In a nation where smoking and vaping are gradually becoming less common, Australia is witnessing a rise in clandestine tobacco activities. While fewer individuals are lighting up or puffing on e-cigarettes, a significant spike in the consumption of illegal tobacco products has caught attention.
This shift is highlighted in the recent National Drug Strategy Household Survey, unveiled on Friday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), an arm of the federal government.
Conducted in 2025, the survey drew insights from over 17,500 Australians aged 14 and older, tracking their patterns of alcohol, tobacco, and drug usage — a practice the survey has maintained for numerous decades.
The data revealed a notable decline in daily smoking rates, with only 5.6 percent of participants admitting to smoking every day. This is a significant drop from the 8.3 percent recorded in the 2022-23 survey and even more so from the 19.5 percent in 2001.
In contrast, the daily use of vapes or e-cigarettes showed a minor holdover at 3.6 percent, nearly unchanged from 3.5 percent in the preceding survey, a number that had previously grown from 1.1 percent in 2019.
That stabilisation was “one of the things that was more surprising”, AIHW spokesperson Louise Gates told SBS News.
Experts were also encouraged to observe an overall decline in the proportion of people using e-cigarettes.
Daily use among young adults dipped from 9.3 per cent in 2022-23 to 8.3 per cent in 2025.
Less frequent use dropped more substantially from 11.3 per cent to 5.8 per cent.
But there was a sharp rise in the use of illicit tobacco among smokers — more than doubling from 16.7 per cent to 34 per cent — and evidence suggesting more people are using multiple different nicotine products at once.
‘That’s a huge concern’
Of the smokers surveyed, nearly one in four reported buying branded tobacco without plain packaging or health warnings in the last three months, and one in six used unbranded illicit tobacco, such as tobacco or cigarettes sold loose in plastic bags.
More than half of respondents who bought illicit branded products said they got them from a tobacconist.
By law, all tobacco products in Australia must be in plain packaging without branding or logos, and display health warnings.
Tobacco is also subject to a high excise to keep prices high and discourage smoking. Any tobacco product on which this tax has not been paid is illegal.
Prices for legal tobacco products have almost tripled in the past decade, while estimated prices of illicit tobacco products have largely remained constant, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Becky Freeman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney with more than two decades of experience in the tobacco control field, said she’d been waiting to see the data amid an “explosion” in availability of cheap tobacco products.
“We can see now that, absolutely, more smokers are using illicit tobacco products, and that’s a huge concern to me,” she tells SBS News.
“One of the key reasons people report that they quit smoking, number one, is always health impacts. But number two is because of the price.
“So if we have a significant portion of smokers getting around that sort of price disincentive, it means those smokers may be less likely to quit.”
Freeman believes two factors are driving the surge in illicit tobacco use: the much lower price point, and ease of access.
“You can walk down your local high street, and a shop will just sell it to you in broad daylight,” she says.
“This isn’t some sort of underground thing where you feel unsafe or not sure how you get your hands on it.”
Overall, though, she views the latest AIHW data as a “good news story”.
Despite the boom in the illicit tobacco market, the data aligns with state-based surveys showing a downward trend in smoking overall.
“We’ve all been kind of holding our breath in public health,” she says.
New patterns of nicotine use
Snus, and more recently, nicotine pouches, have become increasingly popular ways of using nicotine.
Nicotine pouches are small, tobacco-free sachets placed between the lip and gum. Snus is used in a similar way, but it contains tobacco. Both are illegal for commercial sale in Australia.
For the first time, the survey measured the use of nicotine pouches, with 1.8 per cent of respondents reporting having used them in the last year.
It was most popular among young people, with 8.4 per cent of those aged 18-24 reporting they had used them.
There was also new evidence that people are increasingly using multiple forms of nicotine.
The proportion of people who had used three or more forms of nicotine in the last year nearly doubled between surveys,
“The thing that’s most concerning to me is this new pattern of use among people who use nicotine, and that they’re not just either vaping or not just smoking; they’re using multiple nicotine products at once,” Freeman says.
She says it’s important to ensure this trend doesn’t continue to rise.
“Maybe they’re smoking on Friday and Saturday nights. They’re using a vape during the week at work, and then they’re popping a pouch in their mouth for those times where they can’t vape or smoke,” she says.
“That’s keeping them in that nicotine addiction for longer.”
So where to from here? Now is not the time for complacency, according to Freeman.
“The rise of illicit tobacco and these new nicotine products — they absolutely are a big threat to our continued success in reducing smoking,” she says.
Freeman says sustained enforcement, anti-smoking campaigns, support to help people quit and strong restrictions on tobacco sales will all be needed if Australia is to move closer to a tobacco-free future.