Contextualising the medical risks of cigarette smoking: Australian young women’s perceptions of anti-smoking campaigns

Abstract

This paper presents results from a qualitative analysis of the perceptions Australian young women cigarette smokers have of the medical health messages espoused through anti-smoking campaigns. The study aims to show that the deployment of medico-scientific knowledges in the most recent series of anti-smoking campaigns disseminated in New South Wales Australia (those which emerged in the 1990s under the auspices of the National Tobacco Campaign (NTC)), means that for a number of reasons, the anti-smoking message becomes detached from the everyday life circumstances and smoking choices of the young women. Semi-structured face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 20 Australian young women smokers aged 18 to 24. The sample was purposively selected according to gender, age, and smoking status. Interviewees were drawn from the Sydney metropolitan and surrounding Sydney area, the Newcastle area and the Hunter Valley area. The interviews were one-off and took place from May to December 2002. The study found that there are a range of important issues which flow from the tendency of the anti-smoking discourse to characterise and profile smoking as a ‘risky’ health behaviour. For young women who smoke for the positive benefits associated with the activity (such as stress relief and enhanced social interactions), the risks may be justified as part of a risk profiling, where the smoker sees the risk as a risk they are willing to take in an inherently uncertain and risky world. For anti-smoking campaigns to impact on young people, they must adopt strategies which increase the awareness of young people regarding their own particular health risks, and do so in ways which are non-judgemental and even optimistic, without tacitly endorsing risky behaviour.