Smoking during pregnancy is the most common preventable risk factor for pregnancy complications. Supporting women to stop smoking during pregnancy can reduce the risk of adverse outcomes for mothers and their babies.
Smoking is associated with poorer perinatal outcomes, including low birthweight, being small for gestational age, pre-term birth and perinatal death.
Support to stop smoking is widely available through antenatal clinics.
In 2020, almost 1 in 10 mothers (9.2%) report smoking at any time during pregnancy, a rate that has been gradually falling since 2010 (14%). Higher smoking rates were observed among Indigenous mothers (43%), teenage mothers (aged under 20) (34%) and mothers aged 20-24 (21%).
The data visualisation below presents data on smoking status of women who gave birth at any time during pregnancy, in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and after 20 weeks of pregnancy, by selected maternal characteristics, for 2020. Click the trend button to see how data has changed over an 11-year period.