CDC MMWR - Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults — United States, 2005–2013

The report underscores the need to fully implement effective actions to successfully reduce smoking. A combination of tobacco price increases, smoke-free laws, high impact media campaigns, and easy access to quitting assistance, are critical to reducing cigarette smoking and smoking-related disease and death, particularly among subpopulations with the greatest burden. Cigarette smoking among U.S. adults declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 17.8 percent in 2013. However, in 2013, 42.1 million U.S. adults were current cigarette smokers, and cigarette smoking remains particularly high among certain groups, including adults who are male, younger, multiracial or American Indian/Alaska Native, have less education, live below the federal poverty level, live in the South or Midwest, have a disability/limitation, or who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. These disparities call attention to the importance of enhanced implementation and reach of proven strategies to prevent and reduce tobacco use among these groups, as well as expanded questions on surveillance tools to better capture data on subpopulations with the greatest burden of tobacco use.

The online version of the article is  available at www.cdc.gov/mmwr.

Source: CDC/Office on Smoking and Health