CDC Report Reveals That 19 Percent Of Americans Are Smokers, Attributes This To States Cutting Back On Tobacco Measures

As a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a poll indicates that 52 percent of 44 million Americans have tried to quit smoking. However, the number of smokers who have quit remains at 19 percent.

What comes as welcome news for health officials is the fact that the largest decline of smokers occurred among those who are between the ages of 18 and 24, from 24 to 19 percent. The reason why this is good news is because most smokers begin this habit before the age of 18 and in most cases, never try after the age of 25.

Also, the number of smokers who smoke more than 30 cigarettes a day has gone down from 13 to 9 percent between 2005 and 2011, and are figures that are a part of the overall statistic of the number of smokers in the US dropping from 20.9 to 19.3 percent. Alternatively, the number of smokers who smoke between one to nine cigarettes a day has increased from 16 to 22 percent.

Health officials attribute the reasons for the stagnation of the overall figure of 19 percent being due to states cutting back on measures such as tobacco sales taxes and smoke-free laws as they are cash-strapped.

This report also, for the first time, provide figures for disabled Americans who smoke, and which stood at 25 percent – a number that is much higher than smokers who aren’t disabled.

These current statistics reveal that the goal set by the United States Department of Public Health to curtail the number of smokers to 12 percent by 2020 remains a distant goal.