Fewer Bay of Plenty Year 10 students are smoking every day, figures show.
In 2013, 4.91 per cent of 14 to 15-year-old students in the Bay of Plenty District Health Board area smoked daily, compared with 5.4 per cent the year before, Action on Smoking and Health's (ASH) Year 10 smoking survey found.
The number of students who considered themselves regular smokers had dropped from 9.4 per cent to 7.99 per cent and more students said they were never smokers at 72.21 per cent, up from 68.5 per cent.
In March, ASH announced a nationwide drop in youth smoking rates, with only 3.2 per cent of pupils in the 14 to 15-year-old age group smoking daily last year, compared with 4.1 per cent in 2012.
Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation (PHO) smoking cessation co-ordinating officer Graham Hare said the results were great.
"Those results are people's lives. They might be numbers, but they're people's lives."
Although the PHO's work with local medical practices focused on the 18-75 age bracket, Mr Hare had previously worked in health promotion with high school students.
He found some students smoked to fit into social groups, while others were exposed to smoking relatives.
"They were actually really worried about their relatives ... what they were most concerned about was those people being around for their grandchildren."
The PHO was hoping to get involved with training providers that offered programmes to teenage school leavers, looking at providers' smoking policies and what could be offered to students.
"Often smoking is part of the domain and it's part of the socialisation of these places."
ASH director Stephanie Erick said while it was great to see youth daily smoking decreasing nationwide, it was important to be mindful of "smoking inequalities" such as the Maori daily smoking rate.
This rate remained higher at 8.5 per cent but had dropped from 30.3 per cent in the first survey in 1999.
Quitline chief executive Paula Snowden said the organisation was thrilled by the continued decline in youth smoking rates.
Achieving the Government's goal of Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 goal was a two-pronged attack: preventing young people starting smoking and helping addicted smokers to break their addiction, she said.
"The ASH survey tells us we are making great progress in reducing uptake with 14-15-year-olds, and Census 2013 tells us that we are also making progress in getting people to quit, with smoking prevalence falling from 20.7 per cent in 2006 to 15.1 per cent in 2013.
"Today, there are half as many smokers aged 15 to 19 compared with 2006 and we are also especially pleased to see that the decline is seen across all populations, including Maori."
The results highlighted the fact fewer people were starting to smoke and more people were quitting, which was testimony to the effectiveness of the Government's tobacco control policies."