The Cancer Council are using today's World No Tobacco Day to shed light on the massive influence of socioeconomic factors in the Hunter on the prevalence of smoking.
Around 16 per cent of people in the Hunter smoke and it's been found the incidence of smoking is at its highest in lower socioeconomic areas and trending downward in higher socioeconomic areas.
It's no secret smoking can lead to potentially deadly cancers with 80 per cent of lung cancer cases directly related to smoking, but Regional Manager of the Cancer Council Shayne Connell says the socioeconomic factors are becoming just as much of an influence.
"If you look at different socioeconomic groups those rates vary dramatically - so from a higher socioeconomic area, smoking rates are as low as 4 to 5 per cent and in some other groups like unemployed, people suffering a mental illness, those rates can be upwards of 40 and 50 per cent."
Possible reasons for such a big divide are thought to include that those living in the higher socioeconomic areas may be more responsive to public health campaigns and more likely to use effective resources for quitting smoking and have a better environment in which to be encouraged to quit.
These initiatives don't always appear have the same effect on those in lower socioeconomic areas.
The latest research released by the Cancer Council show results collected over a long period of time between 1985 and 2009 giving a significant snapshot of the frequency of cancer and who is most at risk.
"We looked at lung cancer incidences in women and what we found is that it was fairly steady and there's always a 20 or 30 year lag obviously between generational smoking and lung cancer but from about 1995 onwards there's fairly big disparity between people in a higher socioeconomic groups who had lower cancer rates than those in lower socioeconomic areas," said Shayne Connell.
"With today being World No Tobacco Day, we're really highlighting this again and looking to different research to highlight some of the differences in how lung cancers affect the community."
