr Norman says.
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