State-specific Prevalence of Cigarette Smoking Among Adults and Quitting Among Persons Aged 18-35 Years--United States, 2006

Each year, cigarette smoking in the United States causes approximately 438,000 deaths and results in an estimated $167 billion in health-care costs plus lost productivity attributed to premature deaths. Although smoking cessation has major and immediate health benefits for persons of all ages, the benefit is greater the earlier in life a person quits. Persons who quit before the age of 35 years have a life expectancy similar to that of those who never smoked. To assess the prevalence of current smoking among all adults and among those aged 18-35 years, and to assess the proportion of smokers aged 18-35 years who have quit or attempted to quit, CDC analyzed state and area data from the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicated substantial variation in current cigarette smoking prevalence among the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), Puerto Rico (PR), and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) (range: 9.1%-28.6%). The majority of current smokers aged 18-35 years reported that they had attempted to quit smoking during the past year (median: 58.6%; range: 48.0% [Nevada] to 69.2% [New Mexico]), and the median proportion of ever smokers aged 18-35 years who had quit smoking was 34.0% (range: 27.0% [Louisiana] to 47.9% [Utah]). Effective, comprehensive tobacco-use prevention and control programs should be continued and expanded to further reduce smoking initiation by young persons and to encourage cessation as early in life as possible.