Smoking Rates Drop, But Millions Still Use Tobacco

Bumiku December 14, 2016
Fewer Americans than ever are smoking, but millions still struggle with the habit.
© Image courtesy of Pixabay, public domainFewer Americans than ever are smoking, but millions still struggle with the habit.
Fewer people than ever are smoking in the United States, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though certain groups are at greater risk than others for indulging in the habit.  Smoking still kills more people than any other preventable condition in the country, but the CDC says the number of smokers has dropped considerably in the last 10 years, from almost 21 percent of adults in 2005 to about 15 percent of adults last year. However, there were disparities among different groups. For example, men were more likely to smoke than women. The numbers also varied between age groups, with the largest proportion of smokers between 25 and 44 years old, followed by people ages 45 to 64; young adults between 18 and 24 years; and finally people older than 65. Smoking rates also decreased with every rung of education a person reached, from high school diploma to a graduate degree, and with income.
Race also played a role: the CDC reports that Native Americans and mixed race individuals were the most likely to smoke, followed by blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians. Other factors included sexual orientation, with straight adults less likely to smoke than their LGBT counterparts; hometown, with Midwesterners smoking most of all, compared to people in the South, Northeast and West; and disability, with disabled or limited people smoking more. “We’ve made commendable progress toward reducing smoking, the leading cause of death in this country,” Brian A. King, a deputy director in the office of smoking and health at the CDC, told the New York Times. “But there’s still work to do.”
States Ranked by the Most Tobacco-Related Deaths: When people think of fatal drugs, most think of substances like meth, heroin or, more recently, prescription opioids. More than alcohol or tobacco, these drugs can cause quick, deadly overdoses that make headlines. Though cigarettes and tobacco aren’t usually part of sensational news stories, they are silent killers.While smoking and tobacco usage in the United States has been dropping steadily for generations, many people still partake. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking remains the largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Tobacco might not frequently cause the acute poisoning that leads to death by overdose, but it clearly can contribute to an untimely demise. With this in mind, the experts at HealthGrove, a health data site powered by Graphiq, examined the most recent data (2009) on smoking-attributable mortality from the CDC to find the states with the most tobacco-related deaths. To calculate the annual smoking-attributable mortality rate by state, HealthGrove averaged the data across years 2005 to 2009. In the case of ties, the state with the larger total number of smoking-attributable deaths ranks higher. Though some of the more stereotypically health-conscious states, such as California, Oregon and Colorado, rank towards the bottom of the list with lower rates of smoking-attributable deaths, no one region of the United States dominates the top. States in all regions — from the South to the East and West — make an appearance in the top 20.
States Ranked by the Most Tobacco-Related Deaths


source : Medical Daily (http://www.medicaldaily.com/)

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