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Cigarette Smoking Among Adults—United States, 1995
The Wednesday, December 24, 1997 issue of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
(MMWR) contains the article,
"Cigarette Smoking Among
Adults—United States, 1995." Data collected from the 1995 National Health
Interview Survey shows that 24.7 percent (47 million) of all U.S. adults were current
smokers—27 percent of men (24.5 million) and 22.6 percent of women (22.4 million).
Nearly 70 percent (32 million) of smokers in 1995 said they wanted to quit smoking
completely and 45.8 percent of current everyday smokers stopped smoking for at least one
day during the previous year. The findings of this study and previous trends suggest that
the U.S. will fall short of its national public health goal to reduce smoking to 15
percent by the year 2000.
The study also found:
- Racial and ethnic group-specific smoking
prevalences were highest for American Indians and Alaska Natives (36.2 percent) and lowest
for Asian-Pacific Islanders (16.6 percent).
- Smoking prevalence was highest among persons
with 9-11 years of education (37.5 percent) and lowest among persons with 16 or more years
of education (14.0 percent). Smoking prevalence was higher among persons living below the
poverty level (32.5 percent) than among those living at or above the poverty level (23.8
percent).
- An estimated 44.3 million adults were former
smokers---25 million men and 19.3 million women.
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