Australia's most disadvantaged people are more than twice as likely to develop diseases from smoking as the most wealthy.
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The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has made the finding, in a new report laying bare the impact of tobacco on the nation's health.
Smoking contributed to 21,000 deaths in Australia in 2015, the latest year for which data is available.
That was more than one in eight deaths across the nation in the year, making smoking the leading risk factor for ill health and early death.
Ultimately, smoking was responsible for 9.3 per cent of Australia's total burden of disease.
The metric tracks how diseases affect a population by robbing people of years of their life, either through premature death or the effects of living with a particular disease.
Almost half (43 per cent) of tobacco's burden came through cancer, most of which was lung cancer.
Coronary heart disease accounted for almost a third of smoking impact (30 per cent), followed by coronary heart disease (10 per cent) and stroke (3.1 per cent).
But it's all not all bad news, with the AIHW finding tobacco's rate of burden of disease fell by 24 per cent between 2003 and 2015, due to population increase, ageing and fewer people smoking.
That trend is expected to continue, with the burden tipped to drop by another 10 per cent by 2025.
However, the burden linked to past smoking rose by 12 per cent, given that some diseases borne from smoking can take years to develop.
The impact smoking is having on people's health differs depending on where they live in Australia.
People living in the lowest socio-economic areas - or facing the most disadvantage - had a tobacco disease burden 2.6 times higher than those living in the highest socio-economic areas.
Australians living in the Northern Territory had an impact 2.1 times that of the national average.
Tobacco's impact was also 1.8 times higher for people living in remote and very remote areas, compared to those in major cities.
The disparities are caused by a number of factors, including higher rates of smoking in some areas, and differences in access to, or use of, health care services.
About 12.2 per cent of Australians smoked daily in 2016, which is almost half the rate in the early 1990s.
Australian Associated Press
