For the first time in almost 15 years, the rate of smoking among American adults has increased. That’s a number that we find both surprising and distressing.
Surprising because while smoking is just as deadly today as it was in 1994, increases in federal and state taxes have made the smoking habit far more expensive today than 15 years ago. Yet, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, slightly more than one out of five American adults continue to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets to pursue a habit that is a major cause of cancer, heart and respiratory diseases and is likely to shorten the lives of those who continue to puff away.
Based on a 2008 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just less than 21 percent of Americans were current cigarette smokers. The new numbers come just a year after the percentage of adult smokers fell below 20 percent for the first time, at 19.8 percent. While it was clear even then that the federal government’s stated goal of reducing adult smoking to 10 percent by 2010 was not going to be achieved, at least the numbers were moving in the right direction — downward.
In fact, since the first surgeon general’s report on the harmful effects of smoking were published in the 1960s, the rate of smoking among adults has declined by half from more than two in five to about one in five.
While health officials acknowledge that the first increase in the rate of adult smoking since 1994 may be just a “blip,” they are just as concerned that the 2007 decline below the 20 percent level “appears to be a statistical aberration,” said Dr. Matthew McKenna, director of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.
“Clearly, we’ve hit a wall in reducing adult smoking,” said Vince Willmore, spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington, D.C.- based research and advocacy organization.
There’s a general perception that smoking is a dying public health danger. Feeding that perception are indoor smoking laws, higher cigarette taxes and Congress’s recent decision to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. Indoor smoking bans range from the limited ban like the one in Ashland and a number of other Kentucky cities, to a statewide ban like the one in neighboring Ohio. To be sure, smoking in public is becoming less and less socially accepted.
The latest figures were collected before a 62-cent federal tax that took effect on April 1. On the same day, Kentucky’s cigarette tax doubled. In fact, in the last five years, Kentucky’s tax on a pack of cigarettes has risen from a minuscule 3 cents to 60 cents.
For the record, Kentucky no longer leads the nation in the percentage of adult smokers. That “honor” is shared by two of our neighboring states — West Virginia and Indiana — which each have an adult smoking rate of about 26 percent. However, the CDC is quick to point out that the adult smoking rates are nearly as high in Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
Why is it that Kentucky is located amid the top six states with the greatest number of adult smokers? It can’t just be because tobacco continues to be a major cash crop in this state. After all, farmers in North Carolina and Virginia also grow a lot of tobacco, but they apparently do not use the crop they grow as much as we do in Kentucky.
The high rates of cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other smoking-rated ailments in Kentucky clearly show that the state is paying a high price for its high rate of smoking. Let us hope that the increase in adult smoking proves to be just a one-year aberration — in Kentucky and throughout the nation.
