Smoking Rate Has Stopped Declining, Says CDC

Sept. 7, 2010 — -- Anti-smoking advocates worry they are losing the war on tobacco because cash-strapped states and communities are not spending enough to combat the cigarette industry.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today released the results of a new survey that concludes adult smoking rates, which had been on the decline for three decades, have stopped going down over the past five years. The report finds nearly 47 million people, one out of every five adults, were smokers in 2009, a rate that has remained about the same since 2005.

"So why has the decline stalled? The answer really is quite simple," CDC Director Tom Frieden said today. "The tobacco industry combined with the failure of governments and communities to do what we know to reduce tobacco use."

Frieden said states spent $700 million last year on tobacco control. The tobacco industry spent $12 billion -- 35 times as much -- on the marketing and promotion of smoking.

"While government efforts are often standing still or even moving backward, the tobacco industry is not standing still," Frieden said.

The amount spent by states is just a small fraction, Frieden said, of the $25 billion they took in from tobacco taxes and cash from a 1998 settlement with cigarette manufacturers.

Richard Barnes, a researcher at the University of California's Center for Tobacco Research and Education, said "only a couple states really use" the tobacco money they take in for tobacco control. "Most of them spend it on prisons and roads and things like that." Compounding the problem, he said, the recession has eaten away at many state programs meant to fight smoking.

"The economy has had a very significant effect on state spending on their tobacco control programs," Barnes said. "It's just one of the first places that legislators pick because they have just not grasped the payback that a well-run program can have."