According to a national study, the rate of smoking aborigines is the same as almost 40 years ago. This means that Indigenous people weren’t influenced by anti-smoking messages so fiery promoted in USA.

At the moment near half of Australia's Indigenous community are smokers. Doctor David Thomas, from the Menzies School of Health Research, said the biggest number of aborigines’ smokers is people who are socially disadvantaged. Doctor supposes that namely social disadvantage is a major factor that can be attributed with so high smoking rate.

Doctor said this report showed that smokers are mostly those who are the poorest and most socially disadvantaged Indigenous people. Perhaps because of social disadvantage or because of inadequate anti-smoking campaigns, but one thing is quite clear: the anti-smoking message has failed to reach Aboriginal communities.

”What is clear is that those campaigns have not reached Aboriginal people,” Dr. Thomas said.

Being a society with its characteristic features and culture, Aboriginal communities need a peculiar strategies and anti-smoking messages.

”I think we need a combination of both interventions and campaigns that we know work in other populations, and also some special programs for Indigenous people.

”I think even the mainstream programs haven't reached Aboriginal people as well as they could have, so we need the combination,” Dr. Thomas said.